Evolution Of Religion Evolution Of Religion Evolution Of Religion

Book Summary

In the classical meaning of an "essay" this book is an "attempt" to try to unify material on religion from a variety of fields into one coherent frame of reference. The author obviously does not claim deep expertise in this luxuriance of disciplinary approaches to the field of religion, but hopes that his efforts, at the very least, will inform some and stimulate others to renewed theorizing about their specialties. The principal objective of this book then is to show that religion has evolved just like any other cultural entity. At the same time, the author parts company from the at times premature conclusions of earlier "evolutionists" of religion and therefore has subtitled the work a "re-examination". The main diversion from such earlier analyses of the evolution of religion as those of Freud and Comte is in the denial that religion can be explained fully in empirical terms as a product of nature or culture. The author assumes that for religion to have begun it must have sprung from some ontologically prior event that Christians would refer to as "creation" and Buddhists as "transdescension", where ultimate Reality "empties" itself into the temporal. In other words, the evolution of religion needs to be understood from a "theological" perspective. At the same time, the author is convinced that there is a great deal of empirical evolutionary information available from the natural and social sciences that sheds helpful light on even theologically oriented religious understanding. Religion will always be around, concludes the author, not merely because of the way that it springs up out of human nature but also because of its adaptability. It thus may be mankind's one best hope ofsurvival. "The Evolution of Religion: A Re-Examination" attempts to show that while religion has evolved like any other cultural entity, the process is not as simple as earlier "evolutionists" of religion have made it out to be.

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