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LATEST ARTICLES ( 560 )

• Religion Rabbit-Holes

  

  Using the holiday as an excuse for not doing something more productive, I spent the morning delving into the rabbit-hole that is The New Yorker‘s copious... Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Animist & Quantum Worldviews

  

  Perhaps the most salient feature of animist worldviews is the way in which they construe and construct the world in relational terms: everything is connected. Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Summer Reads & Mini-Reviews

  

  With the semester having come to an end, it was refreshing to take a few weeks off from normal reading and writing routines. I’m in the middle of a long... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Durkheim’s Social Mystification

  

  In a recent post on Durkheim, I observed that he seems to have been mystified by the fact that humans are social and live in groups. Read more

  Posted on 07 May 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Rappin’ For Jesus

  This is a real, as in serious, video that is sure to offend different people for different reasons. I’m not sure what to say about JC (“son of the original... Read more

  Posted on 05 May 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Yoga as Religion

  

  Over at aeon, Erik Davis has posted a fantastic piece that attempts to answer the slippery question: Is yoga a religion? On its face, the question appears simpl... Read more

  Posted on 04 May 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Durkheim & De Waal on Human Sociality

  

  I’ve just finished a close study of Emile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) and concluded that its entire premise is based on ignorance. Read more

  Posted on 29 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Marx’s Metaphysical Progressivism

  

  Over at the NYRB, John Gray ably reviews Jonathan Sperber’s Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life (2013). Gray lauds Sperber shedding light on the apparent... Read more

  Posted on 27 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Durkheim’s Social Antecedents

  

  It is remarkable that of all the developmental-evolutionary theorists of religion that I have considered thus far (Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud,... Read more

  Posted on 26 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Dark Matters

  

  In the humble spirit of this post on the state of the mind sciences and this one on science generally, I encourage everyone to read Alexander Fry’s brilliant... Read more

  Posted on 24 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Revisiting Göbekli Tepe

  

  For reasons not entirely clear, The New Yorker has resurrected a 2011 story on Göbekli Tepe and showcased it on the front page. Read more

  Posted on 22 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Lucien Lévy-Bruhl: Animist “Primitives”

  

  At the conclusion of my post on RR Marett, I noted that for all his keen insights into the expansively causal and perhaps even cosmological nature of animist... Read more

  Posted on 21 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Modern European “Primitives”

  

  At the imaginary margins of “secular-rationalist” Europe there be monsters. In fact, there are so many folk-monsters roaming the countryside that French... Read more

  Posted on 17 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Animist v. Scientific Worldviews

  

  While there is no such singular or essential thing as the “animist worldview,” this doesn’t prevent scholars and others from writing about it. Read more

  Posted on 12 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Ark Park & Missionary Lizards

  

  Back in 2010 I posted on the Creation Museum in Kentucky and the grandiose plan to build a Noah’s Ark Amusement Park nearby. It was supposed to open in 2014... Read more

  Posted on 09 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Holy Grail of Neuroscience

  This Salon interview with neurologist Robert Burton hits on all cylinders. Intellectual honesty and humility are beautiful things. Read more

  Posted on 08 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Scientologist Scum & More

  

  I want to clear some links from my cue, so let’s begin with this superb review of Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of... Read more

  Posted on 06 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• RR Marett’s “Pre-Animistic Religion”

  

  Over Spring Break, I went diving in the Caribbean dove into the often neglected work of Robert Ranulph Marett (1866-1943), yet another classicist (like James... Read more

  Posted on 03 April 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Myth of Mythopoeic Eras

  

  According to the Pew Research Center, there are 247,000,000 Christians in the United States. In other words, 80% of all Americans identify as Christian. Read more

  Posted on 30 March 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Ronald Dworkin & Juridical Religion

  

  Before his recent passing, legal scholar Ronald Dworkin seems to have been contemplating this mortal coil and the prickliest of problems, namely religion. Read more

  Posted on 26 March 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY