Hear a review of The New Sciences of Religion by Clay Naff on Nebraska Public Radio!
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The New Sciences of Religion: This is a critical analysis of new scientific research on religious and spiritual phenomena. Grassie takes a two-staged phenomenological approach working from the “outside in” and the “bottom up” without privileging at the outset any religious traditions or philosophical assumptions. Using insights from economics, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, and medicine, he develops a complex and multifaceted understanding of religion as potentially functional and dysfunctional in specific contexts, differentially so for individuals and groups. The New Sciences of Religion then asks what in religion and spirituality might also be true and profound when our received traditions are reinterpreted in light of contemporary sciences. In contrast to the New Atheists, Grassie argues for a concept of God-bywhatever-name that is fully compatible with contemporary science and the reinterpretation of traditional religions. In the end, there is no grand unified theory of religion and none of the many scientific explanations of religion preclude that religions have intuited, experienced, and discovered true and profound insights into the nature of ultimate reality and human existence. This is an original and compelling scientific interpretation interpretation of religion and also a religious interpretation of science that will challenge and delight students and scholars alike. |
Politics by Other Means: Many of these essays were first presented abroad – China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere – and later published on Metanexus. Techno-science and global capitalism have brought us to a threshold, profoundly transforming our ecological and cultural legacies. Scientists are now calling this the Anthropocene, a new epoch in evolution when humans begin to dominate the atmosphere, the geosphere, the biosphere, and now also the “genome-sphere.” Taken as a whole, this collection speaks of an urgent need to ground global ethics (natural law philosophy) in contemporary science (natural philosophy) in dialogue with comparative religion (revelation) and then translate these insights broadly into intellectual and popular culture. |
Advanced Methodologies in the Scientific Study of Religion and Spirituality (Edited) During much of the twentieth century, social scientists were predicting that religions would gradually diminish and disappear with the spread of science, education, and economic growth. Instead, we have witnessed a global revival of religious movements, a source of both hope and concern in the twenty-first century. Alongside this trend, the last decade saw a resurgence of interest in the scientific study of religious and spiritual phenomena among researchers in diverse fields. Psychology, sociology, and anthropology still play central roles in such studies, but these disciplines are now supplemented by economics, epidemiology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral genetics, among others. The eight contributors to this volume have brought to bear an enormous range of expertise and insight from several scholarly arenas. These pioneering thinkers propose new ways of pursuing the scientific study of religious and spiritual phenomena and present reseach that is increasingly suggestive of a profound and critical role for spirituality and religion in promoting human health and wellbeing. The essays within not only promote innovative reseach methodologies, but also develop creative insights into the forces that positively shape and expand world religions and their conceptualization of the sacred. Seasoned social scientists and their students will find much in this collection to provoke new questions and new methods for studying and understanding this enduring dimension of human life. |
Transhumanism & Its Critics This book brings together sixteen of the world’s foremost thinkers on the prospects of a radical reshaping of human nature through biotechnologies and artificial intelligence. The often heated debate about transhumanism is an extremely fruitful field for philosophical and theological inquiry. The last hundred years of human evolution have seen remarkable scientific and technological transformations. If the pace of change continues and indeed accelerates in the twenty-first century, then in short order we will be a much-transformed species on a much-transformed planet. The idea of some fixed human nature, a human essence from which we derive notions of humane dignities and essential human rights, no longer applies in this brave new world of free market evolution. On what basis then do we make moral judgments and pursue pragmatic ends. Should we try to limit the development of certain sciences and technologies? How would we do so? Is it even possible? Are either traditional religious or Enlightenment values adequate at a speciation horizon between humans and posthumans? Is the ideology of transhumanism dangerous independent of the technology? Is the ideology of the bioconservatives, those who oppose transhumanism, also dangerous and how? Are the new sciences and technologies celebrated by transhumanists realistic or just another form of wishful thinking? |
Available from Palgrave Macmillan
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eBook ($9.99) Order now from |
eBook ($9.99) Order now from
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Available in October 2010 |
