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Author: Jay R. Feierman Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 0313364311 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 325
Book Description
Offers a fresh and detailed take on the evolution of religious behavior from a biobehavioral perspective, promoting a new understanding that may help build bridges across the religious divide. There has been much recent interest in the study of religion from the perspective of Darwinian evolution. The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion offers a broad overview of the topic, written by internationally recognized experts. In addition to its primary focus on religious behavior, the book addresses other important aspects of religion, such as values, beliefs, and emotions as they affect behavior. The contributors approach the evolution of religion by examining the behavior of individuals in their everyday lives. After describing various religious behaviors, the contributors consider the behaviors with reference to their evolutionary history, development during the lifetime of the individual, proximate causes, and adaptive value. Happily, this foray into understanding religion from a biobehavioral perspective demonstrates that, at the biological and behavioral levels, what unites the different religions of the world is far greater than what divides them.
Author: Jay R. Feierman Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 0313364311 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 325
Book Description
Offers a fresh and detailed take on the evolution of religious behavior from a biobehavioral perspective, promoting a new understanding that may help build bridges across the religious divide. There has been much recent interest in the study of religion from the perspective of Darwinian evolution. The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion offers a broad overview of the topic, written by internationally recognized experts. In addition to its primary focus on religious behavior, the book addresses other important aspects of religion, such as values, beliefs, and emotions as they affect behavior. The contributors approach the evolution of religion by examining the behavior of individuals in their everyday lives. After describing various religious behaviors, the contributors consider the behaviors with reference to their evolutionary history, development during the lifetime of the individual, proximate causes, and adaptive value. Happily, this foray into understanding religion from a biobehavioral perspective demonstrates that, at the biological and behavioral levels, what unites the different religions of the world is far greater than what divides them.
Author: Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317799046 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
Because society is increasingly secular, it may seem irrelevant to consider the psychology of religion. But the diversity of our multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society in fact makes religion more important to the social sciences than it has ever been before. What are the social consequences of religion? Every day the news is full of events that can be blamed on religion perpetrated by a range of groups from whole societies to individuals. Beit-Hallami and Argyle are renowned for their clear, analytical approach to topics and this new, state-of-the-art study of psychology and religion is no exception. It will be welcomed as an update to their previous work in the area by social psychologists, sociologists and theologians worldwide.
Author: Vassilis Saroglou Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 1136449841 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 441
Book Description
Psychological interest in religion, in terms of both theory and empirical research, has been constant since the beginning of psychology. However, since the beginning of the 21st Century, partially due to important social and political events and developments, interest in religion within personality and social psychology has increased. This volume reviews the accumulated research and theory on the major aspects of personality and social psychology as applied to religion. It provides a high quality integrative, systematic, and rigorous review of that work, with a focus on topics that are both central in personality and social psychology and have allowed for the accumulation of solid and replicated and not impressionist knowledge on religion. The contributors are renowned researchers in the field who offer an international perspective that is both illuminating, yet neutral, with respect to religion. The volume’s primary audience are academics, researchers, and advanced students in social psychology, but it will also interest those in sociology, political sciences, and anthropology.
Author: Walter Burkert Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674175709 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
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.
Author: Justin L. Barrett Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439196575 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
Infants have a lot to make sense of in the world: Why does the sun shine and night fall; why do some objects move in response to words, while others won’t budge; who is it that looks over them and cares for them? How the developing brain grapples with these and other questions leads children, across cultures, to naturally develop a belief in a divine power of remarkably consistent traits––a god that is a powerful creator, knowing, immortal, and good—explains noted developmental psychologist and anthropologist Justin L. Barrett in this enlightening and provocative book. In short, we are all born believers. Belief begins in the brain. Under the sway of powerful internal and external influences, children understand their environments by imagining at least one creative and intelligent agent, a grand creator and controller that brings order and purpose to the world. Further, these beliefs in unseen super beings help organize children’s intuitions about morality and surprising life events, making life meaningful. Summarizing scientific experiments conducted with children across the globe, Professor Barrett illustrates the ways human beings have come to develop complex belief systems about God’s omniscience, the afterlife, and the immortality of deities. He shows how the science of childhood religiosity reveals, across humanity, a “natural religion,” the organization of those beliefs that humans gravitate to organically, and how it underlies all of the world’s major religions, uniting them under one common source. For believers and nonbelievers alike, Barrett offers a compelling argument for the human instinct for religion, as he guides all parents in how to effectively encourage children in developing a healthy constellation of beliefs about the world around them.
Author: Nicholas Wade Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101155671 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
Noted science writer Nicholas Wade offers for the first time a convincing case based on a broad range of scientific evidence for the evolutionary basis of religion.
Author: E. Rae Harcum Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 0761860452 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
This book asserts that the better one understands the causes of behavior, the better one can apply that knowledge to produce a better world. It describes the mechanisms that cause human behavior, such as freedom of will, in a manner consistent with religious beliefs. It also asserts that all avenues for studying human behavior, like intuition and prayer, are acceptable and necessary. Thus, when studying the agent of human action, we must rely on faith, logic, and intuition, in addition to the full use of empirical science. Principles of Psychology for People of God begins with a description of the nervous system and continues with chapters on development, perception, internal states, learning, memory, and the ultimate selection of behaviors. Nevertheless, it steadfastly emphasizes that behavior is not produced by physical mechanisms alone, but also by a non-material spirit that can transcend some inheritances and environments.
Author: Eckart Voland Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 3642001289 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
In a Darwinian world, religious behavior - just like other behaviors - is likely to have undergone a process of natural selection in which it was rewarded in the evolutionary currency of reproductive success. This book aims to provide a better understanding of the social scenarios in which selection pressure led to religious practices becoming an evolved human trait, i.e. an adaptive answer to the conditions of living and surviving that prevailed among our prehistoric ancestors. This aim is pursued by a team of expert authors from a range of disciplines. Their contributions examine the relevant physiological, emotional, cognitive and social processes. The resulting understanding of the functional interplay of these processes gives valuable insights into the biological roots and benefits of religion.
Author: Patrick McNamara Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139483560 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
Technical advances in the life and medical sciences have revolutionised our understanding of the brain, while the emerging disciplines of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience continue to reveal the connections of the higher cognitive functions and emotional states associated with religious experience to underlying brain states. At the same time, a host of developing theories in psychology and anthropology posit evolutionary explanations for the ubiquity and persistence of religious beliefs and the reports of religious experiences across human cultures, while gesturing toward physical bases for these behaviours. What is missing from this literature is a strong voice speaking to these behavioural and social scientists - as well as to the intellectually curious in the religious studies community - from the perspective of a brain scientist.
Author: Jay R. Feierman
Author: Jay R. Feierman
Author: Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Author: Vassilis Saroglou
Author: Walter Burkert
Author: Justin L. Barrett
Author: Nicholas Wade
Author: E. Rae Harcum
Author: William N. Schoenfeld
Author: Eckart Voland
Author: Patrick McNamara