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Author: David Lewis-Williams Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500770433 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
A controversial exploration of the origin of religion in the neurology of the human brain. In this book the noted cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams confronts a question that troubles many people in the world today: Is there a supernatural realm that intervenes in the material world of daily life and leads to the evolution of religions? Professor Lewis-Williams first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about them, and thus creeds are born. Forty thousand years ago, people were leaving traces in the archaeological record of activities that we can label religious, and Lewis-Williams discusses in detail the evidence preserved in the Volp Caves in France. He also shows that mental imagery produced by the functioning of the human brain can be detected in widely separated religious communities such as Hildegard of Bingen’s in medieval Europe or the San hunters of southern Africa.
Author: David Lewis-Williams Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500770433 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
A controversial exploration of the origin of religion in the neurology of the human brain. In this book the noted cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams confronts a question that troubles many people in the world today: Is there a supernatural realm that intervenes in the material world of daily life and leads to the evolution of religions? Professor Lewis-Williams first describes how science developed within the cocoon of religion and then shows how the natural functioning of the human brain creates experiences that can lead to belief in a supernatural realm, beings, and interventions. Once people have these experiences, they formulate beliefs about them, and thus creeds are born. Forty thousand years ago, people were leaving traces in the archaeological record of activities that we can label religious, and Lewis-Williams discusses in detail the evidence preserved in the Volp Caves in France. He also shows that mental imagery produced by the functioning of the human brain can be detected in widely separated religious communities such as Hildegard of Bingen’s in medieval Europe or the San hunters of southern Africa.
Author: Ioannis Tsoukalas Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443818089 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
This book presents a novel explanation for the emergence of the God-concept and human religiosity. In doing so, it makes creative use of the most recent findings in anthropology, neurology and psychology. At the center of this explanation is the fact that early childhood experiences predispose people to ‘magical thinking’, a tendency that is reinforced by the human ability to dream and the over-excitability of the cerebral cortex. The interaction of these three elements, both on the phylogenetic and ontogenetic level, has given rise to the uniquely human ability to apprehend transcendental agency.
Author: Leonardo Wolfe Publisher: WestBow Press ISBN: 1664220607 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 584
Book Description
This debut book boldly seeks to argue competitively in the same intellectual field as famous atheists such as RICHARD DAWKINS, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, and BERTRAND RUSSELL, and to do so in the spirit and style of such famous Christian apologists as C.S. Lewis and RAVI ZACHARIAS, drawing heavily on basic science, history, physics, psychology, paleontology, anthropology, archeology, neurology, child development and even science fiction. It describes the evolution of the human brain in ancient hominids allowing humans to eventually conceive a non-physical realm (the spirit world), and as the mind evolved intellectually from primitive animism to Christology, God revealed himself gradually as the developing hominid brain became able to comprehend new ideas. For Believers, the author presents a new, intellectually satisfying way to understand and defend the Bible. For both Skeptics and Believers, a worldview is offered that is spiritually meaningful and scientifically sound.
Author: Scott Atran Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195178033 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 389
Book Description
Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements in the human condition.
Author: Roger Trigg Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317016920 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 233
Book Description
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.
Author: Armin W. Geertz Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317544552 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 488
Book Description
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.
Author: Fraser Watts Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199688087 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Outgrowth in part of two conferences held in Cambridge in 2009: the Darwin Festival and a conference of the International Society for Science and Religion. (Preface).
Author: James A. Van Slyke Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317037928 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
The cognitive science of religion is a relatively new academic field in the study of the origins and causes of religious belief and behaviour. The focal point of empirical research is the role of basic human cognitive functions in the formation and transmission of religious beliefs. However, many theologians and religious scholars are concerned that this perspective will reduce and replace explanations based in religious traditions, beliefs, and values. This book attempts to bridge the reductionist divide between science and religion through examination and critique of different aspects of the cognitive science of religion and offers a conciliatory approach that investigates the multiple causal factors involved in the emergence of religion.
Author: Todd Tremlin Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199739013 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
This provocative book explains the origins and persistence of religious ideas on the basis of common structures and functions of human thought. The first general introduction to the new "cognitive science of religion," Minds and Gods presents the major themes, theories, and thinkers involved in this revolutionary new approach to human religiosity. Arguing that we cannot understand what we think until we first understand how we think, the book pursues the evolutionary forces that molded the modern human mind and continue to shape our ideas and actions today. Todd Tremlin details many of the adapted features of the brain - illustrating their operation with examples of everyday human behavior - and shows how mental endowments inherited from our ancestral past lead people to naturally entertain religious ideas. Tremlin provides a clear and comprehensive account of the developing field of the cognitive science of religion. This accessible and engaging volume is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the religious mind.