Research into human development involves the use of human embryos and their derivative cells and tissues. How religions view the human embryo depends on beliefs about ensoulment and the inception of personhood, and science can neither prove nor refute the teaching of those religions that consider the zygote to be a human person with an immortal soul. This Spotlight article discusses some of the...

One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.'s article is that supernatural monitoring and intergroup competition have facilitated the rise of large-scale prosocial religions. Although the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of...

Introduction There is a sense in which all intellectual work on religion has a reifying effect. Scholars in the humanities and social sciences necessarily construct religions as particular kinds of object. That is, they take some human emotions, ideas, artefacts and activities and frame them as things called „religions‟. Accounts of these religions provide the basis for inferring something call...

the crises sometimes cause a man(zawj) to become absent so that no news have been received from him. shiite and sunnite religions have two opinions about the situation of the wife(zawjah) of the continuously absent person: patience until his life or death becomes clear, and waiting four months and ten days(ieddeh of death) after waiting for a determined period. shiite jurists, in condition that...

exclusivism is among the matters of dispute among the theologians and advocates of religions, which has since long ago been of interest to the christian theologians and emphasized by them and now is facing various challenges. in this writing, only their out-religious reasons, such as referring other religions to christianity, the resurrection of jesus and similar issues are presented from major...

In the process of studying religions, we often overlook the secular aspects of religious organizations. This paper examines the basic flows of money in different spiritual organizations, and attempts to correlate the types of income with the structure of the priestly hierarchy. This analysis is by no means comprehensive. In the end, more questions are raised than are answered. Patrick Cody Reli...

Religions and languages are social variables, like age, sex, wealth or political opinions, to be studied like any other organizational parameter. In fact, religiosity is one of the most important sociological aspects of populations. Languages are also obvious characteristics of the human species. Religions, languages appear though also disappear. All religions and languages evolve and survive w...

Research suggests that religious individuals are more prejudiced against sexual minorities (Herek, 1987). However, the Golden Rule, a universal concept embedded in many religions, emphasizes the importance of treating others with compassion. The present study examined how priming the Golden Rule influenced Buddhists‟ and Christians‟ attitudes toward gay people. We primed participants with Golde...