Over at the Guardian, Andrew Brown asks if we should clone Neanderthals (assuming it could be done). For me, the easy answer is no.
Brown then asks a series of nonsensical questions which imply that because Neanderthal brains were different from human brains (Neanderthals in fact had bigger brains than humans; the difference is in shape), [...]
Tags:acculturation·Andrew Brown·Anglican·Buddhist·Christian·cloned Neanderthal·cloning·culture·enculturation·heresy·heretics·Hindu·monotheism·Muslim·myth·Neandertal·religious exclusivism·religious pluralism·Richard Dawkins·ritual form·shamanic·shamanisms·social construction·Upper Paleolithic
Few books in the history of anthropology are better known (but never read) than James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. First published in 1890 (2 volumes), Frazer published a second edition in 1900 (3 volumes), and a rolling third edition between 1911 and 1915 which ballooned to 12 volumes.
Though [...]
Tags:Cambridge Ritualists·comparative mythology·Diana·folklore·James George Frazer·JG Frazer·Kant·magic·myth·Nemi·primitive religion·resurrection·ritual·ritual murder·Robert Ackerman·sacred grove·The Golden Bough·Ur-religion
In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published his wonderfully imaginative Just So Stories. What child does not thrill to learn “How the Camel Got His Hump” or “How the Leopard Got His Spots“? When I was six years old, my grandmother read “How the Whale Got His Throat” to me and I swallowed it hook, line, and [...]
Tags:adaptationist·desire·empiricism·epigenetic·evolutionary psychology·imagination·Jaak Panksepp·Jonah·Jules Panksepp·Just So Stories·modules·myth·neuroscience·Panglossian·Rudyard Kipling·science·seven deadly sins·Seven Sins·spandrels·speculation·storytelling·tales·whale·wish fulfillment
Among scholars and historians of religion, there has long been an unfortunate tendency to treat myth as mere text — disembodied, free-floating, timeless, and ahistorical. In such non-contexts, myth is considered to be something universal or essential, that which captures and expresses archetypes, or even worse, an archaic and tentative approach to monotheism.
In the fifth [...]
Tags:ahistorical·archaic·archetype·Carl Jung·disembodied·history·Homo faber·Homo religiosus·Imagining Religion·incipient monotheism·interpretation·Io·Io myth·Jonathan Z. Smith·Karl Marx·Maori cosmology·Maori creation myth·Mircea Eliade·monotheism·myth·native·primordial·text·timeless·universal
In the beginning, I had some hope for the Huffington Post’s relatively new section devoted to religion. Here was a forum, I thought, where difficult questions could be asked and possible answers ventured. Not once, however, have I read a post which asks a tough question, which might include any of the following:
What is “religion”?
Why [...]
Tags:compassion·deities·demons·doctrines·ecumenical·educated·enlightened·ethics·exegesis·existential·Frank Schaeffer·fundamentalism·fuzzy·gods·hermeneutics·Huffington Post·HuffPo Religion·Jay Michaelson·liberal·literalism·love·meaning·morals·mystical·mysticism·myth·progressive·purpose·sophisticated·souls·spirits·syncretic·vague
Over at the New Statesman, Sholto Byrnes has posted a short piece on “The Importance of Myth.” Byrnes was prompted to write after watching Howard Jacobsen’s program on “Creation,” which is part of a BBC series titled “The Bible: A History.” Jacobsen, though not a believer, is moved by some aspects of religion and unhappy [...]
Tags:belief·Bertrand Russell·Blaise Pascal·doubt·faith·Friedrich Nietzsche·Howard Jacobsen·mystery·myth·Rene Descartes·science·Sholto Byrnes·skepticism·unbelief
