Cris

LATEST ARTICLES ( 560 )

• Neo Cultural-Evolutionism

  

  In evolutionary religious studies there are some scholars who claim that “religion” is an adaptation that is the product of natural selection. Read more

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

• Revisiting The Golden Bough

  

  Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough and extracting from it the materials that are relevant to modern... Read more

  Posted on 20 March 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Proofing God

  

  Few things are more arid and unenlightening than the various proofs and disproofs of the existence of God. All logical statements are bounded by assumptions, an... Read more

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

• Ghosts of Julian Jaynes

  

  Over at n+1, Rachel Aviv has posted a perceptive piece on Julian Jaynes, whose dichotomous fate veers wildly between (scientific) derision and (popular)... Read more

  Posted on 15 March 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Digging for Biblical Truth

  

  Over at The Atlantic, Dylan Bergeson reports on the shenanigans that pass for archaeology in the Palestinian West Bank. The focal point is an evangelical... Read more

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

• Myriad Meanings of “Venus” Figurines

  

  For several decades archaeologists have been debating the meaning of female-form figurines from the Paleolithic. In a now classic paper (pdf) Sarah Nelson... Read more

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

• Classifying Cultures: Grade v. Clade

  

  When we account for human history in evolutionist or developmental terms, we nearly always fall into the trap of teleology and progressivism. Read more

  Posted on 01 March 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Evolved Grammar God

  

  While contemplating the ways in which our thoughts are conditioned by language in the Sapir-Whorf post, I kept hearing Nietzsche commenting on the “metaphysics... Read more

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

• Spirits of Sapir-Whorf

  

  I’ve been thinking, in English, about how thinking in English affects my ability to comprehend concepts, ideas, and stories that have been translated from... Read more

  Posted on 25 February 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Economy, Anxiety, and God

  

  In this installment of The Browser’s “Five Books” series, Anthony Gottlieb recommends several good books on God in particular and religion in general. Read more

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

• New Fetishes & Old Treasures

  

  Anyone who has been blogging for a while knows that new stuff sells. While the lifeblood of a blog is new content in the form of fresh posts, if those posts... Read more

  Posted on 21 February 2013 SELF EXPRESSION

• Seabiscuit and Taboo

  

  There once was a time when anthropologists (and sociologists) struggled mightily to explain taboos — they come in such a variety of shapes and sizes that this... Read more

  Posted on 11 February 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Byzantine Buddhism

  

  When imported and variously transformed for western consumption, “Buddhism” connotes a serene sort of detachment from things and concerns of the world. Read more

  Posted on 10 February 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Fear & Loathing in Emotive Africa

  

  For several richly-deserved reasons, evolutionary psychology has gotten a bad rap. Its sins range from rampant reduction to ridiculous speculation. Read more

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

• Perspectival “Costumes” and “Art”

  

  While searching Google’s gigantic photo cache, I came across this startling and beautiful image:In this past I would have looked at this in a rather shallow way... Read more

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

• Meaning of Life: Alienation & Animism

  

  While researching the animist literature over the past year, I have come across several articles by Bruce Charlton, Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the... Read more

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

• Essentialized “Islamists”

  

  Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking my head is going to explode because I keep hearing these empty and meaningless words: Islamists, fundamentalists,... Read more

  Posted on 01 February 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Phallic Rivers of Faith

  

  The esoteric and erotic are sometimes linked, though not often do we find them together in a work of comparative religion. In 1883, James Forlong published a... Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2013 DEBATE, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY

• Freud’s Theory of Religion

  

  In the final installment of the series (Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, and Darwin) on early naturalist-explanatory theories of religion, we come to Sigmund Freud. Read more

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

• Jesus in Japan

  

  Though I’ve heard rumors that peripatetic Jesus visited India, I only recently learned that he may have trekked (and boated) all the way to Japan. Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2013 RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY