巫术与邪教关系的宗教社会学分析

本文运用现代宗教社会学理论,分析了高级宗教与巫术的严格区别,点明了中国传统宗教已属于高级宗教,但其中含有的巫术影响尚未祛尽的实际情形,强调主要是巫术及与之相联的民俗传统信仰对现代化建设有重大阻碍,呼吁应十分重视化传统的阻力为动力。进而,分析了中国式邪教与巫术的内在联系,指出由巫题活动向会道门组织及邪教蜕化的具体途径,并从中概括出巫术与邪教的共同特征。最后,根据其中的主要特征,根据当代被邪教迷惑者的主观原因与邪教所采用的手法分析,强调只有理性才是破邪的利器,只有明确区分巫术与经验技术、高级宗教与巫术、个人体验和普遍经验等,才能切实提高对邪教的辨识能力,从根本上破邪。     

中国古代的尸祭

以活人扮演先祖或死者神灵并代其接受祭祀的尸祭本属于宗教范畴,但是,古代宗教往往是与巫术混合在一起并利用巫术增强信仰。本文运用人类学巫术理论对中国古代的立尸祭祀仪式进行分析,认为中国古代的立尸祭祀包含着形象模拟巫术与接触巫术,具有巫术思维和巫术要素及手段,甚至还直接影响了其后在民间依然流传的巫术活动。     

边界模糊:区分宗教和巫术的困境

巫术和宗教是西方人类学研究领域中从未缺席的内容。关于巫术和宗教的边界问题,众多前辈学者在逻辑实证主义方法论指导下进行了长达百余年的探讨。然而,由于研究对象本身的复杂性,巫术和宗教的边界依然模糊,诸种观点多处于难以自圆其说的困境中。     

《山海经》刑天神话再解读

<山海经>是古代原始宗教崇拜的真实记录.刑天是从属于夏桀政权、代表太阳神崇拜的方国首领.刑天与帝争神的失败是商部族的天帝至上神崇拜战胜夏王朝的太阳神信仰的曲折表达.刑天断首后的干戚之舞,是运用军事巫术仪式震慑敌人、维护宗教信仰的重要手段.这种巫术仪式演变为宗庙祭祀舞蹈,通过祭祖仪式象征部族不灭、宗教精神永存.     

何为亚洲的现代精神?——对范笔德《亚洲的精神性》的批评

正范笔德(Peter van der Veer)是荷兰皇家学院院士、德国哥廷根马普研究院族群与宗教研究所所长,他于2014年出版了《亚洲的现代精神》(The Modern Spirit of Asia:The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India,Princeton University Press)一书,在其中提出了"宗教—灵性—巫术—世俗"的结构链(Syntagmatic chain of religion-magic-secularity-spirituality),颇有雄心地希望总结亚洲世俗性现代化背后的宗教、灵性和巫术等一系列精     

从神仙信仰看道教对工匠建房巫术的影响

道教作为一种具有明显咒术倾向的宗教,对我国工匠建房巫术产生了极其深远的影响。第一种情形是道教神仙直接或间接地对工匠建房巫术系统的形成产生增益作用;第二种情形是在道教的影响下,建房工匠祖师鲁班最终演变成道教散仙,并成为建房巫术仪式中祭祀的主神。从神仙信仰来看道教对工匠建房巫术的影响,可以清楚地看到道教的民间化和世俗化倾向,也可以验证巫术与道教之间"你中有我,我中有你"的关系。     

古代两河流域医疗巫术的文化考察

古代两河流域医学深受宗教神学的影响,认为疾病是由于人们冒犯神灵或道德禁忌引起的,或是某种恶魔或精灵加害的结果,对此常常采用巫术方法治疗。巫师在治病的时候要举行一定的仪式并念诵咒语,咒语详细记录了患者的病状、治病的药方以及巫术实施的步骤。医疗巫术本质上是感应巫术,接近于一种心理治疗方法。巫师操作巫术借助象征进行治疗,正是象征的效力保证了幻想与行动的协调和同步发展,从而取得预想的效果。古代两河流域医疗巫术并不排斥科学知识,丰富的临床经验和药物学知识在帮助患者康复过程中发挥了重要作用。     

弗洛伊德精神分析宗教心理观新探

弗洛伊德的精神分析宗教心理观深受达尔文的生物进化思想、费尔巴哈的人本主义宗教哲学理念、弗雷泽的"巫术先行论"和冯特民族文化宗教心理观的影响。其主要特点是:力求运用类比推理揭示宗教心理的深层根源;主张通过科学的信念战胜非理性的宗教幻觉;试图依据摩西案例阐明宗教的历史发展进程。其历史贡献在于:在探讨宗教信仰深层心理机制方面独树一帜;延续了冯特开创的宗教文化心理的研究取向;针对传统宗教弊端的揭批精神值得后人铭记。其历史局限表现在:夸大了本能冲突在宗教心理形成中的作用;用强迫症案例类推宗教心理缺乏科学依据;对宗教功能的绝对否定伤害了信徒的情感。     

警惕邪教、伪似宗教蔓延,危害社会发展与稳定

自20世纪80年代以来,我国进入经济转轨和社会转型的双重变革时代。变革与转型孕育着生机和创造力,也经历着社会蜕变中的破坏性失范,甚至是罪恶的阵痛。邪教与伪似宗教现象的蔓延,成为威胁社会发展与稳定的痼疾。 一、演变趋势 伪似宗教,是指它撷取正统宗教经典的片言只语,任意篡改,歪曲附会,利用迷信、巫术,装神     

话说鬼神之九神鬼论是一部分人的心理需要

甲:有些科学家说,科学是由巫术中孕育出来的,您有何看法. 乙:我完全同意.我还要说巫术是一切科学的母体,在人类文明史上巫术功不可没.     

GALILEO STILL GOES TO JAIL: CONFLICT MODEL PERSISTENCE WITHIN INTRODUCTORY ANTHROPOLOGY MATERIALS

Historians have long since rejected the dubious assertions of the conflict model, with its narratives of perennial religion versus science combat. Nonetheless, this theory persists in various academic disciplines, and it is still presented to university students as the authoritative historical account of religion–science interactions. Cases of this can be identified within modern anthropology textbooks and reference materials, which often recapitulate claims once made by John W. Draper and Andrew D. White. This article examines 21st‐century introductory anthropology publications, demonstrating how such works perpetuate religion–science myths and the notion that history has been replete with inevitable religion versus science warfare. In particular, this study reveals how such introductory materials propagate discord narratives associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Affiliated with these anecdotes are oversimplified accounts of religious responses to heliocentrism and evolutionary theory, as well as claims that science has invariably led to the usurpation of religious belief and secularization from Galileo onwards.     

Postmodern ontology,anthropology, and religion

This article analyses some changes produced in the contemporary ‘postmodern’ self and its consequences for the anthropological study of religion. In this regard, these changes influence deeply the way we westerners represent our ontological structure, and approach other religious systems and ontologies, due to the current processes of globalisation and transnationalisation, the notion of Self often fluctuates between an old stable, autonomous, maximiser (condensed) self and a dispersed, multivocal one. It is argued here that traditional anthropological analyses of religion lack this critical and reflexive awareness. For that reason, cultural phenomena such as shamanism, sorcery, and many forms of religious and cosmological syncretisms, are frequently approached from a distant, naturalistic viewpoint In this paper a more existential view of religion is proposed; it approaches the observer to the observed, opening up his/her assumptions about the ‘order of things’. A collection of notions, such as critical hermeneutics, critical intersubjectivity, dialectics, and ontological language is discussed, to build a fresh inquiry into the realms of numinous life.     

Is analytical psychology a religion? Rationalist and romantic approaches to religion and modernity

The relationship between analytical psychology and religion is part of the larger issue of the relationship between modernity and religion. There are three main views on the issue. The fundamentalist position sets religion against modernity and opts for religion over modernity. What I call the 'rationalist' position likewise sets religion against modernity but opts for modernity over religion. By contrast to both views, what I call the 'romantic' position reconciles religion with modernity. Rationalists maintain that religion can exist only in so far as it serves as an explanation of the physical world, which the rise of science now precludes. Romantics maintain that religion, while serving as an explanation of the physical world till dislodge by science, is at heart anything but an explanation. The toppling of the religions explanation by the scientific one, far from dooming religion, prods religion into making explicit what it has in fact been all along. By this categorization, Jung is overwhelmingly a romantic. For him, the function of religion has always been more psychological than explanatory, and the rise of science does not preclude the continuing existence of religious myths as a psychological rather than an explanatory phenomenon. For those for whom science does spell the demise of religion, secular myths can replace religious ones, and those secular myths are more secular versions of religions myths than secular alternatives to religions myths. Yet even if for Jung religion can still exist today because religion is in fact psychology, it does not follow that psychology is therefore a religion.     

宗教研究的认知科学新取向

宗教认知科学是新近出现的从认知和进化的角度研究宗教的分支学科。主要有认知副产物和社会适应两种理论。认知副产物理论认为宗教信仰是人类认知倾向的副产物;社会适应理论认为宗教信仰促进群体的团结合作,是一个精巧的社会适应机制,有助于群体的自然选择。两种理论引发了系列的实验研究,由于宗教认知科学仍处于理论研究向实证研究的过渡阶段,未来需统一概念,加强实验范式的建立,更多地借助认知科学的方法和工具开展实证研究。     

SCIENCE AND RELIGION: AN ORIGINS STORY

In recent scholarship, the science and religion debate has been historicized, revealing the novelty of the concepts of science and religion and their complex connections to secularization and the birth of modernity. This article situates this historicist turn in the history of philosophy and its connections to theology and Scripture, showing that the science and religion concept derives from philosophy's earlier tension with theology as it became an academic discipline centered in the medieval, then research university, with the centrality of Scripture changing under the influence of historical criticism. Looking at Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Schleiermacher on theology and Scripture's connection to science, it offers a new framework for theorizing science and religion as part of the history of philosophy.     

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE AND THE HISTORY OF A RELIGIOUS FUTURE

Andrew Dickson White played a pivotal role in constructing the image of a necessary, and even violent, confrontation between religion and science that persists to this day. Though scholars have long acknowledged that his position is more complex, given that White claimed to be saving religion from theology, there has been no attempt to explore what this means in light of his overwhelming attack on existing religions. This essay draws attention to how White's role as a historian was decisive in allowing him to posit a future for religion purified of dogma by science. It argues, furthermore, that this effort is better understood as religious innovation, rather than a plea for strictly secular science. In so doing it hopes to lay the foundation for a more fruitful historical treatment of White, and a range of other figures whose devotion to science has otherwise been difficult to grasp.     

SCIENTISM AND TECHNOLOGY AS RELIGIONS

Abstract. Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, technology, and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point.     

RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND DISENCHANTMENT IN LATE MODERNITY

Late modernity has witnessed a growing semantic shift from “religion” to “spirituality.” In this article, I argue what underlies this shift is a cultural structure I call the religion of the heart. I begin with an explication of what I mean by the “religion of the heart,” and draw on the work of Ernst Troeltsch and Colin Campbell to identify what I take to be its historical antecedents. Second, I analyze the ambiguous relationships fostered between the religion of the heart and the discourses of science and religion, respectively, in late modernity. I illuminate how the social conditions of late modernity undermine or challenge what we conventionally think of as scientific and religious authorities, while at the same time creating existential needs that the religion of the heart is well adapted to meet. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this process, especially as it relates to the sustainability of science and religion, as independent enterprises, in the twenty‐first century.     

“RELIGION AND SCIENCE” AS ADVOCACY OF SCIENCE AND AS RELIGION VERSUS RELIGION

Abstract. “Religion and science” often is understood as being about the relationship between two given enterprises, religion and science. I argue that it is more accurate to understand religion and science in different contexts differently. (1) It serves as apologetics for science in a religious environment. As apologetics for technology the role of religion‐and‐science is more ambivalent, as competing and contrary responses to modern technology find articulation in religious terms. (2) In the political context of the modern university, some invoke religion‐and‐science in arguing for a place of theology alongside the sciences. In this context, secular studies of religion are a major challenge, which is hardly addressed. (3) Within the religious communities, religion‐and‐science is a battleground between revisionist and traditionalist ways of understanding religion.     

MAPPING ONE WORLD: RELIGION AND SCIENCE FROM AN EAST ASIAN PERSPECTIVE

This article aims to delineate a model of religion‐science relationship from an East Asian perspective. The East Asian way of thinking is depicted as nondualistic, relational, and inclusive. From this point of view, most current Western discourses on the religion‐science relationship, including the interconnected models of Pannenberg and Haught, are hierarchical, intellectually centered, and have dualistic tendencies. Taking religion and science as mapping activities, “a multi‐map model” presents nonhierarchical, historical, social, multidimensional, communal, and intimate dimensions of the religion‐science relationship.