Read online: Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory

Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity. Neil Van Leeuwen

Religion-as-Make-Believe-A.pdf
ISBN: 9780674290334 | 312 pages | 8 Mb

• Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity
• Neil Van Leeuwen
• Page: 312
• Format: pdf, ePub, fb2, mobi
• ISBN: 9780674290334
• Publisher: Harvard University Press

Download Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity

Amazon download books iphone Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity FB2 RTF by Neil Van Leeuwen 9780674290334 (English literature)

Overview

To understand the nature of religious belief, we must look at how our minds process the world of imagination and make-believe. We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs—that believing in the existence of God or of supernatural entities that hear our prayers is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different. Our brains do not process religious beliefs like they do beliefs concerning mundane reality; instead, empirical findings show that religious beliefs function like the imaginings that guide make-believe play. Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief—which he terms religious “credence”—is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance. It is hardly controversial to suggest that religion has a social function, but Religion as Make-Believe breaks new ground by theorizing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Once we recognize that our minds process factual and religious beliefs in fundamentally different ways, we can gain deeper understanding of the complex individual and group psychology of religious faith.

Pdf downloads:
[PDF/Kindle] Lonely Planet Germany by Andrea Schulte-Peevers, Kat Barber, Marc Di Duca, Harmony Difo, Anthony Haywood
Online Read Ebook The Perfect Match - I'm Not Your Soulmate 1 - L'autrice qui a déjà conquis 3 millions de lecteurs sur Wattpad !
Theoretische Informatik - kurz gefasst by Uwe Schöning on Ipad
The President's Daughter by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, Bill Clinton, James Patterson on Iphone New Format
[download pdf] Disciple of the Dog by R. Scott Bakker
Read online: La Rose écarlate T20 - Nous sommes deux
[download pdf] Be More Japan by DK Eyewitness