Is There a Universal Grammar of Religion?

Is There a Universal Grammar of Religion?

Author: Henry Rosemont

Publisher: Open Court

Published: 2015-11-08

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0812699300

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In this provocative volume two important scholars of religion, Huston Smith and Henry Rosemont, Jr., put forth their viewpoints and share a probing conversation. Though the two diverge considerably in their accounts of religious faith and practice, they also agree on fundamental points. Huston Smith, author of the important work The World’s Religions, has long argued for the fundamental equality of the world’s religions. Describing a “universal grammar of religion,” he argues that fourteen points of similarity exist among all of the major religious traditions and that these similarities indicate an innate psychological affinity for religion within the human spirit. As Noam Chomsky has argued that humans are hardwired to use language, Smith similarly argues that humans are hardwired for religious experience. In response, Rosemont explicates his humanistic vision of the world, in which the “homoversal” tendency to contemplate the infinite is part of our co-humanity that endures across time, space, language, and culture. Rosemont also elaborates upon Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar and its relevance to Smith’s ideas about the similarities among religions. This insightful exploration of the most essential basis of religion provides a new direction for comparative-religion scholars everywhere.


God, Freud and Religion

God, Freud and Religion

Author: Dianna T. Kenny

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-05

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1317649656

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Choice Essential Read Did God create man or did man create God? In this book, Dianna Kenny examines religious belief through a variety of perspectives – psychoanalytic, cognitive, neuropsychological, sociological, historical and psychiatric – to provide a coherent account of why people might believe in God. She argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a fertile and creative approach to the study of religion that attempts to integrate religious belief with our innate human nature and developmental histories that have unfolded in the context of our socialization and cultural experiences. Freud argued that religion is so compelling because it solves the problems of our existence. It explains the origin of the universe, offers solace and protection from evil, and provides a blueprint about how we should live our lives, with just rewards for the righteous and due punishments for sinners and transgressors. Science, on the other hand, offers no such explanations about the universe or the meaning of our lives and no comfort for the unanswered longings of the human race. Is religion a form of wish-fulfilment, a collective delusion to which we cling as we try to fathom our place and purpose in the drama of cosmology? Can there be morality without faith? Are science and religion radically incompatible? What are the roots of fundamentalism and terror theology? These are some of the questions addressed in God, Freud and Religion, a book that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists, students of psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and theology and all those with an interest in religion and human behaviour. Dianna Kenny is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of over 200 publications, including six books.


The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Religion

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Religion

Author: Hephzibah Israel

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-19

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1315443473

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The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Religion is the first to bring together an extensive interdisciplinary engagement with the multiple ways in which the concepts and practices of translation and religion intersect. The book engages a number of scholarly disciplines in conversation with each other, including the study of translation and interpreting, religion, philosophy, anthropology, history, art history, and area studies. A range of leading international specialists critically engage with changing understandings of the key categories ‘translation’ and ‘religion’ as discursive constructs, thus contributing to the development of a new field of academic study, translation and religion. The twenty-eight contributions, divided into six parts, analyze how translation constructs ideas, texts or objects as 'sacred' or for ‘religious purposes’, often in competition with what is categorized as ‘non-religious.’ The part played by faith communities is treated as integral to analyses of the role of translation in religion. It investigates how or why translation functions in re-constructing and transforming religion(s) and for whom and examines a range of ‘sacred texts’ in translation—from the written to the spoken, manuscript to print, paper to digital, architectural form to objects of sacred art, intersemiotic scriptural texts, and where commentary, exegesis and translation interweave. This Handbook is an indispensable scholarly resource for researchers in translation studies and the study of religions.


Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination

Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination

Author: Anthony Campbell

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2008-04

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 140920314X

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There seems to be a widespread notion that belief is, in itself, a good thing, but in this book Anthony Campbell argues that, for at least some people, freeing oneself from all belief systems brings a huge sense of relief. He illustrates this by describing his own experience of Roman Catholicism and Transcendental Meditation. He also looks at the evidence for miraculous cures for cancer and at ideas about the soul, with particular reference to survival. And he has a discussion of how religions are transmitted, which he thinks depends on story-telling and language as much as on formal belief. This is a wide-ranging book with a lot of ideas.


Christianity and the Roots of Morality

Christianity and the Roots of Morality

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 9004343539

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What is the role of religion, especially Christianity, in morality, pro-social behavior and altruism? Are there innate human moral capacities in the human mind? When and how did they appear in the history of evolution? What is the real significance of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount — does it set up unique moral standards or only crystallize humans’ innate moral intuitions? What is the role of religious teachings and religious communities in pro-social behavior? Christianity and the Roots of Morality: Philosophical, Early Christian, and Empirical Perspectives casts light on these questions through interdisciplinary articles by scholars from social sciences, cognitive science, social psychology, sociology of religion, philosophy, systematic theology, comparative religion and biblical studies. Contributors include: Nancy T. Ammerman, István Czachesz, Grace Davie, Jutta Jokiranta, Simo Knuuttila, Kristen Monroe, Mika Ojakangas, Sami Pihlström, Antti Raunio, Heikki Räisänen (✝), Risto Saarinen, Kari Syreeni, Lauri Thurén, Petri Ylikoski.


The Philosophy of Universal Grammar

The Philosophy of Universal Grammar

Author: Wolfram Hinzen

Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0199654832

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This interdisciplinary book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. The claim is that grammar provides homo sapiens with the ability to think in certain grammatical ways and that this in turn explains the vast cognitive powers of human beings. Evidence is considered from biology, theevolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.


The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion

Author: Robert A. Segal

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-02-26

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 1119092760

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Explore a rigorous but accessible guide to contemporary approaches to the study of religion from leading voices in the field The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion delivers an expert and insightful analysis of modern perspectives on the study of religion across the humanities and the social sciences. Presupposing no knowledge of the approaches examined in the collection, the book is ideal for undergraduate students who have yet to undertake extensive study in the humanities or social sciences. The book includes perspectives from those in fields as diverse as globalization, cognitive science, the study of emotion, law, esotericism, sex and gender, functionalism, terror, the comparative method, modernism, and postmodernism. Many of the topics covered in the book clearly hail from religious studies, while others are grounded in other areas of academia. All of the chapters contained within are written by recognized authors who show how their chosen discipline contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon of religion. This book also includes topics like: A comprehensive exploration of multiple approaches to religious study, including anthropology, economics, literature, phenomenology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology A review of various topics germane to the study of religion, including the study of the body, cognitive science, the comparative method, death and the afterlife, law, magic, music, and myth A selection of subjects touching on modern trends in extremism and violence, including chapters on terror and violence, fundamentalism, and nationalism A discussion of the influence of modernism and postmodernism in religion Ideal for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students in humanities and social science programs taking courses on religion and myth, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion will also earn a place in the libraries of specialists working in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Political Science, History, and Philosophy.


Syncretism in Religion

Syncretism in Religion

Author: Anita Maria Leopold

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-01

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1134967144

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Syncretism - the fusion of different beliefs into one religious system - has long been controversial in scholarship. It is widely held that religion, culture and ethnicity are pure entities that may become mixed in encounter and lead to impure, hybrid forms. 'Syncretism in Religion' presents a selection of essays committed to solving the problems of syncretism. The essays reflect the full breadth of religious traditions that could be called syncretistic. An overview of the historical background of syncretism is given, alongside classical readings from the history of religion, definitions of syncretism in relation to theories of power, and an assessment of the future of the subject. This volume brings together the work of authors who have made significant contributions in the field, some appearing for the first time in English. It will be of interest to any student or scholar of religion, philosophy or anthropology concerned with the dynamics of cultural contact and change.


Perspectives on Maimonides

Perspectives on Maimonides

Author: Joel L. Kraemer

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1909821438

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'It will allow students to possess a volume that will acquaint them with high standards of scholarship, showing at the same time that although so much has been said and written about Maimonides, it is still possible to come up with new and interesting insights into his life and works, which continue to be interpreted very differently by different scholars.' - Gad Freudenthal, Journal of Religious History


The Vienna Circle and Religion

The Vienna Circle and Religion

Author: Esther Ramharter

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-03-08

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 3030761517

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This book is the first systematic and historical account of the Vienna Circle that deals with the relation of logical empiricists with religion as well as theology. Given the standard image of the Vienna Circle as a strong anti-metaphysical group and non-religious philosophical and intellectual movement, this book draws a surprising conclusion, namely, that several members of the famous Moritz Schlick-Circle - e.g., the left wing with Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Philipp Frank, Edgar Zilsel, but also Schlick himself - dealt with the dualisms of faith/ belief and knowledge, religion and science despite, or because of their non-cognitivist commitment to the values of Enlightenment. One remarkable exception was the philosopher and Rabbi Joseph Schächter, who wrote explicitly on religion and philosophy after the linguistic turn. The book also covers another puzzling figure: the famous logician Kurt Gödel, who wrote on theology and the ontological proof of God in his so far unpublished notebooks. The book opens up new perspectives on the Vienna Circle with its internal philosophical and political pluralism and is of value to philosophers, historians and anybody who is interested in the relation between science and religion.