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How should we study religion? Must we be religious ourselves to truly understand it? Do we study religion to advance our knowledge, or should the study of religions help to reintroduce the sacred into our increasingly secularized world? Juraj Franek argues that the study of religion has long been split into two competing paradigms: reductive (naturalist) and non-reductive (protectionist). While the naturalistic approach seems to run the risk of explaining religious phenomena away, the protectionist approach appears to risk falling short of the methodological standards of modern science. Franek uses primary source material from Greek and Latin sources to show that both competing paradigms are traceable to Presocratic philosophy and early Christian literature. He presents the idea that naturalists are distant heirs, not only of the French Enlightenment, but also of the Ionian one. Likewise, he argues that protectionists owe much of their arguments and strategies, not only to Luther and the Reformation, but to the earliest Christian literature. This book analyses the conflict between reductive and non-reductive approach in the modern study of religions, and positions the Cognitive Science of Religion against a background of previous theories - ancient and modern - to demonstrate its importance for the revindication of the naturalist paradigm.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Naturalism and Religion" by Rudolf Otto. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Ecological crisis is being widely discussed in society today and therefore, the subject of religious naturalism has emerged as a major topic in religion. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-four chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts: • Varieties of religious naturalism and its relations to other outlooks • Some earlier religious naturalists • Pantheism, materialism, and the value-ladenness of nature • Ecology, humans, and politics in naturalistic perspective • Religious naturalism and traditional religions • Putting religious naturalism into practice • Critical discussions of religious naturalism. Within these sections central issues, debates, and problems are examined, including: defining religious naturalism; religious underpinnings of ecology; natural piety; the religious-aesthetic; ecstatic naturalism as deep pantheism; spiritual ecology; African-American religious naturalism; Christian religious naturalism; Dao and water; Confucianism; environmental action; and practices in religious naturalism. The Routledge Handbook of Religious Naturalism is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, theology, and philosophy. The Handbook will also be useful for those in related fields, such as environmental ethics and ecology.
This book provides a critical philosophical analysis of the claim that contemporary cognitive approaches to religion undermine theistic beliefs. The book argues that such naturalism is not necessary for the cognitive study of religion and develops an alternative philosophical and methodological framework. This unique contribution to discussions regarding the philosophical and theological implications of the cognitive study of religion summarizes the so far fragmentary discussion, exposes its underlying assumptions, and develops a novel framework for further discussion.
Willem Drees argues that religion and morality are to be understood as rooted in our evolutionary past and neurophysiological constitution.
This book includes a collection of articles by leading researchers on the topic of religious contact in the study of religion. Resulting from the final conference of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Dynamics in the History of Religions"–one of the largest research initiatives in the interdisciplinary study of religion worldwide in recent years (2008-2020)—this book encapsulates the twofold aim of this conference: first, to "step back" and reflect upon the merits and challenges of studying religious dynamics as a result of intra-, inter-, and extra-religious contact, and second "to look beyond" and pave ways for future approaches to study religion as a social phenomenon.
Why are humans obsessed with divine minds? What do gods know and what do they care about? What happens to us and our relationships when gods are involved? Drawing from neuroscience, evolutionary, cultural, and applied anthropology, social psychology, religious studies, philosophy, technology, and cognitive and political sciences, The Minds of Gods probes these questions from a multitude of naturalistic perspectives. Each chapter offers brief intellectual histories of their topics, summarizes current cutting-edge questions in the field, and points to areas in need of attention from future researchers. Through an innovative theoretical framework that combines evolutionary and cognitive approaches to religion, this book brings together otherwise disparate literatures to focus on a topic that has comprised a lasting, central obsession of our species.
How should ancient religious ideas be approached? Is "religion" an applicable term to antiquity? Should classicists, ancient historians, and religious studies scholars work more closely together? Nickolas P. Roubekas argues that there is a disciplinary gap between the study of Greek and Roman religions and the study of “religion” as a category-a gap that has often resulted in contradictory conclusions regarding Greek and Roman religion. This book addresses this lack of interdisciplinarity by providing an overview, criticism, and assessment of this chasm. It provides a theoretical approach to this historical period, raising the issue of the relationship between “theory of religion” and “history of religion,” and explores how history influences theory and vice versa. It also presents an in-depth critique of some crucial problems that have been central to the discussions of scholars who work on Graeco-Roman antiquity, encouraging us to re-examine how we approach the study of ancient religions.
In Understanding Religion through Artificial Intelligence, Justin E. Lane looks at the reasons why humans feel they are part of a religious group, despite often being removed from other group members by vast distances or multiple generations. To achieve this, Lane offers a new perspective that integrates religious studies with psychology, anthropology, and data science, as well as with research at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI). After providing a critical analysis of approaches to religion and social cohesion, Lane proposes a new model for religious studies, which he calls the “Information Identity System.” This model focuses on the idea of conceptual ties: links between an individual's self-concept and the ancient beliefs of their religious group. Lane explores this idea through real-world examples, ranging from the rise in global Pentecostalism, to religious extremism and self-radicalization, to the effect of 9/11 on sermons. Lane uses this lens to show how we can understand religion and culture today, and how we can better contextualize the changes we see in the social world around us.
Building on critical work in biblical studies, which shows how a historically-bounded heretical tradition called Gnosticism was 'invented', this work focuses on the following stage in which it was “essentialised” into a sui generis, universal category of religion. At the same time, it shows how Gnosticism became a religious self-identifier, with a number of sizable contemporary groups identifying as Gnostics today, drawing on the same discourses. This book provides a history of this problematic category, and its relationship with scholarly and popular discourse on religion in the twentieth century. It uses a critical-historical method to show how and why Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism were taken up by specific groups and individuals – practitioners and scholars – at different times. It shows how ideas about Gnosticism developed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, drawing from continental phenomenology, Jungian psychology and post-Holocaust theology, to be constructed as a perennial religious current based on special knowledge of the divine in a corrupt world. David G. Robertson challenges how scholars interact with the category Gnosticism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between primary sources, academics and practitioners in category formation.