Conversations And Controversies In The Scientific Study Of Religion

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004310452
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Conversations and Controversies in the Scientific Study of Religion written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-02-15 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays provides scholars in the study of religion occasion to discuss the theoretical and methodological issues raised, to debate and expand upon them, or, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, even to refute the arguments made.

Author : John F. Haught
Publisher : Paulist Press
ISBN 13 : 9780809136063
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Science and Religion written by John F. Haught and published by Paulist Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Has science made religion intellectually implausible? Does it rule out the existence of a personal God? In an age of science can we really believe that the universe has a "purpose"? And, finally, doesn't religion hold much of the blame for the present ecological crisis?" "These questions form the nucleus of today's debate between science and religion. This book is a guide for that debate, identifying the questions, isolating the issues and pointing to ways the questions can be resolved." "There are four possible ways, says John F. Haught, that we can view the relationship between religion and science. First, they can stand in complete opposition - the conflict position. Or, we can believe they are so different that conflict is impossible - the contrast position. A third approach holds that while science and religion are distinct, each has important implications for the other. A fourth way views them as different but mutually supportive."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author : Donald Wiebe
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350103454
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University written by Donald Wiebe and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these essays, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion in colleges and universities in North America and Europe - that studies almost always exhibit a religious bias. To explore this issue, Wiebe looks at the religious and moral agendas behind the study of religion, showing that the boundaries between the objective study of religion and religious education as a tool for bettering society have become blurred. As a result, he argues, religious studies departments have fostered an environment where religion has become a learned or scholarly practice, rather than the object of academic scrutiny. This book provides a critical history of the failure of 20th- and 21st-century scholars to follow through on the 19th-century ideal of an objective scientific study of religious thought and behaviour. Although emancipated from direct ecclesiastical control and, to some extent, from sectarian theologizing, Wiebe argues that research and scholarship in the academic department of religious studies has failed to break free from religious constraints. He shows that an objective scientific study of religious thought and practice is not only possible, but the only appropriate approach to the study of religious phenomena.

Author : Luther H. Martin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350032476
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion Explained? written by Luther H. Martin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from founders of the field, including Justin Barrett, E. Thomas Lawson, Robert N. McCauley, Paschal Boyer, Armin Geertz and Harvey Whitehouse, as well as from younger scholars from successive stages in the field's development, this is an important survey of the first twenty-five years of the cognitive science of religion. Each chapter provides the author's views on the contributions the cognitive science of religion has made to the academic study of religion, as well as any shortcomings in the field and challenges for the future. Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years calls attention to the field whilst providing an accessible and diverse survey of approaches from key voices, as well as offering suggestions for further research within the field. This book is essential reading for anyone in religious studies, anthropology, and the scientific study of religion.

Author : Juraj Franek
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350082392
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Naturalism and Protectionism in the Study of Religions written by Juraj Franek and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should we study religion? Must we be religious ourselves to truly understand it? Do we study religion to advance our knowledge, or should the study of religions help to reintroduce the sacred into our increasingly secularized world? Juraj Franek argues that the study of religion has long been split into two competing paradigms: reductive (naturalist) and non-reductive (protectionist). While the naturalistic approach seems to run the risk of explaining religious phenomena away, the protectionist approach appears to risk falling short of the methodological standards of modern science. Franek uses primary source material from Greek and Latin sources to show that both competing paradigms are traceable to Presocratic philosophy and early Christian literature. He presents the idea that naturalists are distant heirs, not only of the French Enlightenment, but also of the Ionian one. Likewise, he argues that protectionists owe much of their arguments and strategies, not only to Luther and the Reformation, but to the earliest Christian literature. This book analyses the conflict between reductive and non-reductive approach in the modern study of religions, and positions the Cognitive Science of Religion against a background of previous theories - ancient and modern - to demonstrate its importance for the revindication of the naturalist paradigm.

Author : Andrew Ralls Woodward
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1532660189
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge written by Andrew Ralls Woodward and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most comparisons of science and religion are really comparisons of science and Christianity, or science and Islam, and so forth. In Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge, the author aims to get outside typical polarized debates between traditional, a priori theism and radical, scientistic naturalism. Instead, a new science and religion compatibility system—between a scientific study of religion and a religious epistemology—is our new, elusive problem. Moreover, we shall look at a comparison and contrast of modern science with the simple deference of the human mind to the actions of culturally postulated superhuman agents. This book pays critical attention to the contributions of scholars in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and the scientific study of religion. Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge is useful for readers looking to expand their learning in the philosophies of science and religion as these subjects are taught and analyzed in modern research universities.

Author : Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110721864
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On Making a Shift in the Study of Religion and Other Essays written by Russell T. McCutcheon and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although many would today argue that the onetime dominance of the phenomenology of religion has receded, and with it the traditional approach to studying religion as a unique and deeply-felt experience that defies explanation, the essays collected here take quite the opposite stand: that this approach has merely been re-branded and continues to characterize much work being done in the field today. Offering a different way forward—one that is based on experiences gained by the members of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, a program that has successfully reinvented itself over the past 20 years—the book includes a variety of practical suggestions for how members of Religious Studies departments can revise their approach to studying and teaching about religion. Seeing religion instead as mundane but always exemplary of basic social elements found all across cultures, the volume argues that the way forward for this field lies not in the specialness of its object of study but, instead, the fact that thinking and acting as if something is special is itself an ordinary aspect of history and culture. Making just this shift helps the scholar of religion to contribute to wide, interdisciplinary conversations all across the Humanities and Social Sciences, demonstrating the practical relevance of their work.

Author : Steffen Führding
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004347879
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Method and Theory in the Study of Religion: Working Papers from Hannover written by Steffen Führding and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays provides an insight into the theoretical and methodological debates within the academic study of religion in Hanover and beyond over the last years.

Author : Nickolas P. Roubekas
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350102636
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Study of Greek and Roman Religions written by Nickolas P. Roubekas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should ancient religious ideas be approached? Is "religion" an applicable term to antiquity? Should classicists, ancient historians, and religious studies scholars work more closely together? Nickolas P. Roubekas argues that there is a disciplinary gap between the study of Greek and Roman religions and the study of “religion” as a category-a gap that has often resulted in contradictory conclusions regarding Greek and Roman religion. This book addresses this lack of interdisciplinarity by providing an overview, criticism, and assessment of this chasm. It provides a theoretical approach to this historical period, raising the issue of the relationship between “theory of religion” and “history of religion,” and explores how history influences theory and vice versa. It also presents an in-depth critique of some crucial problems that have been central to the discussions of scholars who work on Graeco-Roman antiquity, encouraging us to re-examine how we approach the study of ancient religions.

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.