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Hundley, Vanora; Land, G D; Blyth, Dana M; Turner, Melanie; Cruickshank, F M; Milne, Joan; Glazener, Cathryn; Mollison, Jill; Donaldson, Cam

doi:10.1136/bmj.310.6982.807a

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“…However, tolerant times have alternated with violent episodes, often superheated by religion. Recent horrors in the former Yugoslavia (Hundley 1995) are but one example in the long, frightening history of genocides (Diamond 1992, chap. 16), but they are an example that raises particularly well the twin questions of how potentially angry, diverse populations can have productively intermingled for so long, and what caused that integration finally to fail.…”

Section: Sources Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Theism: Sources of Accommodation Between Secularism and Religion

Glassman

1996

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Abstract. Religion persists, even within enlightened secular society, because it has adaptive functions. In particular, Ralph Wendell Burhoe's theory holds that religion is the repository of cultural wisdom that most encourages mutual altruism among nonkin, long‐term social survival, and human progress. This article suggests a variant of Burhoe's rationalized naturalistic view. Cognitive theism is a proposal that secularists sometimes take religion on its own terms by suspending disbelief about God. If we consider particular human capacities and limitations in memory, perception, personality, and motivation, the regulated “mind expansion” of cognitive theism may help us to evaluate, coordinate, and invigorate things in a modern environment. In this environment, communicative and travel technologies have led to a high loading of consciousness with a historically unusual diverse range of experiences and responsibilities, a high rate of cultural change relative to biological evolution, and a tendency to factionalize. Burhoe's extension of the concept of symbiosis to the coevolution of culture and genes is modified here in recognition of individual differences and of individuals' potential for choosing strategies, recombining in groups, and learning. In human biocultural symbiont pools, cultural phenomena can evolve while changing partners in a dance with genetic substrates, a dance that broadly supports these substrates. In the context of diversity and incessant change in a large predominantly secular community, Judeo‐Christian monotheism can have a valuable advisory unifying function.

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Section: Sources Of Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Theism: Sources of Accommodation Between Secularism and Religion

Glassman

1996

Zygon

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

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Cited by 1 publication

References 1 publication

Cognitive Theism: Sources of Accommodation Between Secularism and Religion

Cognitive Theism: Sources of Accommodation Between Secularism and Religion

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