Unlike living organisms, cultural formations do not “evolve.” Evolution, sensu stricto, is a biological process and not a cultural one. Despite this fact, some scholars have fruitfully deployed evolutionary ideas — as analogy and metaphor — to analyze cultural history.
In 1964 the sociologist Robert Bellah did just this in his classic paper, Religious Evolution. Taking [...]
Tags:animism·Arabs·Black Stone·Christianity·cult practice·cultural evolution·Eric Voegelin·Eugene Stockton·Ingela Bergman·Islam·kaaba·landscapes·modern religion·multilinear·Norse·objects·pagans·pantheism·Phoenician·polytheism·primitive religion·religious evolution·religious stages·Robert Bellah·rocks·sacred·Sami·shamanic·stones·symbol systems·typology·unilinear·varro muorra·veneration·Vikings·wood
Over at the Evolution of Religion Project, Dominic Johnson comments on the first target article which will appear in what promises to be a fantastic new journal, Religion, Brain, and Behavior. Because the first issue has yet to be published, I will have to rely on Johnson’s summary:
Jeff Schloss and Michael Murray have written a [...]
Tags:Abrahamic faiths·Abrahamic God·adaptionist·biological evolution·Christianity·cooperation enhancement·cultural evolution·Dominic Johnson·Islam·Jeff Schloss·Judaism·Michael Murray·moral order·moralizing gods·nationalism·punishing gods·punishment avoidance·Religion Brain and Behavior·Rodney Stark·supernatural agents·supernatural punishment·supernatural punishment theory·unified theory
Over at The New York Review of Books, Peter Brown covers Alan Cameron’s recently published tome The Last Pagans of Rome. For those of us who are not classicists, it appears that an abridged volume would be useful sometime in the future. I suppose I will read it before then but it looks a bit [...]
Tags:Alan Cameron·Bernard Lewis·Faith and Power·Fred Donner·Islam·Islamic history·Malise Ruthven·Muhammad and the Believers·Peter Brown·The Last Pagans of Rome
As is the case with charismatic or evangelical forms of Christianity, some strands of Islam have a robust sense of supernatural agency that populates the world with all manner of malevolent spirits who are ostensibly responsible for real world afflictions. In a recent article, psychiatrist Amir Afkhami reports on an Islamic “faith healer” in Iraq [...]
Tags:Amir Afkhami·charismatic·Christianity·demons·evangelical·faith healing·folk beliefs·folk religion·Freud·hysteria·Iraq·Islam·jinns·Koran·Mullah Eskandar·Quran·shamanic healing·spirits
In the NYT’s Art & Design section, Nicolai Ouroussoff has a fascinating report (and nice slideshow) on the controversial construction boom in Mecca, the holiest city in Islam. The Saudi royals seem so impressed by Sin City’s overwhelming and kitschy architecture, they have imported Vegas sized and styled buildings to better serve the (very rich) [...]
Tags:architecture·capitalism·class·class conflict·commerce·consumerism·Grand Mosque·hajj·Islam·jihad·jihadists·kaaba·Las Vegas·Mecca·modernity·Muslims·Nicolai Ouroussoff·pilgrimage tourism·pilgrims·Saudi Arabia
In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde uses a character from Shakespeare’s Tempest to comment on 19th century disgust, a moral emotion:
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not [...]
Tags:Answers in Genesis·Caliban·CNN·disgust·Islam·moral emotions·morals·Oscar Wilde·Paul Refsdal·rage·Shakespeare·Taliban·The Picture of Dorian Gray·The Tempest
The recent release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks has had several salutary effects, not the least of which is to demonstrate there is no such thing as a unified or essentialized “Muslim world” in which various countries whose citizens call themselves Muslims subordinate their conflicting interests to idealized religious goals. The “Muslim world,” in [...]
Tags:American Muslims·Christian world·Egypt·essentializing·idealized·Iran·Islam·Muqtedar Khan·Muslim nations·Muslim world·Pakistan·reified·Saudi Arabia·WikiLeaks
The Christian Command:
If you hear that in one of the towns, there are men who are telling people to go and worship other gods, it is your duty to look into the matter and examine it.
If it is proved and confirmed, you must put the inhabitants of that town to the sword.
You must lay the [...]
Tags:arson·Bill O'Reilly·blasphemers·Christian warriors·Christianity·Crusades·death·demagogues·destruction·Deuteronomy·Glenn Beck·heretics·homicide·infidels·Islam·Islam bashing·killing·Knights Templar·Muslim hating·Newt Gingrich·pillage·unbelievers·violence·wrath
Mount Merapi in Indonesia sadly claimed its spiritual “keeper” on Tuesday. As The Australian reports: “The body of Mbah Maridjan, one of Indonesia’s most admired mystics, was found yesterday morning in his house in ash-blasted Umbulharjo village, prostrated as if in prayer, according to searchers. Maridjan, 83, was entrusted with interpreting and placating Mount [...]
Tags:animism·Buddhist·Hindu·Indonesia·Islam·Islam Kejawen·Java·Javanese Islam·Kanjeng Ratu Kidul·Labuhan Ceremony·Mbah Maridjan·Mount Merapi·mysticism·sea goddess·syncretic·syncretism·Umbulharjo·volcano·volcano spirits
Over at The Stone, the primatologist Frans de Waal asks whether we can act “morally” without being “religious.” I quote-bracket these terms because they are not without complication, and we should be careful about using them in the context of such discussions. Regardless, de Waal poses some questions for which we have historical answers. For [...]
Tags:altruistic·Bart Ehrman·chimpanzees·Christianity·ethics·ethnohistory·evolution of morality·Frans de Waal·implicit ethics·Islam·Judaism·Misquoting Jesus·monotheism·Morals Without God·Native Americans·norms·polytheism·primates·primatologist·prosocial·religions of the book·right conduct
