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
In this review of Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion by Julian Young, Weaver Santaniello provides some observations that — if true, are startling:
And while many simply regard Nietzsche as an atheist, Young does not view Nietzsche as a non-believer, radical individualist, or immoralist, but as a nineteenth-century religious reformer belonging to a German Volkish tradition of [...]
Tags:Beyond Good and Evil·Dionysius·existential·Friedrich Nietzsche·Greek mythology·Julian Young·Nietzsche's Philosophy of Religion·paganism·pantheism·Schopenhauer·Supposing Truth is a Woman·Volkish tradition·Weaver Santaniello
The following statement comes from a “scholarly work” (his words, not mine) by Jay Michaelson, who apparently is a well known Jewish thinker and writer:
For nondual Judaism, God does not exist — God is existence itself. Experientially, God is simply all that is, once the illusion of the separate self is taken away. And religiously, [...]
Tags:Everything is God·Jay Michaelson·Jewish mysticism·pantheism·tautology·theism
