Every spring I get depressed. Last month I had the stunning realization that graduate student recruitment is a major cause of my spring depression. Each year, as the days lengthen, graduate programs engage in their ritualistic seduction of prospective students. In the past 15 years, US institutions, including the most elite and respected, have evolved mating displays worthy of birds and fish. T...

It is the charge of economic history not only to explain the economic past, but to use it to enrich and develop economic theory (North, 1994). In paleoeconomics, theory plays the additional role of adding veracity of accounts based on sparse evidence through the demonstration of internal consistency. We synthesize pre-historical and historical evidence available from the settlement and moderniz...

In this paper we respond to Benjamin Crowe’s criticisms in this issue of our discussion of the grounds of worship. We clarify our previous position, and examine Crowe’s account of what it is about God’s nature that might ground our obligation to worship Him. We find Crowe’s proposals no more persuasive than the accounts that we examined in our previous paper, and conclude that theists still owe...

Previous studies have revealed denominational subculture variations in marriage timing in the U.S. with conservative Protestants marrying at a much younger age than Catholics and the unaffiliated. However, the effects of other religious factors, such as worship service attendance and religious salience, remain overlooked. Informed by a theoretical framework that integrates the denominational su...

prayer is the most principle worship andthe most important divine prophet’s advice especially by holy messengermuhammad. prayer has been established by the divine religions and has been as an importablecomponent in all ofthem. prayer meets the especial altitude in islam. the effects and blesses ofthis holy value has been cited with fine and summary expression in the quran.refection in these uni...

Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”) liturgy opens its participants to a world undefined by stark border between the transcendent and immanent, with an emphasis on embodiment relationality. The formal rites of temple, in particular that part rite called “the endowment”, act as frame erases immanent–transcendent border. Within frame, more informal weekly administration blood body Christ, known sacrament”...

Thanks to such works as Keith Thomas's Religion and the decline ofmagic (1973), Lawrence Stone's The family, sex and marriage in England, 1500-1800 (1977), Ronald Hutton's The rise andfall ofmerry England: the ritual year, 1400-1700 (1994), and Anthony Fletcher's Gender, sex and subordination in England 1500-1800 (1995), the cultural and social history of the early modem period is blessed with ...

Magico - religious rites in treating physical and mental ailments once widespread in ancient India are still prevalent among the tribals / primitive societies. This study shows that it is based on a scientifically sound psychological approach. Magical incantation and other religious rites performed to cure the disease unknowingly affect the mind of patient who in turn subjected to have autosugg...