RELIGION AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Abstract. The end of the twentieth century marks the slow disintegration of both the Marxist and capitalist socioeconomic theories, inasmuch as both have proven inadequate to meet basic issues of human existence. Their inadequacy rests on the tendency to use the criteria of extrinsic rewards, quantification, production, and consumption to evaluate human personhood and human activity. What is needed is a third alternative to these two systems, one that is based on intrinsic rewards and cultivates internal values rather than production, consumption, and quantification. Religious communities have traditionally been such an alternative and seem to represent an ordered nucleus of information that can counter the inadequacies of Marxism and capitalism. To carry out this function, religions must (1) minimize the trivial differences that set belief systems against one another; (2) support bimodal cultural evolution that allows the old and the new to coexist; and (3) discover the unifying factors that cut across human groups.     

《文化演化与宗教》

社会学家贝拉(Robert Bellah)在其颇具影响力"宗教演化"的文章中,根据广泛的人类经验提出了一个检验文化和宗教互动的模式。贝拉在其雄心勃勃的计划中还是保持相当的谦虚,他警觉到其所用的例证源于历史文献,而模式本身则不是历史。模式是"一种思考的工具":一个用来指导思考的理论性框架,而非基于田野调查的经验性描述。在我们下面的讨论中,我们将使用贝拉的"思考工具"的基本模式,将包括来自贝拉本人和其他宗教学者研究中的一些修正和补充的内容。     

EVOLUTION AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

Abstract. The last century has witnessed a succession of revolutionary transformations in the discipline of biology. However, the rapid expansion of our understanding of life and its nature has had curiously little impact on the way that questions about life and its significance have been discussed by philosophers. This paper explores the answers that biology provides to central questions about our existence, and it examines why the substitution of causal explanations for teleological ones appears natural and satisfying in the case of physical theory but meets widespread resistance in the case of biology.     

THE DISCOVERY OF MEANING THROUGH SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS FORMS OF INDWELLING

Abstract. Because of similarities between some implications of Michael Polanyi's theory of personal knowledge and intelligent design, claims have been made that his theory provides support to the project of intelligent design. This essay contends that, when Polanyi's reflections on a Ideological framework for contextualizing evolutionary biology are properly understood as a heuristic vision, his position contrasts sharply with the empirical claims made on behalf of intelligent design.     

EVOLUTION, HUMAN VALUES AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A PROCESS PERSPECTIVE

This essay sketches an interpretation of human experience utilizing the perspective of’ process philosophy. Beauty is a key notion, and emergent evolution is a central theme. The following topics are addressed: the emergence of modern evolutionary thinking and alternative responses to it; the nature of human nature in a process perspective; the place of humans in nature; the immanence of laws; emergent evolution on this planet; some implications of the hierarchy of nature for the interpretation of human life, human morality, and human values; and human religious experience.     

EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: ORIGINS AND BUILDING BLOCKS

The large, ancient ape population of the Miocene reached across Eurasia and down into Africa. From this genetically diverse group, the chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and humans evolved from populations of successively reduced size. Using the findings of genomics, population genetics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and archaeology, the authors construct a theoretical framework of evolutionary innovations without which religious capacity could not have emerged as it did. They begin with primate sociality and strength from a basic ape model, and then explore how the human line came to be the most adaptive and flexible of all, while coming from populations with reduced genetic variability. Their analysis then delves into the importance of neurological plasticity and a lengthening developmental trajectory, and points to their following article and the last building block: the expansion of the parietal areas, which allowed visuospatial reckoning, and imagined spaces and beings essential to human theologies. Approximate times for the major cognitive building blocks of religious capacity are given.     

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND ORGAN DONATION AMONG MUSLIMS

Bioethics and health researchers often turn to Islamic jurisconsults (fuqahā’) and their verdicts (fatāwā) to understand how Islam and health intersect. Yet when using fatwā to promote health behavior change, researchers have often found less than ideal results. In this article we examine several health behavior change interventions that partnered with Muslim religious leaders aiming at promoting organ donation. As these efforts have generally met with limited success, we reanalyze these efforts through the lens of the theory of planned behavior, and in light of two distinct scholarly imperatives of Muslim religious leaders, the ?ilmī and the islāhī. We argue for a new approach to health behavior change interventions within the Muslim community that are grounded in theoretical frameworks from the science of behavior change, as well the religious leadership paradigms innate to the Islamic tradition. We conclude by exploring the implications of our proposed model for applied Islamic bioethics and health research.     

TRIANGLE EFFECT AND THE CONNOTATIVE MEANING OF TRUST IN PRISONER'S DILEMMA: A CROSS CULTURAL STUDY

Two hundred and forty-nine male postgraduate students of management played the Prisoner's Dilemma Game (Deutsch 1960) and filled out a postgame questionnaire measuring attitude toward the ‘other player’. Striking differences resulted between trusting and trustworthy subjects on the one hand and suspicious and untrustworthy subjects on the other with respect to different meanings given to the dimension of trust (cooperation) in the interaction. As predicted, trusting behavior of the other player was given a positive evaluative meaning - good versus bad - by the trusting and trustworthy subjects and negative dynamism meaning - weak versus strong - by the suspicious and untrustworthy subjects. The trusting players expected the typical other to make either trusting or suspicious moves, whereas the suspicious subjects expected the typical other to be uniformly suspicious, yielding a high Triangularity Index (Kelley and Stahelski 1970). Most provocatively, while 51% of trusting subjects thought that the other player was a female, 81% from among the suspicious subjects thought so. Some implications of the results in interpersonal and organizational situations are discussed.     

EFFECT OF ACADEMIC DEGREE AND DISCIPLINE ON RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND EVOLUTION ACCEPTANCE: SURVEY AT A CHILEAN UNIVERSITY

Affiliation with a scientific area or degree program could affect one´s religious beliefs and acceptance of evolution; however, this issue has been poorly studied. Moreover, little information is available regarding Chilean university scientists’ views on religion and evolution. This study aims to provide the first documentation of the opinion of scientists at a Chilean University with regard to religion and evolution. This was done by conducting a personal survey of first and last year undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. We found that nonreligiosity, as well as acceptance of Darwinian evolution, increased with possession of an advanced degree and this correlation was stronger for individuals who study biology and physics in comparison to those who study chemistry. Although less than 30 percent of undergraduate students are atheists/agnostics, more than 70 percent of faculty members are atheist or agnostic. However, most of the surveyed scientists did not see a conflict between science and religion.     

VISIONARY COMMUNICATION QUALITIES AS MEDIATORS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NARCISSISM AND ATTRIBUTIONS OF LEADER CHARISMA

This study seeks to answer questions that have been raised regarding the precise nature of the relationship between narcissism and charismatic leadership. Specifically, we test a model that portrays the roles of socialized vision and visionary boldness as mediators in the relationship between narcissism and attributions of leader charisma. Our findings suggest that narcissism is positively related to vision boldness but negatively related to socialized vision. In turn, both aspects of vision are positively associated with attributions of leader charisma. These results add clarity to the literature regarding the personal basis of charismatic leadership by providing insight into how aspects of visionary communication may mediate the indirect relationship between narcissism and attributions of charismatic leadership.     

RELIGIOUS CULTURE AND HISTORICAL CHANGE: VATICAN II ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

At Vatican II and since Vatican II there have been Catholics who have held that the Council's teaching on religious freedom is in contradiction to the Church's earlier teaching and practice. The Council defended it as a legitimate development of doctrine in part through claiming that changing human experience in history shows us only gradually what human dignity entails, and the Church learns from this experience. True, the Council's teaching is in part a denial of its earlier teaching and practice. The present article defends the legitimacy of this development through showing that there is a change of paradigm by which the Church now views this issue, a change that includes both continuity and discontinuity. This reliance on what is revealed to us by changing human experience is accepted by the Church only when it sees it as critically evaluated by an adequate philosophy and as in accord with Christian revelation, but its acceptance moves us to a growth in our understanding of revelation itself.     

THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

It is often assumed that there is a hard line between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). Many theistic evolutionists subscribe to the idea that God only acts through natural processes, as opposed to the ID assertion that God, at certain points in natural history, has acted in a direct manner; directly causing particular features of the world. In this article, I argue that theistic evolutionists subscribe to what might be called Natural Divine Causation (NDC). NDC does not merely provide a nonsupernaturalist and noninterventionist model of divine action, it provides a line of demarcation between TE and ID. I make the critique that NDC is philosophically untenable and argue, consequently, that the line between TE and ID is blurred.     

EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: COGNITIVE TIME SEQUENCE

Intrigued by the possible paths that the evolution of religious capacity may have taken, the authors identify a series of six major building blocks that form a foundation for religious capacity in genus Homo. Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens idaltu are examined for early signs of religious capacity. Then, after an exploration of human plasticity and why it is so important, the analysis leads to a final building block that characterizes only Homo sapiens sapiens, beginning 200,000–400,000 years ago, when all the other cognitive and neurological underpinnings gradually came together. Because the timing of cognitive evolution has become an issue, the authors identify the time periods for these building blocks based on findings from modern cognitive science, neuroscience, genomic science, the new cognitive archaeology, and traditional stones‐and‐bones archaeology. The result is a logical, and even a likely story 55–65 million years long, which leads to the evolution of religious capacity in modern human beings.     

BETWEEN THE HAMMER OF THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT AND THE ANVIL OF THE ETHNIC COMMUNITY

This article examines the ambivalent status of rabbis of communities of Ethiopian immigrants who serve within the framework of the religious establishment in Israel. On the one hand, they function in their communities as spiritual leaders who are committed to Jewish law and act as representatives of the religious establishment. On the other, they belong to an excluded ethnic community which perceives them as traitors. Our findings indicate that the marginal status of the Ethiopian rabbis prevents their inclusion and strengthens components of their ethnic identity. Thus, diverse behaviour patterns and various syncretic combinations between religious and cultural elements have been created in their identity.