Darwin Dharma And The Divine

Author : G. Clinton Godart
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824876838

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Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine by G. Clinton Godart Pdf

Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine is the first book in English on the history of evolutionary theory in Japan. Bringing to life more than a century of ideas, G. Clinton Godart examines how and why Japanese intellectuals, religious thinkers of different faiths, philosophers, biologists, journalists, activists, and ideologues engaged with evolutionary theory and religion. How did Japanese religiously think about evolution? What were their main concerns? Did they reject evolution on religious grounds, or—as was more often the case—how did they combine evolutionary theory with their religious beliefs? Evolutionary theory was controversial and never passively accepted in Japan: It took a hundred years of appropriating, translating, thinking, and debating to reconsider the natural world and the relation between nature, science, and the sacred in light of evolutionary theory. Since its introduction in the nineteenth century, Japanese intellectuals—including Buddhist, Shinto, Confucian, and Christian thinkers—in their own ways and often with opposing agendas, struggled to formulate a meaningful worldview after Darwin. In the decades that followed, as the Japanese redefined their relation to nature and built a modern nation-state, the debates on evolutionary theory intensified and state ideologues grew increasingly hostile toward its principles. Throughout the religious reception of evolution was dominated by a long-held fear of the idea of nature and society as cold and materialist, governed by the mindless “struggle for survival.” This aversion endeavored many religious thinkers, philosophers, and biologists to find goodness and the divine within nature and evolution. It was this drive, argues Godart, that shaped much of Japan’s modern intellectual history and changed Japanese understandings of nature, society, and the sacred. Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine will contribute significantly to two of the most debated topics in the history of evolutionary theory: religion and the political legacy of evolution. It will, therefore, appeal to the broad audience interested in Darwin studies as well as students and scholars of Japanese intellectual history, religion, and philosophy.

Author : C. Mackenzie Brown
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2012-01-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781136484674

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Hindu Perspectives on Evolution by C. Mackenzie Brown Pdf

Providing new insights into the contemporary creationist-evolution debates, this book looks at the Hindu cultural-religious traditions of India, the Hindu Dharma traditions. By focusing on the interaction of religion and science in a Hindu context, it offers a global context for understanding contemporary creationist-evolution conflicts and tensions utilizing a critical analysis of Hindu perspectives on these issues. The cultural and political as well as theological nature of these conflicts is illustrated by drawing attention to parallels with contemporary Islamic and Buddhist responses to modern science and Darwinism. The book explores various ancient and classical Hindu models to explain the origin of the universe encompassing creationist as well as evolutionary—but non-Darwinian—interpretations of how we came to be. Complex schemes of cosmic evolution were developed, alongside creationist proofs for the existence of God utilizing distinctly Hindu versions of the design argument. After examining diverse elements of the Hindu Dharmic traditions that laid the groundwork for an ambivalent response to Darwinism when it first became known in India, the book highlights the significance of the colonial context. Analysing critically the question of compatibility between traditional Dharmic theories of knowledge and the epistemological assumptions underlying contemporary scientific methodology, the book raises broad questions regarding the frequently alleged harmony of Hinduism, the eternal Dharma, with modern science, and with Darwinian evolution in particular.

Author : Alister E. McGrath
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781118697771

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Darwinism and the Divine by Alister E. McGrath Pdf

Darwinism and the Divine examines the implications ofevolutionary thought for natural theology, from the time ofpublication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species tocurrent debates on creationism and intelligent design. Questions whether Darwin's theory of natural selection reallyshook our fundamental beliefs, or whether they served to transformand illuminate our views on the origins and meaning of life Identifies the forms of natural theology that emerged in19th-century England and how they were affected by Darwinism The most detailed study yet of the intellectual background toWilliam Paley's famous and influential approach to naturaltheology, set out in 1802 Brings together material from a variety of disciplines,including the history of ideas, historical and systematic theology,evolutionary biology, anthropology, sociology, and the cognitivescience of religion Considers how Christian belief has adapted to Darwinism, andasks whether there is a place for design both in the world ofscience and the world of theology A thought-provoking exploration of 21st-century views onevolutionary thought and natural theology, written by theworld-renowned theologian and bestselling author

Author : Dee Denver
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780197604588

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The Dharma in DNA by Dee Denver Pdf

"The Dharma in DNA has three objectives: 1) to share the rich but underappreciated history of biology-Buddhism intersections and surprising harmonies between the two traditions, 2) to evaluate Buddhist teachings from a scientific perspective using DNA as the focus of study, and 3) to propose a new approach to science, Bodhi Science, as an ethical and operational framework for conducting Buddhist wisdom-guided science and preventing pseudoscience. An interwoven side project examines the life journey of the author, a professor of genetics and father in a transracial adoptive family, who questions the apparent paradox of his fascination with DNA in the lab but disinterest in passing on his own DNA. Early book chapters present the core teachings and diversifications of Buddhism over the last twenty-five centuries. Subsequent chapters share stories of biology-Buddhism interactions, situated in the colonial contexts; examples derive from early 20th century Sri Lanka and Japan, and contemporary activities of the Dalai Lama and Western biological scholars. The hypothesis-guided analysis of Buddhist principles and DNA then begins, touring through classical genetic research alongside modern post-genomic insights. The investigation reveals strong support for three core Buddhist concepts - anitya (impermanence), anatman (non-self), and pratitysamutpada (mutual cause-and-effect) - as applied to DNA. Bodhi Science is proposed as a new mode of scientific inquiry rooted in Buddhist teachings. The approach is based on four qualities: selflessness, detachment, awareness, and compassion. Bodhi Science provides a path to strong science rooted in logic-based Buddhist ethics, and helps scientists avoid the deceptive and damaging waters of pseudoscience"--

Author : Jon H. Roberts
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:39015012896950

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Darwinism and the Divine in America by Jon H. Roberts Pdf

Author : C. Mackenzie Brown
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-12-17
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783030373405

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Asian Religious Responses to Darwinism by C. Mackenzie Brown Pdf

This volume brings together diverse Asian religious perspectives to address critical issues in the encounter between tradition and modern western evolutionary thought. Such thought encompasses the biological theories of Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Earnest Haeckel, Thomas Huxley, and later “neo-Darwinians,” as well as the more sociological evolutionary theories of thinkers such as Herbert Spencer, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Henri Bergson. The essays in this volume cover responses from Hindu, Jain, Buddhist (Chinese, Japanese, and Indo-Tibetan), Confucian, Daoist, and Muslim traditions. These responses come from the decades immediately after publication of The Origin of Species up to the present, with attention being paid to earlier perspectives and teachings within a tradition that have affected responses to Darwinism and western evolutionary thought in general. The book focuses on three critical issues: the struggle for survival and the moral implications read into it; genetic variation and its seeming randomness as related to the problems of meaning and purpose; and the nature of humankind and human exceptionalism. Each essay deals with one or more of the three issues within the context of a specific tradition.

Author : Hyung Wook Park
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2024-06-25
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781040039458

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Creationism in a South Korean Culture by Hyung Wook Park Pdf

Park investigates the unexpected success of early Korean creationists, who were mostly scientists, and argues that creationism is not a product of the lack of intelligence or proper scientific education but a consequence of more profound social developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Known as the religious belief rejecting evolutionary theory, creationism has become a global issue. Although it was often known as a problem unique among fundamentalist Protestants in the United States, it has been appropriated by people with diverse religions around the world, including Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. Many scientists and educators perceive this dissemination as a threat to modern pedagogy and scholarship, although few of them are aware of its historical and cultural contexts. Through an intensive study of the birth and growth of the anti-evolutionary movement in South Korea during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this book traces an important part of this worldwide movement against evolution. The author argues that South Korean creationism started from the country's past as a developmental state during the Cold War but proliferated further amid subsequent democratization and globalization. Creationism reflected the new identifications of some Korean scientists and engineers with evangelical faith, who actively formed their own domain outside of the state hegemony and authority. This book is a valuable reference for scholars interested in the dynamic interaction between science and religion in East Asia.

Author : David N. Livingstone
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014-05-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781421413266

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Dealing with Darwin by David N. Livingstone Pdf

How was Darwin’s work discussed and debated among the same religious denomination in different locations? Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the relationship between science and religion. The particulars of place—whether in Edinburgh, Belfast, Toronto, Princeton, or Columbia, South Carolina—shaped the response to Darwin’s theories. Were they tolerated, repudiated, or welcomed? Livingstone shows how Darwin was read in different ways, with meaning distilled from Darwin's texts depending on readers' own histories—their literary genealogies and cultural preoccupations. That the theory of evolution fared differently in different places, Livingstone writes, is "exactly what Darwin might have predicted. As the theory diffused, it diverged." Dealing with Darwin shows the profound extent to which theological debates about evolution were rooted in such matters as anxieties over control of education, the politics of race relations, the nature of local scientific traditions, and challenges to traditional cultural identity. In some settings, conciliation with the new theory, even endorsement, was possible—demonstrating that attending to the specific nature of individual communities subverts an inclination to assume a single relationship between science and religion in general, evolution and Christianity in particular. Livingstone concludes with contemporary examples to remind us that what scientists can say and what others can hear in different venues differ today just as much as they did in the past.

Author : Bernard Lightman,Sarah Qidwai
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Page : 375 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2023-11-21
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780822990079

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Evolutionary Theories and Religious Traditions by Bernard Lightman,Sarah Qidwai Pdf

How Intellectuals and Global Publics Viewed the Relationship between Evolution and Diverse Religious Traditions Before the advent of radio, conceptions of the relationship between science and religion circulated through periodicals, journals, and books, influencing the worldviews of intellectuals and a wider public. In this volume, historians of science and religion examine that relationship through diverse mediums, geographic contexts, and religious traditions. Spanning within and beyond Europe and North America, chapters emphasize underexamined regions—New Zealand, Australia, India, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire—and major religions of the world, including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam; interactions between those traditions; as well as atheism, monism, and agnosticism. As they focus on evolution and human origins, contributors draw attention to European scientists other than Darwin who played a significant role in the dissemination of evolutionary ideas; for some, those ideas provided the key to understanding every aspect of human culture, including religion. They also highlight central figures in national contexts, many of whom were not scientists, who appropriated scientific theories for their own purposes. Taking a local, national, transnational, and global approach to the study of science and religion, this volume begins to capture the complexity of cultural engagement with evolution and religion in the long nineteenth century.

Author : J. Arvid Ågren
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2021-07-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780192607027

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The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution by J. Arvid Ågren Pdf

'Arvid Ågren has undertaken the most meticulously thorough reading of the relevant literature that I have ever encountered, deploying an intelligent understanding to pull it into a coherent story. As if that wasn't enough, he gets it right.' (Richard Dawkins) To many evolutionary biologists, the central challenge of their discipline is to explain adaptation, the appearance of design in the living world. With the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin elegantly showed how a purely mechanistic process can achieve this striking feature of nature. Since then, the way many biologists have thought about evolution and natural selection is as a theory about individual organisms. Over a century later, a subtle but radical shift in perspective emerged with the gene's-eye view of evolution in which natural selection was conceptualized as a struggle between genes for replication and transmission to the next generation. This viewpoint culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 1976) and is now commonly referred to as selfish gene thinking. The gene's-eye view has subsequently played a central role in evolutionary biology, although it continues to attract controversy. The central aim of this accessible book is to show how the gene's-eye view differs from the traditional organismal account of evolution, trace its historical origins, clarify typical misunderstandings and, by using examples from contemporary experimental work, show why so many evolutionary biologists still consider it an indispensable heuristic. The book concludes by discussing how selfish gene thinking fits into ongoing debates in evolutionary biology, and what they tell us about the future of the gene's-eye view of evolution. The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution is suitable for graduate-level students taking courses in evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, and evolutionary genetics, as well as professional researchers in these fields. It will also appeal to a broader, interdisciplinary audience from the social sciences and humanities including philosophers and historians of science.

Author : James Poskett
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2022-03-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780241394113

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Horizons by James Poskett Pdf

'Superb' Sunday Times 'Revolutionary' Alice Roberts 'Hugely important' Jim Al-Khalili _______________ A radical retelling of the history of science that foregrounds the scientists erased from history In this major retelling of the history of science from 1450 to the present day, James Poskett explodes the myth that science began in Europe. The blinkered Western gaze focusing on individual 'genius' - Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - was only one part of the story. The reality was an utterly global, non-linear pattern of cross-fertilization, competition, cooperation and outright conflict. Each rupture in history carved fresh channels for global exchange. Here, for the first time, Poskett celebrates how scientists from Africa, America, Asia and the Pacific were integral to this very human story. We meet Graman Kwasi, the African botanist who discovered a new cure for malaria; Hantaro Nagaoka, the Japanese scientist who first described the structure of the atom; and Zhao Zhongyao, the Chinese physicist who discovered antimatter. _______________ 'Remarkable. Challenges almost everything we know about science in the West' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in 12 Maps 'Perspective-shattering' Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, 'Editor's Choice' 'Horizons upends traditional accounts of the history of science' Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred 'Poskett deftly blends the achievements of little-known figures into the wider history of science . . . brims with clarity' Chris Allnutt, Financial Times

Author : Georgios T. Halkias,Richard K. Payne
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 808 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2019-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824877149

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Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts by Georgios T. Halkias,Richard K. Payne Pdf

This diverse anthology of original Buddhist texts in translation provides a historical and conceptual framework that will transform contemporary scholarship on Pure Land Buddhism and instigate its recognition as an essential field of Buddhist studies. Traditional and contemporary primary sources carefully selected from Buddhist cultures across historical, geopolitical, and literary boundaries are organized by genre rather than chronologically, geographically, or by religious lineage—a novel juxtaposition that reveals their wider importance in fresh contexts. Together these fundamental texts from different Asian traditions, expertly translated by eminent and up-and-coming scholars, illustrate that the Buddhism of pure lands is not just an East Asian cult or a marginal type of Buddhism, but a pan-Asian and deeply entrenched religious phenomenon. The volume is organized into six parts: Ritual Practices, Contemplative Visualizations, Doctrinal Expositions, Life Writing and Poetry, Ethical and Aesthetic Explications, and Worlds beyond Sukhāvatī. Each part is introduced and summarized, and each translated piece is prefaced by its translator to supply historical and sectarian context as well as insight into the significance of the work. Common and less-common issues of practice, doctrine, and intra-religious transfer are explored, and deeper understandings of the meaning of “pure lands” are gained through the study of the celestial, cosmological, internal, and earthly pure lands associated with various buddhas, bodhisattvas, and devotional figures. The introduction by the volume editors ties the diverse themes of the book together and provides a historical background to Pure Land Buddhist studies. Scholars of Buddhism and Asian religion, including graduate and post-graduate students, as well as Buddhist practitioners, will appreciate the range of translated materials and accompanied discussions made accessible in one essential collection, the first of its kind to center on the formerly-neglected topic of Buddhist pure lands.

Author : Orion Klautau,Hans Martin Krämer
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2021-03-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824884581

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Buddhism and Modernity by Orion Klautau,Hans Martin Krämer Pdf

Japan was the first Asian nation to face the full impact of modernity. Like the rest of Japanese society, Buddhist institutions, individuals, and thought were drawn into the dynamics of confronting the modern age. Japanese Buddhism had to face multiple challenges, but it also contributed to modern Japanese society in numerous ways. Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan makes accessible the voices of Japanese Buddhists during the early phase of high modernity. The volume offers original translations of key texts—many available for the first time in English—by central actors in Japan’s transition to the modern era, including the works of Inoue Enryō, Gesshō, Hara Tanzan, Shimaji Mokurai, Kiyozawa Manshi, Murakami Senshō, Tanaka Chigaku, and Shaku Sōen. All of these writers are well recognized by Buddhist studies scholars and Japanese historians but have drawn little attention elsewhere; this stands in marked contrast to the reception of Japanese Buddhism since D. T. Suzuki, the towering figure of Japanese Zen in the first half of the twentieth century. The present book fills the chronological gap between the premodern era and the twentieth century by focusing on the crucial transition period of the nineteenth century. Issues central to the interaction of Japanese Buddhism with modernity inform the five major parts of the work: sectarian reform, the nation, science and philosophy, social reform, and Japan and Asia. Throughout the chapters, the globally entangled dimension—both in relation to the West, especially the direct and indirect impact of Christianity, and to Buddhist Asia—is of great importance. The Introduction emphasizes not only how Japanese Buddhism was part of a broader, globally shared reaction of religions to the specific challenges of modernity, but also goes into great detail in laying out the specifics of the Japanese case.

Author : Jeff Schroeder
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2022-10-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780824894719

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The Revolution of Buddhist Modernism by Jeff Schroeder Pdf

Reacting to nineteenth-century forces of colonialism and globalization, Buddhist reformers across Asia strove to modernize Buddhist teachings, practices, and institutions. “Buddhist modernism” was typically characterized by disbelief in the supernatural, rejection of ritual, deinstitutionalization, and egalitarianism. The Revolution of Buddhist Modernism provides an account of the upheaval that took place within the world of Japanese Jōdo Shin (True Pure Land) Buddhism when scholar-priest Kiyozawa Manshi (1863–1903) initiated modernist reforms. Kiyozawa and his disciples, especially Soga Ryōjin and Kaneko Daiei, reenvisioned Pure Land teachings as a path to awakening in the present world rather than rebirth in a faraway Pure Land after death. This doctrinal reinterpretation led to a range of revolutionary institutional reforms, including new experiential methods of Buddhist studies, democratization of sect institutions, and enhanced cooperation with Japan’s imperialist state. By combining intellectual history with institutional history, The Revolution of Buddhist Modernism reveals deep connections between Buddhist thought, Buddhist institutions, and national and global politics. It tracks the chaotic, fascinating history by which modernist Buddhist ideas came to be grounded in Buddhist institutions and authoritative for Buddhist communities, offering readers a compelling, ground-level view of Buddhist modernism—and traditionalism—in action.

Author : Ryan Anningson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 243 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2021-07-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000411638

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Theories of the Self, Race, and Essentialization in Buddhism by Ryan Anningson Pdf

This book analyzes Buddhist discussions of the Aryan myth and scientific racism and the ways in which this conversation reshaped Buddhism in the United States, and globally. The book traces the development of notions of Aryanism in Buddhism through Buddhist publications from 1899-1957, focusing on this so-called "yellow peril," or historical racist views in the United States of an Asian "other." During this time period in America, the Aryan myth was considered to be scientific fact, and Buddhists were able to capitalize on this idea throughout a global publishing network of books, magazines, and academic work which helped to transform the presentation of Buddhism into the "Aryan religion." Following narratives regarding colonialism and the development of the Aryan myth, Buddhists challenged these dominant tropes: they combined emic discussions about the "Aryan" myth and comparisons of Buddhism and science, in order to disprove colonial tropes of "Western" dominance, and suggest that Buddhism represented a superior tradition in world historical development. The author argues that this presentation of a Buddhist tradition of superiority helped to create space for Buddhism within the American religious landscape. The book will be of interest to academics working on Buddhism, race and religion, and American religious history.