How Religion Evolved
DOWNLOAD
Download How Religion Evolved PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get How Religion Evolved book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages. If the content not found or just blank you must refresh this page
How Religion Evolved
DOWNLOAD
Author : Robin Dunbar
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2022
How Religion Evolved written by Robin Dunbar and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022 with Religion categories.
In How Religion Evolved, Robin Dunbar explores the evolution of religion from the earliest practices to the world religions familiar to us today. Examining religion's origins, social functions, its effects on the brain and body, and its place in the modern era, Dunbar offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of the quintessentially human impulse to believe.
How Religion Evolved
DOWNLOAD
Author : Robin Dunbar
language : en
Publisher: Penguin UK
Release Date : 2022-04-07
How Religion Evolved written by Robin Dunbar and has been published by Penguin UK this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-04-07 with Religion categories.
A fascinating analysis of the evolution of religion from the internationally renowned evolutionary psychologist When did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured? Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the 'mystical stance' - the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. As he explores world religions and their many derivatives, as well as religions of experience practised by hunter-gatherer societies since time immemorial, Dunbar argues that this instinct is not a peculiar human quirk, an aberration on our otherwise efficient evolutionary journey. Rather, religion confers an advantage: it can benefit our individual health and wellbeing, but, more importantly, it fosters social bonding at large scale, helping hold fractious societies together. Dunbar suggests these dimensions might provide the basis for an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious, and so help unify the myriad strands that currently populate this field. Drawing on path-breaking research, clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe, as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders, mysterious sects and lost faiths, How Religion Evolved offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse - to believe.
The Faith Instinct
DOWNLOAD
Author : Nicholas Wade
language : en
Publisher: Penguin
Release Date : 2009-11-12
The Faith Instinct written by Nicholas Wade and has been published by Penguin this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-11-12 with Social Science categories.
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.
Religion In Human Evolution
DOWNLOAD
Author : Robert N. Bellah
language : en
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Release Date : 2011-09-15
Religion In Human Evolution written by Robert N. Bellah and has been published by Harvard University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-09-15 with Religion categories.
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.
Supernatural Selection
DOWNLOAD
Author : Matt Rossano
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2010-05-28
Supernatural Selection written by Matt Rossano and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-05-28 with Religion categories.
In 2006, scientist Richard Dawkins published a blockbuster bestseller, The God Delusion. This atheist manifesto sparked a furious reaction from believers, who have responded with numerous books of their own. By pitting science against religion, however, this debate overlooks what science can tell us about religion. According to evolutionary psychologist Matt J. Rossano, what science reveals is that religion made us human. In Supernatural Selection, Rossano presents an evolutionary history of religion. Neither an apologist for religion nor a religion-basher, he draws together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show the valuable--even essential--adaptive purpose served by systematic belief in the supernatural. The roots of religion stretch as far back as half a million years, when our ancestors developed the motor control to engage in social rituals--that is, to sing and dance together. Then, about 70,000 years ago, a global ecological crisis drove humanity to the edge of extinction. It forced the survivors to create new strategies for survival, and religious rituals were foremost among them. Fundamentally, Rossano writes, religion is a way for humans to relate to each other and the world around them--and, in the grim struggles of prehistory, it offered significant survival and reproductive advantages. It emerged as our ancestors' first health care system, and a critical part of that health care system was social support. Religious groups tended to be far more cohesive, which gave them a competitive advantage over non-religious groups, and enabled them to conquer the globe. Rather than focusing on one aspect of religion, as many theorists do, Rossano offers an all-encompassing approach that is rich with surprises, insights, and provocative conclusions.
The Evolution Of Gods The Scientific Origin Of Divinity And Religion
DOWNLOAD
Author : Ajay Kansal
language : en
Publisher: Epicurus Books
Release Date : 2012-04-23
The Evolution Of Gods The Scientific Origin Of Divinity And Religion written by Ajay Kansal and has been published by Epicurus Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-04-23 with Religion categories.
Did gods create mankind, or did mankind create gods? Why, when and how did mankind begin to worship gods? Religious scriptures the world over claim that one or the other god made man, but science has not yet identified any supernatural power that created and governed human beings. Was it man who came up with the idea of gods to help him cope with his own fears? Could it be that ancient people attributed natural phenomena-unfathomable and frightening to them-to the working of invisible gods? What kind of sufferings or bewilderments made people bow before unseen powers or gods as we call them? When were these gods created? Who invented morals and methods of worship? Who wrote the ancient scriptures such as the Bible and the Vedas? Most crucially, have gods and the scriptures shaped our responses to the world around us? The Evolution of Gods seeks to answer these questions, and explains scientifically how, when and why religions and gods came into being. Ajay Kansal marshals anthropological and historical facts about the development of religions in a simple and straightforward manner to assert that it was mankind that created gods, and not the other way around.
Religion Evolving
DOWNLOAD
Author : Benjamin Grant Purzycki
language : en
Publisher: Advances in the Cognitive Science of Religion
Release Date : 2022
Religion Evolving written by Benjamin Grant Purzycki and has been published by Advances in the Cognitive Science of Religion this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022 with Religion categories.
The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.
Why We Believe
DOWNLOAD
Author : Agustin Fuentes
language : en
Publisher: Yale University Press
Release Date : 2019-09-24
Why We Believe written by Agustin Fuentes and has been published by Yale University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-09-24 with Psychology categories.
A wide-ranging argument by a renowned anthropologist that the capacity to believe is what makes us human Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? 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 wholeheartedly to an idea--is central to the human way of being in the world.
Religion Explained
DOWNLOAD
Author : Pascal Boyer
language : en
Publisher: Basic Books
Release Date : 2007-03-21
Religion Explained written by Pascal Boyer and has been published by Basic Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2007-03-21 with Social Science categories.
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 "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. And Man Creates God tells readers, for the first time, what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and how it originates. It is a beautifully written, very accessible book by an anthropologist who is highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic. As a scientific explanation for religious feeling, it is sure to arouse controversy.
Darwin S Cathedral
DOWNLOAD
Author : David Wilson
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2003-10
Darwin S Cathedral written by David Wilson and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2003-10 with Religion categories.
'Darwin's Cathedral' takes the radical step of joining evolution and religion, proposing an evolutionary theory of religion that shakes both evolutional biology and social theory at their foundations.