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
Historians have long known that the shelf life of complex societies throughout human history has been rather limited. Archaeologists are aware of this also. But how to explain it?
In a recent (open access) paper, “Cycling in the Complexity of Early Societies,” Sergey Gavrilets and colleagues mathematically modeled early complex societies using a number of variables [...]
Tags:chiefs·collective action problems·competition·complex societies·control mechanisms·cycling·David Anderson·domination·earliest religions·early societies·elites·emergence·group conflict·legitimation·Mesoamerica·Mesopotamia·Neolithic Revolution·Peter Turchin·power·priests·Robert Carneiro·rulers·Sergey Gavrilets·shamanic·shamanisms·stratification·succession mechanisms·warfare
In a few days Jesse Bering’s new book, The Belief Instinct, will be published in the United States. It has already been published in the UK as The God Instinct. The title change seems a bit odd and the opposite of what one might have expected. Something like ninety percent of Americans believe in God, [...]
Tags:anthropomorphism·autism·cognitive illusion·Faces in the Clouds·Jesse Bering·neolithic·Paleolithic·shamanisms·Stewart Guthrie·The Belief Instinct·The God Instinct·theory of mind
There has been much chatter over the past few weeks about what appears to be a general lack of religious knowledge among Americans. Although I have not seen any surveys or studies from outside the United States, I think it safe to say this ignorance is not limited to America — it most likely is [...]
Tags:brain-mind·Breaking the Spell·curriculum·Daniel Dennett·Diane Winston·hunter-gatherers·metaphysics·neolithic·Paleolithic·Purpose Driven Life·religious ignorance·religious knowledge·religious naturalism·Rick Warren·shamanisms·social construction·supernaturalism·truth·truth correspondence
Over at NPR, Alix Spiegel presents a stimulating piece (which you can listen to or read) that asks: Is Believing in God Evolutionarily Advantageous? It seems to me that framing the question in this way suggests certain answers, all of which are neatly ensconced within Western and modern understandings of what constitutes “religion.” The story’s [...]
Tags:Alix Spiegel·cognitive science of religion·cooperation·Dominic Johnson·ethics·evolution of religion·extended kinship·fictive kinship·Jesse Bering·kinship·morality·Plains Indians·punishment·religion as adaptation·religiosity·shamanism·shamanisms·supernatural agents·surveillance
Nearly 5,500 years ago or about 3,500 BCE, the Sumerians began writing about supernatural matters; in a sense, this marks the origin of what most people today understand as “religion.” This relatively modern and provincially Western understanding of religion is on full display in Paul Raushenbush’s article introducing HuffPo Religion’s new series on religious texts [...]
Tags:Bhagavad Gita·books·Buddhist·category of religion·Christian presuppositions·doctrinal·Edward Said·essentializing·Harvey Whitehouse·Hindu·imagistic·Jonathan Z. Smith·non-written traditions·orientalism·Paul Raushenbush·religion as academic creation·religion as text·religion as writing·religions of the book·religious writings·scriptures·shamanisms·shamanist·shamans·Sumeria·Sumerians·texts·The Word·theologians·theology·transcendence·transcendent·Vedic·word·writing
I recently found an excellent blog, Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion, written by the German scholar Dr. Michael Blume. After I linked to his blog, Michael came over here for some reading. He also had a question, which I answered, and he responded. The issue we are discussing — higher fertility rates [...]
Tags:adaptive assumptions·cultural evolution·earliest religions·fertility·group level selection·Homo religiosus·hunter-gatherers·Michael Blume·Neolithic Revolution·Panglossian Paradigm·religion as adaptation·religion as byproduct·reproductive fitness·Richard Lewontin·Sarah Hrdy·shamanisms·shamans·spandrels·Stephen Jay Gould
