71 posts · 42,256 views
This blog explores the following questions: (1) is there something about the evolved brain-mind that inclines humans towards supernatural thinking or religious belief; (2) can individual or group level selection account for any such features of brain-mind; (3) can we discern supernatural-religious activities or beliefs from the archaeological record (and if so, what kinds); (4) how have supernatural-religious activities and beliefs changed over time; and (5) what might explain such changes?
Cris Campbell
71 posts
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- May 4, 2012
- 12:10 PM
- 112 views
Research Riches & Plains Visions
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
One of the fantastic and daunting things about a project which seeks to comprehend “religion” in its historical entirety and cultural variety is that it’s impossible to read everything. The field for this kind of project is enormous and is touched upon, in one way or another, by nearly every discipline in the academy. This [...]... Read more »
Albers, Patricia, & Parker, Seymour. (1971) The Plains Vision Experience: A Study of Power and Privilege. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 27(3), 203-233. info:/
- April 13, 2012
- 05:26 PM
- 215 views
Myth of Pristine “Primitive” Religions
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Scholars have long been fascinated by the idea that something like the primordial or original religion existed until recently and may in fact be curated by a few people even today. If such “religions” could be identified, scholars hoped they could sketch the historical development or genealogy of religions. For old-time cultural evolutionists this amounted [...]... Read more »
Charlesworth, Max. (2009) Anthropological Approaches to "Primitive" Religions. Sophia, 48(2), 119-125. DOI: 10.1007/s11841-009-0096-5
Eliade, Mircea. (1966) Australian Religions: An Introduction. Part I. History of Religions, 6(2), 108. DOI: 10.1086/462538
- April 6, 2012
- 03:50 PM
- 157 views
Cross Cultural Glossolalia: Babeling
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Glossolalia or “speaking in tongues” is known primarily from charismatic Christian churches. In that setting it has been studied extensively with some remarkable findings. In Tower of Linguistic Babel, I examined one of those studies and noted some curious features of “tongues” or glossas:
They are always derivative of the speakers’ native language. In other words, [...]... Read more »
May, L. Carlyle. (1956) A Survey of Glossolalia and Related Phenomena in Non-Christian Religions. American Anthropologist, 58(1), 75-96. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1956.58.1.02a00060
Goodman, Felicitas. (1969) Phonetic Analysis of Glossolalia in Four Cultural Settings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 8(2), 227. DOI: 10.2307/1384336
Samarin, William. (1968) The Linguisticality of Glossolalia. Hartford Quarterly, 8(4), 49-75. info:/
- March 29, 2012
- 03:08 PM
- 172 views
Animism as Altruistic Adaptation
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
I have a confession to make. I’ve long denigrated claims that what we today call “religion” originated during the Upper Paleolithic because early supernaturalism fostered altruism. When this argument makes an appearance, it’s often in the service of an evolutionary theism which assumes that because God is behind evolution, religion is the designed outcome of [...]... Read more »
Bird‐David, Nurit. (1999) “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40(S1). DOI: 10.1086/200061
Bird-David, Nurit. (1992) Beyond "The Original Affluent Society": A Culturalist Reformulation. Current Anthropology, 33(1), 25-34. info:/
- March 6, 2012
- 04:13 PM
- 197 views
Encultured Hallucinations
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Hallucinations are a universal feature of human experience. This doesn’t mean that everyone has hallucinated, but everyone is capable of hallucinating. If hallucinations can be managed, the effects range from enlightening to fun. If hallucinations are uncontrolled, the effects range from psychosis to terror. In most cases, expectations are the key to management [...]... Read more »
Luhrmann, Tanya. (2011) Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides. Annual Review of Anthropology, 71-85. info:/10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145819
- February 17, 2012
- 02:29 PM
- 254 views
Vanquishing the Soul: Gall & Phrenology
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Thinking is a strange thing. So strange, in fact, that most people think that whatever is doing the thinking must have a life of its own. This idea, commonsense dualism, has been around a long time and is the default position for most people regardless of culture. It’s a hard habit or intuition to break, [...]... Read more »
McLaren, Angus. (1974) Phrenology: Medium and Message. The Journal of Modern History, 46(1), 86. DOI: 10.1086/241166
Castro-Caldas, A., & Grafman, J. (2000) Those Were the (Phrenological) Days. The Neuroscientist, 6(4), 297-302. DOI: 10.1177/107385840000600412
McLaren Angus. (1981) A prehistory of the social sciences: phrenology in France. Comparative studies in society and history, 23(1), 3-22. PMID: 11614370
- February 12, 2012
- 02:01 PM
- 269 views
Chemical Ghosts in the Machine
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
If we think deeply about evolution, we eventually will ask questions not about the origin of species but about the origin of life. For some theistic evolutionists, this is the point of Designer intervention. They find it hard to imagine that chemicals could combine in way that gives rise to life. For those less inclined [...]... Read more »
Urey, Harold. (1952) On the Early Chemical History of the Earth and the Origin of Life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 38(4), 351-363. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.38.4.351
Peretó J. (2005) Controversies on the origin of life. International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology, 8(1), 23-31. PMID: 15906258
Joyce, G. (1989) RNA evolution and the origins of life. Nature, 338(6212), 217-224. DOI: 10.1038/338217a0
Orgel LE. (1998) The origin of life--a review of facts and speculations. Trends in biochemical sciences, 23(12), 491-5. PMID: 9868373
- February 8, 2012
- 06:34 PM
- 252 views
All Mixed Up: Julian Jaynes
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In 1976, the polymathic Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes published The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It is one of those rare books which is mostly wrong but is filled with so many penetrating and provocative insights that it still deserves to be read. It’s a fun and big idea book [...]... Read more »
Jaynes, Julian. (1986) Consciousness and The Voices of the Mind. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 27(2), 128-148. DOI: 10.1037/h0080053
- January 27, 2012
- 11:36 AM
- 345 views
Disrupting & Inventing “Religion”
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
When I teach my anthropology of religion course the first order of business is to define and disrupt “religion” as a category. I begin by having students identify everything they consider to be “religion.” Our list grows and all the usual suspects make their appearance. After the list has been compiled, we then ask what [...]... Read more »
Josephson, Joseph A. (2011) The Invention of Japanese Religions. Religion Compass, 5(10), 589-597. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00307.x
- January 4, 2012
- 02:34 PM
- 347 views
Altruistic Infants Aren’t Little Devils
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Someone forgot to tell a group of 15-month-old infants they are flawed and that without proper (religious or moral) instruction, they will be unfair and selfish. Rather than being born this way, they appear to have been born another way: with built-in expectations of fairness and a willingness to share. These are the conclusions reached [...]... Read more »
Schmidt, Marco, & Sommerville, Jessica. (2011) Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants. PLoS ONE, 6(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023223
- December 30, 2011
- 03:45 PM
- 274 views
Structure & Function of Creation Myths
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Creation myths do psychological and cultural work. Because all known societies have creation myths, the number and variety is staggering. There are entire encyclopedias of creation myths and even dictionaries for creation myths. Given this seemingly endless variety, it is unsurprising there have been several kinds of efforts to impose order on the mass. Folklorists [...]... Read more »
Rooth, Anna B. (1957) The Creation Myths of the North American Indians. Anthropos, 52(3/4), 497-508. info:/
- December 20, 2011
- 03:35 PM
- 351 views
Creation Myths: Not Just Stories
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about creation myths. By calling them “myths” it allows us to overlook, dismiss, or ignore them. This is a mistake. We should think hard about what these myths do and how they work. They are not just quaint relics of a pre-scientific past. They are not just [...]... Read more »
Lewin, Roger. (1988) Man's Place in Nature. The Missouri Review, 11(3), 16-32. info:/
- December 16, 2011
- 11:17 AM
- 1,211 views
Searching for the Elusive God Effect
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Physicists may soon confirm the actual existence of the Higgs boson or God particle. It must exist or their models don’t work and the math is all wrong, which can’t possibly be the case. Or perhaps it can. Stranger things have happened. The elusiveness of the God particle, which is needed for mass to exist, [...]... Read more »
Stark, Rodney. (1984) Religion and Conformity: Reaffirming a Sociology of Religion. Sociological Analysis, 45(4), 273-282. info:/
- December 14, 2011
- 01:42 PM
- 1,141 views
Eating Bodies & Drinking Spirits
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
For historians and theorists of religion, one of the more useful exercises is to compare and contrast the religions of indigenous peoples whose economies or “bases” were different. We are fortunate to have fairly comprehensive records of two such peoples in America: the Iroquois tribes and the Plains Indians. The Iroquois were sedentary horticulturalists whereas [...]... Read more »
Abler, Thomas. (1980) Iroquois Cannibalism: Fact Not Fiction. Ethnohistory, 27(4), 309-316. info:/
- December 9, 2011
- 02:29 PM
- 406 views
Altruism in Religionless Rats
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
No one who has ever kept rats as pets (as I have) will be surprised by a study that appeared in yesterday’s Science and is getting major media coverage. In “Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats,” the authors report:
Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether [...]... Read more »
Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011) Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats. Science, 334(6061), 1427-1430. DOI: 10.1126/science.1210789
- December 3, 2011
- 12:50 PM
- 349 views
Universal Shamanism: The Japanese Context
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In religious studies and popular usage, the term “universal” is used to describe religions which are open to all and transcend ethnic, geographic, political, and cultural boundaries. Three religions are usually cited as universal: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Some newer religions, such as Mormonism and Bahá’í, would also qualify. But if we take a longer [...]... Read more »
Meeks, Lori. (2011) The Disappearing Medium: Reassessing the Place of Miko in the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan . History of Religions, 50(3), 208-260. DOI: 10.1086/656611
Josephson, Jason A. (2006) When Buddhism Became a “Religion”: Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 33(1), 143-168. info:/
- November 22, 2011
- 05:34 PM
- 416 views
Out of Symbolic Africa
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
When fully modern humans left Africa, their journey is often described as the “colonization” or “peopling” of the world. Characterizing things this way can give rise to the mistaken impression that the journey out of Africa was unprecedented and unique. This of course ignores the fact that human ancestors pulsed out of Africa multiple times [...]... Read more »
Balme, J., Davidson, I., McDonald, J., Stern, N., & Veth, P. (2009) Symbolic behaviour and the peopling of the southern arc route to Australia. Quaternary International, 202(1-2), 59-68. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2008.10.002
- November 15, 2011
- 12:12 PM
- 429 views
Animate Motion & Religion
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
While working on the Göbekli Tepe Series, a reader suggested some possible intersections with the work of Julian Jaynes. At her suggestion I’m reading The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) and some of Jaynes’ other writings, including his 1970 essay on “The Problem of Animate Motion in the Seventeenth [...]... Read more »
Jaynes, Julian. (1970) The Problem of Animate Motion in the Seventeenth Century. Journal of the History of Ideas, 31(2), 219-234. DOI: 10.2307/2708546
- November 12, 2011
- 01:47 PM
- 362 views
Haeckel’s Mystical Monism
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
A place for everything and everything in its place. This is not just a mantra for those with obsessive tendencies. It also describes the drive that some have toward a system: a unified theory of everything.
Before the Enlightenment, there was no need for such a theory. God served this purpose and everything was explained by [...]... Read more »
Holt, Niles. (1971) Ernst Haeckel's Monistic Religion. Journal of the History of Ideas, 32(2), 265-280. DOI: 10.2307/2708280
- November 6, 2011
- 02:04 PM
- 337 views
The China Rule & Cult of Confucius
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
China is big, old, and fascinating. Its importance in the larger scheme of things is such that there should be what I call “The China Rule.” This rule would apply as follows. If a scholar claims that history unfolds directionally or according to general rules, s/he must specifically test the claim using China as datum. [...]... Read more »
Wilson, T. (2002) Sacrifice and the Imperial Cult of Confucius. History of Religions, 41(3), 251. DOI: 10.1086/463684
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