Suchergebnisse

"What is the value of religious and spiritual experiences within human life? Are we evolutionarily programmed to have such experiences? How will emerging technologies change such experiences in the future? Wesley Wildman addresses these key intellectual questions and more, offering a spiritually evocative naturalist interpretation of the diverse variety of religious and spiritual experiences. He describes these experiences, from the common to the exceptional, and offers innovative classifications of them based on their neurological features and their internal qualities. His account avoids reductionalistic oversimplifications and instead synthesizes perspectives from many disciplines, including philosophy and natural sciences, into a compelling account of the meaning and value of religious and spiritual experiences in human life. The resulting interpretation does not assume a supernatural worldview nor does it reject such experiences as positive affirmation of this-worldly existence"--

We employ existing data sets and agent-based modeling to forecast changes in religiosity and existential security among a collective of individuals over time. Existential security reflects the extent of economic, socioeconomic and human development provided by society. Our model includes agents in social networks interacting with one another based on the education level of the agents, the religious practices of the agents, and each agent's existential security within their natural and social environments. The data used to inform the values and relationships among these variables is based on rigorous statistical analysis of the International Social Survey Programme Religion Module (ISSP) and the Human Development Report (HDR). We conduct an evaluation that demonstrates, for the countries and time periods studied, that our model provides a more accurate forecast of changes in existential security and religiosity than two alternative approaches. The improved accuracy is largely due to the inclusion of social networks with educational homophily which alters the way in which religiosity and existential security change in the model. These dynamics grow societies where two individuals with the same initial religious practices (or belief In God, or supernatural beliefs) evolve differently based on the educational backgrounds of the individuals with which they surround themselves. Finally, we discuss the limitations of our model and provide direction for future work.

Abstract
This article presents a microsimulation that explores age, period, and cohort effects in the decline of religiosity in contemporary societies. The model implements a well-known and previously empirically validated theory of secularization that highlights the role of "fuzzy fidelity," i.e., the percentage of a population whose religiosity is moderate (Voas 2009). Validation of the model involved comparing its simulation results to shifts in religiosity over 9 waves of the European Social Survey. Simulation experiments suggest that a cohort effect, based on weakened transmission of religiosity as a function of the social environment, appears to be the best explanation for secularization in the societies studied, both for the population as a whole and for the proportions of religious, fuzzy, and secular people.

This book introduces Robert Corrington's "ecstatic naturalism," a new perspective in understanding "sacred" nature and naturalism, and explores what can be done with this philosophical thought. This is an excellent resource for scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and American pragmatism.