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Genealogy of Religion
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Originus
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- February 17, 2012
- 02:29 PM
- 72 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
- 03:28 PM
- 82 views
Big Brains in Evolutionary History
by Matt & Cris in Originus
In 1985 I visited the Soviet Union with a small group of Austrian tourists (I was studying in Vienna at …Continue reading »... Read more »
Gross, C. (1993) Huxley versus Owen: the hippocampus minor and evolution. Trends in Neurosciences, 16(12), 493-498. DOI: 10.1016/0166-2236(93)90190-W
- February 12, 2012
- 02:01 PM
- 76 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
- 119 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
- 199 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
- 178 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
- 174 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
- 235 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
- 570 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
- 555 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
- 300 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
- 263 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
- 298 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
- 328 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
- 265 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
- 251 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
- November 2, 2011
- 12:41 PM
- 334 views
Your Homunculus is Credulous
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Thanks to the hard work and serendipity of Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, who was recently profiled in the New York Times, we know that our left brain homunculus is a storyteller. Our homunculi confabulate like crazy. Nevermind that the person in our head lacks basic information or essential plot elements: s/he will fashion a narrative or [...]... Read more »
Lynn, M., Berger, C., Riddle, T., & Morsella, E. (2010) Mind control? Creating illusory intentions through a phony brain–computer interface. Consciousness and Cognition, 19(4), 1007-1012. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2010.05.007
- October 27, 2011
- 05:23 PM
- 383 views
Your Homunculus Is A Liar
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
The person who lives inside your head may seem rational and honest, but who is fooling who? If you are fortunate there is only one voice and if you are sober the voice should be sensible. Or so we would like to think. Two recent studies suggest otherwise. As it turns out, our homunculi are [...]... Read more »
von Hippel, W., & Trivers, R. (2011) The evolution and psychology of self-deception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(01), 1-16. DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X10001354
Sharot, T., Korn, C., & Dolan, R. (2011) How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality. Nature Neuroscience, 14(11), 1475-1479. DOI: 10.1038/nn.2949
- October 21, 2011
- 04:41 PM
- 361 views
Göbekli Tepe: Series Conclusion
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In the Göbekli Tepe series opener, I noted that several claims have been made about this 11,000 year old archaeological site:
It was built by nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than sedentary or village agriculturalists.
It was a religious or ritual pilgrimage center that attracted people from far and wide.
The massive stone pillars or megaliths were “temples” or “shrines.”
Göbekli [...]... Read more »
Goring-Morris, A., & Belfer-Cohen, A. (2011) Neolithization Processes in the Levant. Current Anthropology, 52(S4). DOI: 10.1086/658860
Belfer-Cohen, A., & Goring-Morris, A. (2011) Becoming Farmers:. Current Anthropology, 52(S4). DOI: 10.1086/658861
- October 19, 2011
- 07:13 PM
- 256 views
Göbekli Tepe: Houses of the Holy?
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
In the series introduction, I asked whether Göbekli Tepe was (as the excavator Klaus Schmidt suggests) an archaeological or metaphorical Stairway to Heaven. Continuing the Led Zeppelin riff, a better question for today might be whether Göbekli’s megalithic structures were Houses of the Holy.
E.B. Banning suggests something along these lines in “So Fair a House: [...]... Read more »
Banning, E.B. (2011) So Fair a House: Gobekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Current Anthropology, 52(5), 619-660. info:/10.1086/661207
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