Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
I've noted before that religion is a tricky thing to define. Simple definitions, such as belief in gods, have a tendency to leave out movements that everyone agrees is religious, such as non-theistic versions of Buddhism. We can be a bit more inclusive by including any belief in a superempirical reality, but that still leaves … Continue reading Defining religion polythetically
The new Dune movie has reminded me of that franchise's vision of future religions. So I was probably more primed than usual to notice a brief article asking if aliens would be religious. The author, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, invokes the Copernican principle to conclude that they likely would be. After all, most humans are religious to … Continue reading Would aliens or AI have religion?
Related to our discussion on religion, I found this series of posts from Bret Devereaux on Practical Polytheism pretty interesting. It matches descriptions I've read from writers like Bart Ehrman, on how ancient polytheism worked. In summary, at the center of polytheism was ritual, ritual to appease the gods so that the harvest would come … Continue reading How polytheism worked
This is an ongoing series of posts on topics that catch my interest as I read Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Religion is one of those concepts, like life, beauty, or consciousness, that are difficult to define. I used to think it was just worship of God, or gods. But many … Continue reading The superhuman order definition of religion
Some years ago I reviewed a book by Ara Norenzayan called Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Norenzayan's thesis was that it was a belief in big gods, specifically cosmic gods that cared about human morality, that enabled the creation of large scale human societies. In small societies, reputation serves as an effective … Continue reading Big societies came before big gods
Click through for full sized version, and to see the red-button caption. via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. I often wish I could draw comics. You can say a lot in a brief and humorous cartoon. I think one of the dangers we always have to be on guard against is the trap of thinking that we know … Continue reading The danger of thinking we know best
I recently read the late Robert Bellah's 'Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age.' Although the title of the book seems to narrow it to just religion, in ancient societies, religion was just about everything, so the book ended up being about the development of cultures, which isn't too surprising given … Continue reading Religion, the Axial Age, and theoretic culture
I've noted before that defining religion is difficult. Simple definitions (such as belief in gods) tend to either exclude some religions (such as Buddhism), or include things that most people don't consider to be a religion (such as constitutional law or science). Definitions that get the scope about right tend to be hopelessly vague or unwieldy. … Continue reading Confucianism and the definition of religion
One of the things that a lot of people are often surprised to hear, is that most scholars don't believe that religion was always concerned with morality, that moralizing religion didn't exist to any significant extent before the 'Axial Age' circa 500 BC. Psychologist Nicolas Baumard has a theory about what may have led to moralizing … Continue reading Wealth may have driven the rise of moralizing religions
Pew just released an interesting report on religion in Latin America: Religion in Latin America | Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. Given our recent discussion on the decline of religion in western societies, I found this report interesting. Religion and belief in God remains very strong in Latin America, except in one country, Uruguay. … Continue reading Religion in Latin America is strong, except in Uruguay
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