Homo Religiosus?

Homo Religiosus?

Author: Timothy Samuel Shah

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1108422357

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examines whether religion is natural to human experience, and whether this helps to ground a universal right to religious freedom.


Homo Religiosus?

Homo Religiosus?

Author: Timothy Samuel Shah

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1108395147

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Are humans naturally predisposed to religion and supernatural beliefs? If so, does this naturalness provide a moral foundation for religious freedom? This volume offers a cross-disciplinary approach to these questions, engaging in a range of contemporary debates at the intersection of religion, cognitive science, sociology, anthropology, political science, epistemology, and moral philosophy. The contributors to this original and important volume present individual, sometimes opposing points of view on the naturalness of religion thesis and its implications for religious freedom. Topics include the epistemological foundations of religion, the relationship between religion and health, and a discussion of the philosophical foundations of religious freedom as a natural, universal right, drawing implications for the normative role of religion in public life. By challenging dominant intellectual paradigms, such as the secularization thesis and the Enlightenment view of religion, the volume opens the door to a powerful and provocative reconceptualization of religious freedom.


The Sacred and the Profane

The Sacred and the Profane

Author: Mircea Eliade

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 1959

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780156792011

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Famed historian of religion Mircea Eliade observes that even moderns who proclaim themselves residents of a completely profane world are still unconsciously nourished by the memory of the sacred. Eliade traces manifestations of the sacred from primitive to modern times in terms of space, time, nature, and the cosmos. In doing so he shows how the total human experience of the religious man compares with that of the nonreligious. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the history of religion, but its perspective also emcompasses philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. It will appeal to anyone seeking to discover the potential dimensions of human existence. -- P. [4] of cover.


The Western Construction of Religion

The Western Construction of Religion

Author: Daniel Dubuisson

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2003-06-18

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780801873201

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of religionas it is understood in the West but offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.


The Case for God

The Case for God

Author: Karen Armstrong

Publisher: Knopf Canada

Published: 2009-09-22

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0307372952

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the bestselling author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times. Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the lengths to which humankind has gone to experience a sacred reality that it called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. With her trademark depth of knowledge and profound insight, Armstrong elucidates how the changing world has necessarily altered the importance of religion at both societal and individual levels. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for structuring a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.


Homo Symbolicus

Homo Symbolicus

Author: Christopher S. Henshilwood

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011-11-16

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 9027211892

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The emergence of symbolic culture, classically identified with the European cave paintings of the Ice Age, is now seen, in the light of recent groundbreaking discoveries, as a complex nonlinear process taking root in a remote past and in different regions of the planet. In this book the archaeologists responsible for some of these new discoveries, flanked by ethologists interested in primate cognition and cultural transmission, evolutionary psychologists modelling the emergence of metarepresentations, as well as biologists, philosophers, neuro-scientists and an astronomer combine their research findings. Their results call into question our very conception of human nature and animal behaviour, and they create epistemological bridges between disciplines that build the foundations for a novel vision of our lineage's cultural trajectory and the processes that have led to the emergence of human societies as we know them.


The Roots of Religion

The Roots of Religion

Author: Roger Trigg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1317016939

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The cognitive science of religion is a new discipline that looks at the roots of religious belief in the cognitive architecture of the human mind. The Roots of Religion deals with the philosophical and theological implications of the cognitive science of religion which grounds religious belief in human cognitive structures: religious belief is ’natural’, in a way that even scientific thought is not. Does this new discipline support religious belief, undermine it, or is it, despite many claims, perhaps eventually neutral? This subject is of immense importance, particularly given the rise of the ’new atheism’. Philosophers and theologians from North America, UK and Australia, explore the alleged conflict between truth claims and examine the roots of religion in human nature. Is it less ’natural’ to be an atheist than to believe in God, or gods? On the other hand, if we can explain theism psychologically, have we explained it away. Can it still claim any truth? This book debates these and related issues.


Creation of the Sacred

Creation of the Sacred

Author: Walter Burkert

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1998-01-13

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780674175709

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sacrifice is essential to all religions. Could there be a natural, even biological, reason? Why are sacrifice and numerous other religious rituals and concepts shared by so many different cultures? In this extraordinary book, one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient religions explores the possibility of natural religion.


The Gravity of Sin

The Gravity of Sin

Author: Matt Jenson

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0567031381

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book looks at the influential metaphor of sinful humanity as 'homo incurvatus in se' (humanity curved in on itself), from its origins in Augustine to Luther, Barth and the Feminist theology.