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The history of religion is the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BCE). [1] The prehistory of religion involves the study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the advent of written records.
The theory of religious economy sees different religious organizations competing for followers in a religious economy, much like the way businesses compete for consumers in a commercial economy. Theorists assert that a true religious economy is the result of religious pluralism , giving the population a wider variety of choices in religion.
either that religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage; or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, saw religion as an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words: religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.
Richard Scheimann, Wach's theory of the science of religion (1963) Charles M. Wood, Theory and religious understanding : a critique of the hermeneutics of Joachim Wach (1975) Rainer Flasche, Die Religionswissenschaft Joachim Wachs (1977) Christian K. Wedemeyer and Wendy Doniger, eds., Hermeneutics, Politics, and the History of Religions: The ...
In 1998, Jonathan Z. Smith wrote a chapter in Critical Terms for Religious Studies which traced the history of the term religion and argued that the contemporary understanding of world religions is a modern Christian and European term, with its roots in the European colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. [51]
The anthropology of religion, as a field, overlaps with but is distinct from the field of Religious Studies. The history of anthropology of religion is a history of striving to understand how other people view and navigate the world. This history involves deciding what religion is, what it does, and how it functions. [2]
Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of man's spiritual life." [84] When religion is seen in terms of sacred, divine, intensive valuing, or ultimate concern, then it is possible to understand why scientific findings and philosophical criticisms (e.g., those made by Richard Dawkins) do not necessarily disturb its adherents. [85]
The theory posits that these differing ritual patterns promote the transmission of religious traditions by exploiting core memory processes. Imagistic rituals arouse strong emotion and generate vivid, flashbulb like, episodic memories , while doctrinal rituals repetitive nature means that rather than individual events the experiences over time ...