Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture
Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture

Author: Armin W. Geertz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-10-20

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1317545494

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'Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture' brings together some of the world's leading scholars in the fields of cognitive science and comparative religion. The essays range across diverse fields: the neurological processes and possible genetic foundations of how language emerged; the possible phylogenetic routes in the development of language and culture; the complex interrelations between the ontogenesis and the sociogenesis of cognitive processes; the value of a combination of neurology, narratology and a reworked speech-act approach that focuses on narrative; how the psychology of ritual helps make narrative beliefs possible; religious narratives; emotional communication; the role of gossip as religious narrative; area studies of religious narrative and cognition in the Bible; Indian Epic literature; Australian Aboriginal mythology and ritual; modern religious forms such as New Age, Asatro, astrological narrative and virtual rituals in cyberspace.

Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture
Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture

Author: Armin W. Geertz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-11

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1317544552

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Attempts to understand the origins of humanity have raised fundamental questions about the complex relationship between cognition and culture. Central to the debates on origins is the role of religion, religious ritual and religious experience. What came first: individual religious (ecstatic) experiences, collective observances of transition situations, fear of death, ritual competence, magical coercion; mirror neurons or temporal lobe religiosity? Cognitive scientists are now providing us with important insights on phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes. Together with insights from the humanities and social sciences on the origins, development and maintenance of complex semiotic, social and cultural systems, a general picture of what is particularly human about humans could emerge. Reflections on the preconditions for symbolic and linguistic competence and practice are now within our grasp. Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture puts culture centre stage in the cognitive science of religion.

Religious Narrative, Cognition, and Culture
Religious Narrative, Cognition, and Culture

Author: Armin W. Geertz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781845532949

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Contains contributions dealing with religious narrative and cognitive theory written by some of the world's leading scholars in the fields of cognitive science, narratology and comparative religion. This title explores the neurological processes and possible genetic foundations of how language emerged in Homo sapiens.

Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture
Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture

Author: Armin W. Geertz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-11

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 1317544560

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Attempts to understand the origins of humanity have raised fundamental questions about the complex relationship between cognition and culture. Central to the debates on origins is the role of religion, religious ritual and religious experience. What came first: individual religious (ecstatic) experiences, collective observances of transition situations, fear of death, ritual competence, magical coercion; mirror neurons or temporal lobe religiosity? Cognitive scientists are now providing us with important insights on phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes. Together with insights from the humanities and social sciences on the origins, development and maintenance of complex semiotic, social and cultural systems, a general picture of what is particularly human about humans could emerge. Reflections on the preconditions for symbolic and linguistic competence and practice are now within our grasp. Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture puts culture centre stage in the cognitive science of religion.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion
The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion

Author: Anne Koch

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-09-05

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1350066729

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Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this handbook explores both social scientific and humanities approaches to understanding the physical processes of religious life, tradition, practice, and belief. It reflects the cultural turn within the study of religion and puts theory to the fore, moving beyond traditional theological, philosophical, and ethnographic understandings of the aesthetics of religion. Editors Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens bring together research in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts, and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity, and postcolonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space to move beyond a sensory understanding of aesthetics. Emerging areas of research are covered, including secular aesthetics and the aesthetic of spirits. This is an important contribution to theory and method in the study of religion, and is grounded in research that has been taking place in Europe over the past 20 years. Case studies are drawn from around the world with contributions from scholars based in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The book is illustrated with over 40 color images and features a foreword from Birgit Meyer.

An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion
An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion

Author: Claire White

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-14

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1351010956

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In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing to fight—and die—for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses.

Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture
Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-04-26

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9004453822

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Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality analyzes the presence and function of traces of religious narratives in contemporary western culture, from the perspective of cultural memory studies and the transmedial study of narrative and art.

What is Religion?
What is Religion?

Author: Jeppe Sinding Jensen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-09-11

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1317545990

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Religious belief is one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous characteristics of human society. Religion has shadowed and illuminated human lives since primitive times, shaping the world views of cultures from isolated tribes to vast empires. Starting from the premise that religion is a concept which can be analysed and compared across time and cultures, What is Religion? brings the most up-to-date scholarship to bear on humankind’s most enduring creation. The book opens with a brief history of the idea of religion, then divides the study of religion into four essential topics - types, representations, practices, and institutions – and concludes with a final, eye-opening chapter on religion today. Packed with case studies from a wide range of religions, past and present, What is Religion? offers a very current, comprehensive, yet intellectually challenging overview of the history, theories, practices, and study of religion. Accessible, wide-ranging, engaging, and short, What is Religion? is written primarily for undergraduate students in the study of religion, but it will also be invaluable for students of anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, and theology as well as anyone interested in how and why humans came and continue to be religious.

The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion
The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion

Author: Michael Stausberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 881

ISBN-13: 019872957X

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The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religions provides a comprehensive overview of the academic study of religions. Written by an international team of leading scholars, its fifty-one chapters are divided thematically into seven sections. The first section addresses five major conceptualaspects of research on religion. Part two surveys eleven main frameworks of analysis, interpretation, and explanation of religion. Reflecting recent turns in the humanities and social sciences, part three considers eight forms of the expression of religion. Part four provides a discussion of theways societies and religions, or religious organizations, are shaped by different forms of allocation of resources (i.e., economy). Other chapters in this section consider law, the media, nature, medicine, politics, science, sports, and tourism. Part five reviews important developments,distinctions, and arguments for each of the selected topics.The study of religion addresses religion as a historical phenomenon and part six looks at seven historical processes. Religion is studied in various ways by many disciplines, and this Handbook shows that the study of religion is an academic discipline in its own right. The disciplinary profile ofthis volume is reflected in part seven, which considers the history of the discipline and its relevance. Each chapter in the Handbook references at least two different religions to provide fresh and innovative perspectives on key issues in the field. This authoritative collection will advance thestate of the discipline and is an invaluable reference for students and scholars.