When we study the history of life, it easy to see that life has evolved over time. The fossils of creatures that lived before us faithfully record the innovations and changes leading to the diversity of life that we observe today. The history of religion is much shorter, yet it too has left a fossil record revealing some of the innovations and changes leading to the diversity of religions which...

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...

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...

The word spirit with a small "s", has many meanings. It may mean 1) one of the elements in man which is considered as separable from the flesh and animating the body; or, 2)a person, from the moral, emotional or-intellectual point of view; or, 3) a person's disposition, permanent or temporary mental attitude, or, predominance of the spirit over the flesh especially as manifested in courage, ene...

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...

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...

The overall aim of this paper is to highlight a transcendental usage of the Religion of Islamin the Qur’an. I will show that the notion of Islamas a unitary Religion is used in the Qur’an as a genus for religions (adyan) which have appeared throughout human history. This usage will show that there is a sense of Religion which guarantees the essential unity of all religions and...