Theological Incorrectness

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Theological Incorrectness : Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Author : D. Jason Slone Assistant Professor of Religious Studies University of Findlay
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2004-01-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0198037848

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Theological Incorrectness : Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't by D. Jason Slone Assistant Professor of Religious Studies University of Findlay Pdf

"Ask two religious people one question, and you'll get three answers!" Why do religious people believe what they shouldn't--not what others think they shouldn't believe, but things that don't accord with their own avowed religious beliefs? This engaging book explores this puzzling feature of human behavior. D. Jason Slone terms this phenomenon "theological incorrectness." He demonstrates that it exists because the mind is built it such a way that it's natural for us to think divergent thoughts simultaneously. Human minds are great at coming up with innovative ideas that help them make sense of the world, he says, but those ideas do not always jibe with official religious beliefs. From this fact we derive the important lesson that what we learn from our environment--religious ideas, for example--does not necessarily cause us to behave in ways consistent with that knowledge. Slone presents the latest discoveries from the cognitive science of religion and shows how they help us to understand exactly why it is that religious people do and think things that they shouldn't. He then applies these insights to three case studies. First he looks at why Theravada Buddhists profess that Buddha was just a man but actually worship him as a god. Then he explores why the early Puritan Calvinists, who believed in predestination, acted instead as if humans had free will by, for example, conducting witch-hunts and seeking converts. Finally, he explains why both Christians and Buddhists believe in luck even though the doctrines of Divine Providence and karma suggest there's no such thing. In seeking answers to profound questions about why people behave the way they do, this fascinating book sheds new light on the workings of the human mind and on the complex relationship between cognition and culture.

Theological Incorrectness

Author : Jason Slone
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2007-12-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0198044283

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Theological Incorrectness by Jason Slone Pdf

Why do religious people believe what they shouldn't -- not what others think they shouldn't believe, but things that don't accord with their own avowed religious beliefs? D. Jason Slone terms this phenomenon "theological incorrectness." He argues that it exists because the mind is built in such a way that it's natural for us to think divergent thoughts simultaneously. Human minds are great at coming up with innovative ideas that help them make sense of the world, he says, but those ideas do not always jibe with official religious beliefs. From this fact we derive the important lesson that what we learn from our environment -- religious ideas, for example -- does not necessarily cause us to behave in ways consistent with that knowledge. Slone presents the latest discoveries from the cognitive science of religion and shows how they help us to understand exactly why it is that religious people do and think things that they shouldn't.

A Natural History of Natural Theology

Author : Helen De Cruz,Johan De Smedt
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-11
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780262552455

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A Natural History of Natural Theology by Helen De Cruz,Johan De Smedt Pdf

An examination of the cognitive foundations of intuitions about the existence and attributes of God. Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality.

Corporeal Theology

Author : Tobias Tanton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2023-01-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780192884589

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Corporeal Theology by Tobias Tanton Pdf

Appropriating insights from empirical findings and theoretical constructs of 'embodied cognition', this study explores how theological understanding is accommodated to the bodily nature of human cognition. The principle of divine accommodation provides a theological framework for considering the human cognitive capacities that are accommodated by theological concepts and ecclesial practices. A rich portrait of the nature of human cognitive capacities is drawn from an emerging paradigm in cognitive science, embodied cognition, which proposes that cognition depends upon bodily sensorimotor systems to ground concepts and to draw upon environmental resources. Embodied cognition's hypothesis that human concepts are grounded in sensorimotor states poses a theological quandary for God-concepts, since identifying God with sensorimotor content risks idolatry. The incarnation resolves this problem in theological epistemology by grounding God-concepts in bodily understanding, while avoiding idolatry. Thus, the incarnation represents an accommodation to human conceptual capacities. Embodied cognition further hypothesises that cognition relies on sensorimotor engagement with the world rather than internal mental representations. Subsequently, in addition to the brain, bodily states and environmental artefacts 'scaffold' cognitive processes. A scaffolded view of cognition highlights the cognitive import of embodied religious practices, which choregraph the body and curate material culture. Tobias Tanton applies dozens of studies identifying mechanisms by which bodily or environmental factors influence cognition to the embodied and material dimensions Christian practices. On account of their inherent cognitive effects, practices are theorised to have intrinsic 'embodied' meanings alongside 'symbolic' ones established by conventions. Consequently, liturgy is seen as a bearer of theological content rather than merely an expression of it; a locus of religious experience; and a crucial determinate of religious and ethical formation. Again, the embodied nature of Christian liturgy is understood in terms of accommodation. Embodied cognition research helpfully illuminates the details of human embodiment to which theological understanding must be accommodated.

Cognitive Science and Ancient Israelite Religion

Author : Brett E. Maiden
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2020-10-08
Category : Bibles
ISBN : 9781108487788

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Cognitive Science and Ancient Israelite Religion by Brett E. Maiden Pdf

Recent tools and findings from the cognitive sciences illuminate religious thought and behaviour in ancient Israel and the Bible. Primarily intended for scholars of the Bible and religion, it is also relevant to cognitive scientists, researchers, and graduate students interested in the intersection of cognition and culture.

The Cognitive Science of Religion

Author : James A. Van Slyke
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2016-03-23
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781317037934

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The Cognitive Science of Religion by James A. Van Slyke Pdf

The cognitive science of religion is a relatively new academic field in the study of the origins and causes of religious belief and behaviour. The focal point of empirical research is the role of basic human cognitive functions in the formation and transmission of religious beliefs. However, many theologians and religious scholars are concerned that this perspective will reduce and replace explanations based in religious traditions, beliefs, and values. This book attempts to bridge the reductionist divide between science and religion through examination and critique of different aspects of the cognitive science of religion and offers a conciliatory approach that investigates the multiple causal factors involved in the emergence of religion.

Disagreeing Virtuously

Author : Olli-Pekka Vainio
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2017-04-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781467447164

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Disagreeing Virtuously by Olli-Pekka Vainio Pdf

Disagreement is inevitable, particularly in our current context, marked by the close coexistence of conflicting values and perspectives in politics, religion, and ethics. How can we deal with disagreement ethically and constructively in our pluralistic world? In Disagreeing Virtuously Olli-Pekka Vainio presents a valuable interdisciplinary approach to that question, drawing on insights from intellectual history, the cognitive sciences, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory. After mapping the current discussion on disagreement among various disciplines, Vainio offers fresh ways to understand the complicated nature of human disagreement and recommends ways to manage our interpersonal and intercommunal conflicts in ethically sustainable ways.

The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity

Author : J. B. Stump,Alan G. Padgett
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 667 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2012-05-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781444335712

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The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity by J. B. Stump,Alan G. Padgett Pdf

A cutting-edge survey of contemporary thought at the intersection of science and Christianity. Provides a cutting-edge survey of the central ideas at play at the intersection of science and Christianity through 54 original articles by world-leading scholars and rising stars in the discipline Focuses on Christianity's interaction with Science to offer a fine-grained analysis of issues such as multiverse theories in cosmology, convergence in evolution, Intelligent Design, natural theology, human consciousness, artificial intelligence, free will, miracles, and the Trinity, amongst many others Addresses major historical developments in the relationship between science and Christianity, including Christian patristics, the scientific revolution, the reception of Darwin, and twentieth century fundamentalism Divided into 9 Parts: Historical Episodes; Methodology; Natural Theology; Cosmology & Physics; Evolution; The Human Sciences; Christian Bioethics; Metaphysical Implications; The Mind; Theology; and Significant Figures of the 20th Century Includes diverse perspectives and broadens the conversation from the Anglocentric tradition

The Cognitive Science of Religion

Author : Asst Prof James A. Van Slyke
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2013-06-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781409481652

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The Cognitive Science of Religion by Asst Prof James A. Van Slyke Pdf

The cognitive science of religion is a relatively new academic field in the study of the origins and causes of religious belief and behaviour. The focal point of empirical research is the role of basic human cognitive functions in the formation and transmission of religious beliefs. However, many theologians and religious scholars are concerned that this perspective will reduce and replace explanations based in religious traditions, beliefs, and values. This book attempts to bridge the reductionist divide between science and religion through examination and critique of different aspects of the cognitive science of religion and offers a conciliatory approach that investigates the multiple causal factors involved in the emergence of religion.

Religion Explained?

Author : Luther H. Martin,Donald Wiebe
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2017-09-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781350032484

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Religion Explained? by Luther H. Martin,Donald Wiebe Pdf

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.

Revisioning John Chrysostom

Author : Chris de Wet,Wendy Mayer
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 868 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-01-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004390041

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Revisioning John Chrysostom by Chris de Wet,Wendy Mayer Pdf

In Revisioning John Chrysostom, Chris de Wet and Wendy Mayer harness a new wave of scholarship on the life and works of John Chrysostom (c. 350-407 CE), which applies new theoretical lenses and reconsiders his debt to classical paideia.

The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism

Author : Hugh Nicholson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2016-02-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780190455354

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The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism by Hugh Nicholson Pdf

The cognitive science of religion has shown that abstract religious concepts within many established religious traditions often fail to correspond to the beliefs of the vast majority of those religions' adherents. And yet, while the cognitive approach to religion has explained why these "theologically correct" doctrines have difficulty taking root in popular religious thought, it is largely silent on the question of how they developed in the first place. Hugh Nicholson aims to fill this gap by arguing that such doctrines can be understood as developing out of social identity processes. He focuses on the historical development of the Christian doctrine of Consubstantiality, the claim that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, and the Buddhist doctrine of No-self, the claim that the personality is reducible to its impersonal physical and psychological constituents. Both doctrines are maximally counterintuitive, in the sense that they violate the default expectations that human beings spontaneously make about the basic categories of things in the world. Nicholson argues that that these doctrines were each the products of intra- and inter-religious rivalry, in which one faction tried to get the upper hand over its ingroup rivals by maximizing the contrast with the dominant outgroup. Thus the "pro-Nicene" theologians of the fourth century developed the concept of Consubstantiality in the context of an effort to maximize, against their "Arian" rivals, the contrast with Christianity's archetypal "other," Judaism. Similarly, the No-self doctrine stemmed from an effort to maximize, against the so-called Personalist schools of Buddhism, the contrast with Brahmanical Hinduism with its doctrine of an unchanging and eternal self. In this way, Nicholson shows how religious traditions, to the extent that their development is driven by social identity processes, can back themselves into doctrinal positions that they must then retrospectively justify.

Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not

Author : Robert N. McCauley
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2013-11
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780199341542

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Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not by Robert N. McCauley Pdf

A comparison of the cognitive foundations of religion and science and an argument that religion is cognitively natural and that science is cognitively unnatural.

The Problem of Disenchantment

Author : Egil Asprem
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 662 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2018-05-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781438469928

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The Problem of Disenchantment by Egil Asprem Pdf

Challenges the conventional view of a “disenchanted” and secular modernity, and recovers the complex relation that exists between science, religion, and esotericism in the modern world. Max Weber famously characterized the ongoing process of intellectualization and rationalization that separates the natural world from the divine (by excluding magic and value from the realm of science, and reason and fact from the realm of religion) as the “disenchantment of the world.” Egil Asprem argues for a conceptual shift in how we view this key narrative of modernity. Instead of a sociohistorical process of disenchantment that produces increasingly rational minds, Asprem maintains that the continued presence of “magic” and “enchantment” in people’s everyday experience of the world created an intellectual problem for those few who were socialized to believe that nature should contain no such incalculable mysteries. Drawing on a wide range of early twentieth-century primary sources from theoretical physics, occultism, embryology, radioactivity, psychical research, and other fields, Asprem casts the intellectual life of high modernity as a synchronic struggle across conspicuously different fields that shared surprisingly similar intellectual problems about value, meaning, and the limits of knowledge. “The Problem of Disenchantment is, in its entirety, extraordinarily well researched, argued, and written—representing at once the most complete and nuanced treatment of the notion of disenchantment within this network of scientific, religious, philosophical, and esoteric discourses and currents.” — Nova Religio

Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590–1640

Author : Leif Dixon
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 398 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2016-04-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317076728

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Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590–1640 by Leif Dixon Pdf

The belief that God eternally and unalterably decrees the election of one part of humankind and the reprobation of the rest has not aged well, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the doctrine of predestination was publicised and popularised to an extent unparalleled in the history of Christianity. Why was this? How successfully was the doctrine able to mix with other ideas, and to what effect? And did belief in predestination encourage confidence or despair? Practical Predestinarians is a study of the ways in which the doctrine of predestination was understood and communicated by churchmen in late Tudor and early Stuart England. It connects with debates about the 'popularity' of Protestantism during England's 'long reformation', as well as with the question of whether predestination tended toward inclusive or divisive, and conformist or subversive, applications. Intersecting with recent debates about the popular reception of Protestant preaching, this book focusses upon the pastoral message itself - it is therefore an investigation into the public face of English Calvinism.