Religiously Diverse Countries and States Have Less Inter-Religious Prejudice

Globalization has led to an unprecedented level of religious mixing and religious diversity. These trends have led scholars to wonder whether religious diversity creates religious conflict or breeds tolerance towards different religions, but few studies have been able to draw clear conclusions. We conducted two studies to explore the relationship between religious diversity and religious prejudice. The first study collected data from 8,827 participants from 10 major religions in 37 countries around the world. We found a strong negative correlation between religious diversity and religious prejudice (r = -.55) which was independent of several demographic and attitudinal covariates. The second study collected data from across the United States. We replicated the relationship between religious diversity and religious prejudice (r = -.54) controlling for several group-level factors like conservatism, residential mobility, and threat. Our results suggest that contact between religious groups may be related to religious tolerance, and contrasts with “marketplace” theories of religion which suggest that religious diversity should breed competition and conflict.

Supernatural Explanations Across the Globe Are More Common for Natural Than Social Phenomena

Supernatural beliefs are common in every human society, and people frequently invoke the supernatural to explain natural (e.g., storms, disease outbreaks) and social (e.g., murder, warfare) events. However, evolutionary and psychological theories of religion raise competing hypotheses about whether supernatural explanations should more commonly focus on natural or social phenomena. Here we test these hypotheses with a global analysis of supernatural explanations in 109 geographically and culturally diverse societies. We find that supernatural explanations are more prevalent for natural phenomena than for social phenomena, an effect that generalizes across regions and subsistence styles and cannot be reduced to the frequency of natural vs. social phenomena or common cultural ancestry. We also find that supernatural explanations of social phenomena only occur in societies that also have supernatural explanations of natural phenomena. This evidence is consistent with theories that ground the origin of supernatural belief in a human tendency to perceive intent and agency in nature.

How not to become a founding figure

The views recently put forward by Fukuyama and Huntington showed that the academic world may once again be ready to think in large patterns of the rise and fall of civilisations. However, long before that, the Buddhologist Trevor Ling put forward a theoretical position regarding the rise and fall of civilisations and the vestigial survival of dead civilisations as ‘religions’. More recently, Naomi Goldenberg put forward a superficially similar, but, on deeper inspection, quite a different point of view on the power relationship between state institutions and the ‘vestigial states’ that contest the state’s monopoly on power and are known to us as religions. This article explored the differences and possible synergies between these two standpoints.Contribution: This article pleads for much attention to be paid to less well-known theories of religion and demonstrates with reference to the theories of Trevor Ling and Naomi Goldenberg how a virtual conversation between older and more contemporary theorists can open up new theoretical and methodological avenues for understanding religion.

Cultural research in the logic of the development of Ukrainian humanities: the experience of 2010–2020

The purpose of the article is to focus on the theoretical developments of Ukrainian cultural studies over the last decade. The methodology consists in the application of general scientific principles of objectivity and historicism, systematization and generalization of the researched problem, and also the analytical method is used - at studying historical and culturological literature on a research theme; historical and cultural - to highlight the holistic "images-concepts" of creative activity of the individual in the historical dynamics of Ukrainian culture and a comprehensive cultural approach based on interdisciplinary links of humanities. Scientific novelty. It consists in the fact that the structure of the Ukrainian humanities is analyzed, which in its historical and modern movement has a self-sufficient and self-valuable character. Conclusions. It is emphasized that the active development of culturological knowledge requires both the fixation of already corrected problems and the identification of new problems in the logic of the further research process. among other "structural elements" are humanities, separately, socio-political knowledge, philosophy, aesthetics, history, and theories of religion, art history, and others. The "boundary space" where the theoretical interests of culturology are transformed with other humanities is outlined.

The Origins of Religious Disbelief: A Dual Inheritance Approach

Widespread religious disbelief represents a key testing ground for theories of religion. We evaluated the predictions of three prominent theoretical approaches—secularization, cognitive byproduct, and dual inheritance—in a nationally representative (United States, N = 1,417) data set with preregistered analyses and found considerable support for the dual inheritance perspective. Of key predictors of religious disbelief, witnessing fewer credible cultural cues of religious commitment was the most potent, β = .28, followed distantly by reflective cognitive style, β = .13, and less advanced mentalizing, β = .05. Low cultural exposure predicted about 90% higher odds of atheism than did peak cognitive reflection, and cognitive reflection only predicted disbelief among those relatively low in cultural exposure to religion. This highlights the utility of considering both evolved intuitions and transmitted culture and emphasizes the dual roles of content- and context-biased social learning in the cultural transmission of disbelief (preprint https://psyarxiv.com/e29rt/ ).

Introduction

The introduction lays out the primary argument and themes of the study, provides an orientation to religion and media, and defines the three central terms: religion, network, and disconnection. Fundamental promises affiliated networks with connection—friction-free technology, social unity, a utopian present, and perfect communication—and obscured the failures of networks to be or produce those things. Religion, while fueling those very promises, also participated in the disconnections that riddled telegraph networks: negotiating and occasioning technological breakdown, structuring social life on the violence of colonialism, investing in the impossibility of utopian futures, and fomenting the fundamental failures of communication. The final section provides an account of infrastructure to supplement theories of religion and networks.

EARLY SYMBOLISM AND EARLY FORMS OF RELIGION OF THE PEOPLES OF THE LOWER AMUR REGION

The purpose of the article is, firstly, to determine the territorial and chronological boundaries of the formation of early symbolism and early forms of religion in the basin of the Lower Amur, and secondly, to explicate early beliefs and practices in the context of modern theories of religion. The territorial boundaries of early symbolism and early forms of religion are located in the Lower Amur region within the boundaries of the distribution of the Osipovskaya and Mariinskaya archaeological cultures. These cultures belong to the Early Neolithic and are located in chronological intervals of 13,000-10,000 years ago ( Osipovskaya culture ) and 10,000-9,000 years ago ( Mariinskaya culture ). The oldest beliefs and practices archaeologically recorded in the Lower Amur region are the gender cult, zoolatry and thanatology. The gender cult is represented by its male and female varieties. Zoolatry is manifested primarily in the forms of bear cult, ichthyolatria (worship of fish) and ornitholatria (worship of birds). Thanatology reveals itself in thanatocracies - the funeral practice of inhumation of the body with the ritual use of fire and buried objects. Gender cult and zoolatry are objectified in the objects of mobile art. Thanatology is objectified in the burial complex.

Max Müller, a ciência da religião comparada e a busca por outras “bíblias” na Índia

Tradução de Eduardo Rodrigues da Cruz (PUC-SP) gentilmente autorizada pelo autor. Texto originalmente publicado em STRENSKI, Ivan. Max Müller, the comparative study of religion, and the search for other Bibles in India. In: STRENSKI, Ivan. Understanding theories of religion: na introduction. 2nd ed. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, pp. 33-34