An Unnatural History Of Religions

Author : Leonardo Ambasciano
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350062391
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Unnatural History of Religions written by Leonardo Ambasciano and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Unnatural History of Religions examines the origins, development, and critical issues concerning the history of religion and its relationship with science. The book explores the ideological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted beliefs that surround the scientific foundations (or lack thereof) in the academic discipline of the history of religions, positioning them in today's 'post-truth' culture. Leonardo Ambasciano provides the necessary critical background to evaluate the most important theories and working concepts dedicated to the explanation of the historical developments of religion. He covers the most important topics and paradigm shifts in the field, such as phenomenology, postmodernism, and cognitive science. These are taken into consideration chronologically, each time with case studies on topics such as shamanism, gender biases, ethnocentrism, and biological evolution. Ambasciano argues that the roots of post-truth may be deep in human biases, but that historical justifications change each time, resulting in different combinations. The surprising rise of once-fringe beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific claims, and so-called scientific creationism, demonstrates the alarming influence that post-truth ideas may exert on both politics and society. Recognising them before they spread anew may be the first step towards a scientifically renewed study of religion.

Author : Leonardo Ambasciano
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350062405
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Unnatural History of Religions written by Leonardo Ambasciano and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Unnatural History of Religions examines the origins, development, and critical issues concerning the history of religion and its relationship with science. The book explores the ideological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted beliefs that surround the scientific foundations (or lack thereof) in the academic discipline of the history of religions, positioning them in today's 'post-truth' culture. Leonardo Ambasciano provides the necessary critical background to evaluate the most important theories and working concepts dedicated to the explanation of the historical developments of religion. He covers the most important topics and paradigm shifts in the field, such as phenomenology, postmodernism, and cognitive science. These are taken into consideration chronologically, each time with case studies on topics such as shamanism, gender biases, ethnocentrism, and biological evolution. Ambasciano argues that the roots of post-truth may be deep in human biases, but that historical justifications change each time, resulting in different combinations. The surprising rise of once-fringe beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific claims, and so-called scientific creationism, demonstrates the alarming influence that post-truth ideas may exert on both politics and society. Recognising them before they spread anew may be the first step towards a scientifically renewed study of religion.

Author : Thomas A. Tweed
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520917987
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Retelling U.S. Religious History written by Thomas A. Tweed and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection marks a turning point in the study of the history of American religions. In challenging the dominant paradigm, Thomas A. Tweed and his coauthors propose nothing less than a reshaping of the way that American religious history is understood, studied, and taught. The range of these essays is extraordinary. They analyze sexual pleasure, colonization, gender, and interreligious exchange. The narrators position themselves in a number of geographical sites, including the Canadian border, the American West, and the Deep South. And they discuss a wide range of groups, from Pueblo Indians and Russian Orthodox to Japanese Buddhists and Southern Baptists.

Author : Timothy Beal
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135283486
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and Its Monsters written by Timothy Beal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion's great and powerful mystery fascinates us, but it also terrifies. So too the monsters that haunt the stories of the Judeo-Christian mythos and earlier traditions: Leviathan, Behemoth, dragons, and other beasts. In this unusual and provocative book, Timothy K. Beal writes about the monsters that lurk in our religious texts, and about how monsters and religion are deeply entwined. Horror and faith are inextricable. Ans as monsters are part of religious texts and traditions, so religion lurks in the modern horror genre, from its birth in Dante's Inferno to the contemporary spookiness of H.P. Lovecraft and the Hellraiser films. Religion and Its Monsters is essential reading for students of religion and popular culture, as well as any readers with an interest in horror.

Author : Sharman Apt Russell
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 9780465071654
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hunger written by Sharman Apt Russell and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2006-09-05 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day, we wake up hungry. Every day, we break our fast. Hunger is both a natural and an unnatural human condition. In Hunger, Sharman Apt Russell explores the range of this primal experience. Step by step, Russell takes us through the physiology of hunger, from eighteen hours without food to thirty-six hours to three days to seven days to thirty days. In quiet, elegant prose, she asks a question as big as history and as everyday as skipping lunch: How does hunger work?

Author : Gareth Medway
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 081475645X
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lure of the Sinister written by Gareth Medway and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2001-04 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A frequent writer on comparative religion and the history of occultism, Medway begins by exploring what a Satanist is and why people worship Satan, then looks at such topics as the history of Satan and the Pact, Satanic crime, hell on earth, sex slaves of Lucifer, and the relationship between paranoia and conspiracy. He explains that as a Pagan he does not believe in Satan, but neither does he believe in Christianity but knows Christians are real. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Terry Tempest Williams
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 030777273X
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Refuge written by Terry Tempest Williams and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-03-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.

Author : Paul Johnson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451688512
Total Pages : 816 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book History of Christianity written by Paul Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1976, Paul Johnson’s exceptional study of Christianity has been loved and widely hailed for its intensive research, writing, and magnitude—“a tour de force, one of the most ambitious surveys of the history of Christianity ever attempted and perhaps the most radical” (New York Review of Books). In a highly readable companion to books on faith and history, the scholar and author Johnson has illuminated the Christian world and its fascinating history in a way that no other has. Johnson takes off in the year AD 49 with his namesake the apostle Paul. Thus beginning an ambitious quest to paint the centuries since the founding of a little-known ‘Jesus Sect’, A History of Christianity explores to a great degree the evolution of the Western world. With an unbiased and overall optimistic tone, Johnson traces the fantastic scope of the consequent sects of Christianity and the people who followed them. Information drawn from extensive and varied sources from around the world makes this history as credible as it is reliable. Invaluable understanding of the framework of modern Christianity—and its trials and tribulations throughout history—has never before been contained in such a captivating work.

Author : Joseph P. Laycock
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793640254
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous written by Joseph P. Laycock and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters explores the intersection of the emerging field of “monster theory” within religious studies. With case studies from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary valleys of the Himalayas to ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia, the volume examines the variegated nature of the monstrous as well as the cultural functions of monsters in shaping how we see the world and ourselves. In this, the authors constructively assess the state of the two fields of monster theory and religious studies, and propose new directions in how these fields can inform each other. The case studies included illuminate the ways in which monsters reinforce the categories through which a given culture sees the world. At the same time, the volume points to how monsters appear to question, disrupt, or challenge those categories, creating an ‘unsettling’ or surplus of meaning.

Author : Elizabeth Pérez
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479839558
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion in the Kitchen written by Elizabeth Pérez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association Winner, 2017 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion section of the American Anthropological Association Finalist, 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions An examination of the religious importance of food among Caribbean and Latin American communities Before honey can be offered to the Afro-Cuban deity Ochún, it must be tasted, to prove to her that it is good. In African-inspired religions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, such gestures instill the attitudes that turn participants into practitioners. Acquiring deep knowledge of the diets of the gods and ancestors constructs adherents’ identities; to learn to fix the gods’ favorite dishes is to be “seasoned” into their service. In this innovative work, Elizabeth Pérez reveals how seemingly trivial "micropractices" such as the preparation of sacred foods, are complex rituals in their own right. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in Chicago among practitioners of Lucumí, the transnational tradition popularly known as Santería, Pérez focuses on the behind-the-scenes work of the primarily women and gay men responsible for feeding the gods. She reveals how cooking and talking around the kitchen table have played vital socializing roles in Black Atlantic religions. Entering the world of divine desires and the varied flavors that speak to them, this volume takes a fresh approach to the anthropology of religion. Its richly textured portrait of a predominantly African-American Lucumí community reconceptualizes race, gender, sexuality, and affect in the formation of religious identity, proposing that every religion coalesces and sustains itself through its own secret recipe of micropractices.