This ambitious book probes our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have imagined were worth living. Bellah’s theory goes deep into cultural and genetic evolution to identify a range of capacities (communal dancing, storytelling, theorizing) whose emergence made religious development possible in the first millennium BCE.
This book uses a multidisciplinary approach to describe millions of years of biological innovations that eventually give rise to the modern trait and its varied expression in humanity's many religions.
This book explores the role of ritual in social life, human evolution, and religion.
A fascinating intervention into some of the most common misconceptions about human nature, this book employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief—the ability to commit passionately and ...
To remedy this, in this volume leading researchers from theoretical biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history, and economics come together to explore the central role ...
2005; Rosenbaum, Maldonado-Chapparo, and Stoinski 2016; Lukas et al. 2005; Watts and Mitani 2002; Goodall 1986, 1990; Nishida 1990; Stumpf et al. 2009; Boesch and BoeschAchermann 2000). In Table 3.1, Maryanki's cladistic analysis of ...
Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and ...
Actually, El means “god,” and Baal was also used as a generic term for god (Smith, 2002). Mark Smith summarizes: Israelite religion in its earliest form did not contrast markedly with the religions of its Levantine neighbors in either ...
God, Hitchens writes, is not great. But man, according to George E. Vaillant, M.D., is great. In Spiritual Evolution, Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion but of man’s inherent spirituality.
This text is ideal for students of theology.
In this book, E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question.