Modeling Religion

Modeling Religion PDF Author: Wesley J. Wildman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350367311
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? This book introduces new methodological tools and material insights for guiding conversations about these debates. The authors introduce a new branch of computational humanities, using computational modeling to simulate civilizational transformations. They integrate multiple theories across many disciplines, including the scientific study of religion, and evaluate the relative importance of those causal theories in processes of civilizational change. Materially, the book sheds new light on major debates among historians, archaeologists, and other social theorists on the role of religion within these major transitions. The book tackles the urgent question of what sort of civilizational transformations might be possible in a world where the influence and significance of religion continues to decline wherever technology, education, freedom, and cultural pluralism are most advanced.

Modeling Religion

Modeling Religion PDF Author: Wesley J. Wildman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350367311
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? This book introduces new methodological tools and material insights for guiding conversations about these debates. The authors introduce a new branch of computational humanities, using computational modeling to simulate civilizational transformations. They integrate multiple theories across many disciplines, including the scientific study of religion, and evaluate the relative importance of those causal theories in processes of civilizational change. Materially, the book sheds new light on major debates among historians, archaeologists, and other social theorists on the role of religion within these major transitions. The book tackles the urgent question of what sort of civilizational transformations might be possible in a world where the influence and significance of religion continues to decline wherever technology, education, freedom, and cultural pluralism are most advanced.

Education, Religion and Diversity

Education, Religion and Diversity PDF Author: L. Philip Barnes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131780693X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
"In this thoughtful and provocative book Philip Barnes challenges religious educators to re-think their field, and proposes a new, post-liberal model of religious education to help them do so. His model both confronts prejudice and intolerance and also allows the voices of different religions to be heard and critically explored. While Education, Religion and Diversity is directed to a British audience the issues it raises and the alternative it proposes are important for those educators in the United States who believe that the public schools have an important role in teaching students about religion." Walter Feinberg, Professor Emeritus of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "Philip Barnes offers a penetrating and lucid analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of modern religious education in Britain. He considers a range of epistemological and methodological issues and identifies two contrasting models of religious education that have been influential, what he calls a liberal and a postmodern model. After a detailed review and criticism of both, he outlines his own new post-liberal model of religious education, one that is compatible with both confessional and non-confessional forms of religious education, yet takes religious diversity and religious truth claims seriously. Essential reading for all religious educators and those concerned with the role of religion in schools." Bernd Schröder, Professor of Practical Theology and Religious Education, University of Göttingen. "What place, if any, does religious education have in the schools of an increasingly diverse society? This lucid and authoritative book makes an incisive contribution to this crucial debate." Roger Trigg is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, and Senior Research Fellow, Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford. The challenge of diversity is central to education in modern liberal, democratic states, and religious education is often the point where these differences become both most acute and where it is believed, of all curriculum subjects, resolutions are most likely to be found. Education, Religion and Diversity identifies and explores the commitments and convictions that have guided post-confessional religious education and concludes controversially that the subject as currently theorised and practised is incapable of challenging religious intolerance and of developing respectful relationships between people from different communities and groups within society. It is argued that despite the rhetoric of success, which religious education is obliged to rehearse in order to perpetuate its status in the curriculum and to ensure political support, a fundamentally new model of religious education is required to meet the challenge of diversity to education and to society. A new framework for religious education is developed which offers the potential for the subject to make a genuine contribution to the creation of a responsible, respectful society. Education, Religion and Diversity is a wide-ranging, provocative exploration of religious education in modern liberal democracies. It is essential reading for those concerned with the role of religion in education and for religious and theological educators who want to think critically about the aims and character of religious education.

Understanding Religion Through Artificial Intelligence

Understanding Religion Through Artificial Intelligence PDF Author: Justin E. Lane
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350103551
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
1. Introduction -- 2. Religions old and new -- 3. Bonding and belief -- 4. Identity and extremism -- 5. Artificial intelligence and religions in Silico -- 6. From AI in Silico, to AI in Situ: creating AI gurus, birds eye views of Christianity, and using MAAI to study social stability -- 7. Schisms and sacred values -- 8. The future of religion.

Playing for Real

Playing for Real PDF Author: Jacqueline Suthren Hirst
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This Book Investigates The Ways In Which Influential Figures And Types, Mythological And Contemporary, Have Functioned And Continue To Function As Role Models In Matters Of Gender, Authority, And Power In A Variety Of Hindu Contexts.

God from the Machine

God from the Machine PDF Author: William Sims Bainbridge
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759107441
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
"God from the machine" (deus ex machina) refers to an ancient dramatic device where a god was mechanically brought onto the stage to save the hero from a difficult situation. But here, William Sims Bainbridge uses the term in a strikingly different way. Instead of looking to a machine to deliver an already known god, he asks what a computing machine and its simulations might teach us about how religion and religious beliefs come to being. Bainbridge posits the virtual town of Cyburg, population 44,100. Then, using rules for individual and social behavior taken from the social sciences, he models a complex community where residents form groups, learn to trust or distrust each other, and develop religious faith. Bainbridge's straightforward arguments point to many more applications of computer simulation in the study of religion. God from the Machine will serve as an important text in any class with a social scientific approach to religion.

Myths, Models and Paradigms

Myths, Models and Paradigms PDF Author: Ian G. Barbour
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062276425
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Scientist and philosophers have more in common than might first appear, especially when the language used in the two disciplines receives a closer scrutiny, Ian G. Barbour treats three scientific view-points that can clarify the specific nature of religious language. The first theme is the diverse function of language. Science and religion each has its own task and its own applicable logic and language. Religious symbols and their expression in myths imply a perspective and interpretation of human history and experience, directing attention to particular patterns in events. The second theme is the role of models in both scientific and religious language. What the "billiard ball model" of a gas and the biblical model of personal God both achieve is an interpretation of experience, a restructuring of how one sees the world. The third area in which science and religion have a common stake is the role of paradigms. Paradigms are standard examples of scientific investigation which embody a set of assumptions and becomes a research tradition until replaced by other assumptions. Religions has its paradigms, like the covenant of Sinai, wich have issued in traditions. Dr. Barbour concludes that scientific and religious language bother offer knowledge of reality based on experience. In determining the appropriate data and criteria for this experience the philosopher of religion can profit greet from the work of the scientist.

In Our Own Image

In Our Own Image PDF Author: Wesley J. Wildman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198815999
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This study provides a comprehensive systematic classification, comparison, and evaluation of the major classes of theories of ultimate reality. It offers compelling analyses of anthropomorphism and apophaticism, including tracing multiple dimensions of anthropomorphism in various models of ultimate reality.

Religion, Theory, Critique

Religion, Theory, Critique PDF Author: Richard King
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231518242
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
Religion, Theory, Critique is an essential tool for learning about theory and method in the study of religion. Leading experts engage with contemporary and classical theories as well as non-Western cultural contexts. Unlike other collections, this anthology emphasizes the dynamic relationship between "religion" as an object of study and different methodological approaches and openly addresses the question of the manifold ways in which "religion," "secular," and "culture" are imagined within different disciplinary horizons. This volume is the first textbook which seeks to engage discussion of classical approaches with contemporary cultural and critical theories. Contributors write on the influence of the natural sciences in the study of religion; the role of European Christianity in modeling theories of religion; religious experience and the interface with cognitive science; the structure and function of religious language; the social-scientific study of religion; ritual in religion; the phenomenology of religion; critical theory and religion; embodiment and religion; the impact of colonialism and modernity; theorizing religion in terms of race and ethnicity; links among religion, nationalism, and globalization; the interplay of gender, sex, and religion; and religion and the environment. Each chapter introduces the topic, identifies key theorists and issues, and respects the pluralistic nature of the scholarship in the field. Altogether, this collection scrutinizes the explicit and implicit assumptions theorists make about religion as an object of analysis.

In Our Own Image

In Our Own Image PDF Author: Wesley J. Wildman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192548042
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
In Our Own Image is a work of comparative philosophical theology. It is a study of the roles anthropomorphism and apophaticism play in the construction of conceptual models of ultimate reality. Leading scholar Wesley J. Wildman considers whether we create our ideas of God. He offers a comparative analysis of three major classes of ultimacy models, paying particular attention to the way those classes are impacted by anthropomorphism while tracing their relative strengths and weaknesses. Wildman provides a constructive theological argument on behalf of an apophatic understanding of ultimate reality, showing how this understanding subsumes, challenges, and relates ultimacy models from the three classes being compared. He describes and compares competing ultimacy models, fairly and sympathetically. The conclusion is that all models cognitively break on the shoals of ultimate reality, but that the ground-of-being class of models carries us further than the others in regard to the comparative criteria that matter most.

Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes

Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes PDF Author: Samuli Schielke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857455079
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.