
The Minds of Gods
New Horizons in the Naturalistic Study of Religion
- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Minds of Gods
New Horizons in the Naturalistic Study of Religion
About this book
Why are humans obsessed with divine minds? What do gods know and what do they care about? What happens to us and our relationships when gods are involved? Drawing from neuroscience, evolutionary, cultural, and applied anthropology, social psychology, religious studies, philosophy, technology, and cognitive and political sciences, The Minds of Gods probes these questions from a multitude of naturalistic perspectives. Each chapter offers brief intellectual histories of their topics, summarizes current cutting-edge questions in the field, and points to areas in need of attention from future researchers. Through an innovative theoretical framework that combines evolutionary and cognitive approaches to religion, this book brings together otherwise disparate literatures to focus on a topic that has comprised a lasting, central obsession of our species.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title Page
- Dedication Page
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Studying the Minds of Gods: State of the Art
- 1 Toward a Cognitive Science of the Gods: A Brief Introduction
- 2 Growing the Minds of Gods
- 3 The Divine Projector: How Human Motivations and Biases Give Shape to Gods’ Minds
- 4 The Personality of the Divine
- 5 Night Visions: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Dreaming about Supernatural Agents
- 6 Animatism Reconsidered: A Cognitive Perspective
- 7 The Minds behind the Ritual: How “Ordering Gods” Reinforced Human Cooperation
- 8 The Mind of God and the Problem of Evil: A Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspective
- 9 From Watching Human Acts to Penetrating Their Souls
- 10 Cultural Models of Minds and the Minds of Gods
- 11 Moralistic Gods and Social Complexity: A Brief History of the Problem
- 12 Game Theoretical Aspects of the Minds of Gods
- 13 Accounting for Cross-Cultural Variation in the Minds of Gods
- 14 Environmentalism and the Minds of Gods
- 15 Approaching the Minds of the Gods through AI
- 16 Never Mind the Gods: Explaining Unbelief and Nonreligion
- Notes
- References
- Index
- Copyright Page