Anyone studying religion will sooner or later read Sigmund Freud’s classic, The Future of an Illusion (1927). I was engaged in my fifth reading today and came across this passage:
Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that [...]
Tags:atheism·fear·helplessness·lack of telos·loss of parents·loss of protection·meaninglessness·neurosis·religious delusion·religious illusion·replacement with god·secular·secularization·separation anxiety·Sigmund Freud·The Future of an Illusion
As I noted in A Tale of Two Religion Scholars, Dr. Michael Blume’s research (which you can find at Homo religious) shows that religious groups out-reproduce their secular counterparts. The data are solid and correspond to the commandments of most religions: “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Given that religious people make more babies than secular people, Blume [...]
Tags:agnosticism·atheism·carrying capacity·confirmation bias·Darwin·extended lactation·fertility·fitness benefits·Freud·group level selection·group size·ideological causation·infanticide·John Hawks·Marx·Michael Blume·Nietzsche·Paleolithic shamanism·religious·reproduction·Rodney Stark·secular·secularism
Incredibly, there are three articles over at HuffPo Religion that I have recently bookmarked for brief discussion here. There are of course about ten others which reflect the liberal, progressive, ecumenical, and mystical view of religion adhered to by a tiny minority of people, and which will be of interest mostly to the highly educated [...]
Tags:Buddhist history·Christianity as state religion·Constantine·Constantine's conversion·Darwinism and the Moral Argument for God·Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche·early Christianity·empire·evolved morality·foragers·Fran de Waal·hunter-gatherers·Is Buddhism a Religion·Marc Hauser·Michael Ruse·moral code·morality·natural morality·non-religious morality·Paul Wagler·primates·privatization of religious belief·proto-morality·Rodney Stark·secular·Siddhartha·Talal Asad·westernized Buddhism
As I stated in The Supernatural and Stonehenge, it is “incredible that ninety percent of the area surrounding one of the most famous megalithic sites in the world has remained largely unexplored. No wonder there are so many different theories and arguments about who built Stonehenge, why it was constructed, and how [...]
Tags:barrow·barrows·categories·Druids·gobsmacked·Great Britain·henge·henges·Maev Kennedy·Marden Henge·Mardenhenge·midden·mysticism·neolithic·Neolithic religion·paganism·pagans·religious·secular·Stonehenge·supernatural·Wiltshire
In the New York Times Science section, Rachel Donadio reports on a museum in Florence that treats Galileo as both a “secular” and “religious” saint; the curators thus commingle two concepts (the secular/religious) that were being developed during the Renaissance and which reached fruition during the Enlightenment:
The Galileo case is often seen starkly as science’s [...]
Tags:beatification·Catholic Church·Christianity·cosmology·enlightenment·essentializing·excommunication·Florence·Formations of the Secular·Galileo·Gallileo Museum·Genealogies of Religion·heretic·Islam·Naturalization·Rachel Donadio·relics·religious·Renaissance·saint·secular·Talal Asad·William Conolly
