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Supernatural Agents

2009-04-27 Religion
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Release : 2009-04-27
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 75X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Supernatural Agents by : Iikka Pyysiainen

Download or read book Supernatural Agents written by Iikka Pyysiainen. This book was released on 2009-04-27. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysiäinen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then goes on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysiäinen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others. Abstract theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysiäinen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology.

The Minds of Gods

2023-02-09 Religion
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Release : 2023-02-09
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 713/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Minds of Gods by : Benjamin Grant Purzycki

Download or read book The Minds of Gods written by Benjamin Grant Purzycki. This book was released on 2023-02-09. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Violence in the Name of God

2020-01-23 Religion
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Release : 2020-01-23
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 981/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Violence in the Name of God by : Joel Hodge

Download or read book Violence in the Name of God written by Joel Hodge. This book was released on 2020-01-23. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the trajectory of militant jihadism to show how violence is more intentionally embraced as the centre of worship, social order and ideology. Undertaking an in-depth analysis of militant jihadist groups and utilising the work of René Girard, Joel Hodge argues that the extreme violence of militant jihadists is a response to modernity in two ways that have not been sufficiently explored by the existing literature. Firstly, it is a manifestation of the unrestrained and escalating state of desire and rivalry in modernity, which militant jihadists seek to counter with extreme violence. Secondly, it is a response to the unveiling and discrediting of sacred violence, which militant jihadists seek to reverse by more purposefully valorising sacred violence in what they believe to be jihad. Relevant to anyone interested in Islam, philosophy of religion, theology, and terrorism, Violence in the Name of God imagines new ways of thinking about militancy in the name of Islam in the twenty-first century.

Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science

2014-03-20 Religion
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Release : 2014-03-20
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 443/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science by : Fraser Watts

Download or read book Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science written by Fraser Watts. This book was released on 2014-03-20. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cognitive science of religion is an inherently heterogeneous subject, incorporating theory and data from anthropology, psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, and philosophy of mind amongst other subjects. One increasingly influential area of research in this field is concerned specifically with exploring the relationship between the evolution of the human mind, the evolution of culture in general, and the origins and subsequent development of religion. This research has exerted a strong influence on many areas of religious studies over the last twenty years, but, for some, the so-called 'evolutionary cognitive science of religion' remains a deeply problematic enterprise. This book's primary aim is to engage critically and constructively with this complex and diverse body of research from a wide range of perspectives. To these ends, the book brings together authors from a variety of relevant disciplines, in the thorough exploration of many of the key debates in the field. These include, for example: can certain aspects of religion be considered adaptive, or are they evolutionary by-products? Is the evolutionary cognitive science of religion compatible with theism? Is the evolutionary cognitive approach compatible with other, more traditional approaches to the study of religion? To what extent is religion shaped by cultural evolutionary processes? Is the evolutionary account of the mind that underpins the evolutionary cognitive approach the best or only available account? Written in accessible language, with an introductory chapter by Ilkka Pyssiäinen, a leading scholar in the field, this book is a valuable resource for specialists, undergraduate and graduate students, and newcomers to the evolutionary cognitive science of religion.

Religion and Cognition

2016-04-01 Religion
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Release : 2016-04-01
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 870/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Religion and Cognition by : D. Jason Slone

Download or read book Religion and Cognition written by D. Jason Slone. This book was released on 2016-04-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cognitive science of religion examines the mental processes that govern religious belief and behaviour. It offers a fresh and exciting approach to the scientific study of religion. 'Religion and Cognition' brings together key essays which outline the theory and illustrate this with experimental case material. The central topics in this new critical field of research are all addressed: meta-theoretical arguments for cognitive explanations of religion; theoretical models of cognition employed in the cognitive science of religion; prominent cognitive theories of religion; methods used to gather data and test theories; and experimental findings by cognitive scientists of religion.

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