Why “Hunter-Gatherers and Religion”?
Anyone who surveys the “religious” beliefs of hunter-gatherers (or foragers) will almost immediately discover that many of them do not have a word that translates as “religion” and do not understand...
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Homo Religiosus, Religion, and Fertility: A Conversation with Michael Blume
I recently found an excellent blog, Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion, written by the German scholar Dr. Michael Blume. After I linked to his blog, Michael came over here for some...
View ArticleAgriculture and the Apocalypse
By my reading of history, the turning (or tipping) point for humanity was the domestication of plants and animals, otherwise known as the Neolithic Revolution. Before this occurred — at different...
View ArticleStephen Hawking on Religion: “Science Will Win”
Over at ABC News, Ki Mae Heussner reports on a Diane Sawyer interview of the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking with this contentious headline: “Stephen Hawking on Religion: Science Will Win.” This is...
View ArticleMorality without God, Buddhism as Religion, and Christian Empire
Incredibly, there are three articles over at HuffPo Religion that I have recently bookmarked for brief discussion here. There are of course about ten others which reflect the liberal, progressive,...
View ArticleReligious Knowledge — What Curriculum?
There has been much chatter over the past few weeks about what appears to be a general lack of religious knowledge among Americans. Although I have not seen any surveys or studies from outside the...
View ArticleFertility Does Not Explain “Evolution of Religion”
We should thank Tom Rees over at Epiphenom for posting a much needed “rant on the evolution of religion.” What has Tom so worked up? The claim — first made by Michael Blume and now accepted by Jesse...
View ArticleGroup Level Selection? The Non-Evolution of Religion
There are a number of scholars who claim that “religion” evolved as an adaptation. What kind of adaptation? A group level adaptation. The story usually goes like this: at some unknown time during the...
View ArticleShamans as Storytellers
It is a well known fact that in many pre-state or small-scale societies where shamanic practices prevail, shamans are expert storytellers and keepers of traditional knowledge. As I noted in a previous...
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