{"title":"New Approaches To The Scientific Study Of Religion","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the fascinating intersection of science and religion with this thought-provoking book series. Perfect for those seeking a deeper understanding of belief systems through empirical study and critical analysis.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"when-children-draw-gods-book-pierre-yves-brandt-9783030944315","title":"When Children Draw Gods","description":"This open access book explores how children draw god. It looks at children’s drawings collected in a large variety of cultural and religious traditions. Coverage demonstrates the richness of drawing as a method for studying representations of the divine. In the process, it also contributes to our understanding of this concept, its origins, and its development.     This intercultural work brings together scholars from different disciplines and countries, including Switzerland, Japan, Russia, Iran, Brazil, and the Netherlands. It does more than share the results of their research and analysis. The volume also critically examines the contributions and limitations of this methodology. In addition, it also reflects on the new empirical and theoretical perspectives within the broader framework of the study of this concept.    The concept of god is one of the most difficult to grasp. This volume offers new insights by focusing on the many different ways children depict god throughout the world. Readers will discover the importance of spatial imagery and color choices in drawings of god. They will also learn about how the divine's emotional expression correlates to age, gender, and religiosity as well as strategies used by children who are prohibited from representing their god.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49746464833809,"sku":"NGR9783030944315","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52677510005009,"sku":"NLS9783030944315","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/303094431X.jpg?v=1751284793"},{"product_id":"rituals-and-music-in-europe-book-daniel-burgos-9783031544309","title":"Rituals and Music in Europe","description":"This book explores modern European religious and non-religious rituals and their main features by focusing on music as a key element required for the full expression of beliefs. It specifically examines the relationship between religious, non-religious, pagan, cultural, celebratory, and traditional rituals.  In doing so, this text focuses on the extent to which the rituals overlap, replace, or feed religious or pseudo-religious beliefs to create alternative beliefs (individual or collective) that systematically ignore any religion. The book further analyses the relationship between daily habits, holidays, sports, politics, culture, and other pagan rituals as forms that represent social feelings by identifying, enjoying, or impersonating emotions; and transversally, it explores how music facilitates and fosters those emotions. The volume also investigates how rituals coexist and mutually influence each other through a representation of religious and non-religious rituals, and how music plays a central role in that phenomenology.   The author argues that music is a key part of various types of rituals (e.g. rites of passage), and that music supports and enriches the meaning of the ritual, to ultimately strengthen the bond of communication with the individual and the group.  This monograph appeals to students and researchers working in religious studies and in music theory.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50329505759505,"sku":"NGR9783031544309","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3031544307.jpg?v=1750870551"},{"product_id":"franciscan-theological-metaphysical-foundation-of-emergence-book-alessandro-mantini-9783031726088","title":"A Franciscan Theological-Metaphysical Foundation of Emergence","description":"This book proposes a broad synthesis of the state of the art regarding the debate on the phenomenon of Emergence. Discussing from a theoretical and a theological perspective, it aims to propose a new interpretation, according to the theological and metaphysical framework offered by St Bonaventure and the Franciscan school. Identifying the main concepts, the salient, and questions that characterize the phenomenon of Emergence, the book employs a complex, multilevel and wide-ranging analysis between the wisdom of Bonaventurean theology, metaphysics, and modern scientific and metaphysical knowledge. This book is a must read for scholars and academics interested in new sapiential depths to extract and make the new and the ancient interact.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51717791023377,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51717791940881,"sku":"NGR9783031726088","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3031726081.jpg?v=1751188814"},{"product_id":"overcoming-reductionism-and-crafting-a-new-synthesis-book-piotr-roszak-9783031624971","title":"Overcoming Reductionism and Crafting a New Synthesis","description":"This book explores and sheds light on the contemporary discourse between science and religion. Employing the methodological approach of modern science, Overcoming Reductionism aims to explain natural phenomena not in isolation from philosophical or theological interpretations. The book then focuses on the concept of pain. Although pain is a phenomenon familiar to all humans, defining it exclusively in terms of nociception proves challenging. This book therefore delves into the intricate nature of the phenomenon, critically acknowledging the way pain profoundly influences the construction of one's existential meaning, particularly concerning matters of faith.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51717945852177,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51717946409233,"sku":"NGR9783031624971","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3031624971.jpg?v=1751063750"},{"product_id":"pragmatic-approach-to-religion-and-sustainability-book-deepanjali-mishra-9783031673597","title":"A Pragmatic Approach to Religion And Sustainability","description":"This volume outlines various religious practices followed across the global south and highlights their correlation to sustainability. It features more than 30 chapters from scholars across diverse disciplines, including philosophy, economics, ethics, theology, sociology, ritual studies, and education. The interdisciplinary volume mines religious rituals and practices for answers that could aid and alleviate unsustainable lifestyles. Delving deep into the cultural practices of tribal religions in India, the book highlights humanistic elements to establish sustainable ways of thinking, feeling, acting, and being. Including perspectives from Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, and tribal religious traditions, this book is a must for scholars interested in sustainability and religion in the global south.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51728320299281,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51728320725265,"sku":"NGR9783031673597","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/303167359X.jpg?v=1769686619"},{"product_id":"god-naturalized-book-halvor-kvandal-9783030831806","title":"God Naturalized","description":"This volume argues that theistic philosophy should be seen not as an “armchair” enterprise but rather as a critical endeavor to bring philosophy of religion into close contact with emerging sciences of religion. This text engages with the rationality of religious belief by investigating central problems and arguments in philosophy of religion from the perspective of new naturalistic research. A central question the book analyzes is whether findings in cognitive science of religion (CSR) falsify or undermine religious ideas and beliefs.     With regard to CSR, this volume offers a sustained and critical investigation of the neutrality and positive-relevance view, before offering a re-appraisal of the conflict view. The text argues that when scrutinizing these views, much more attention must be paid to specific normative premises that allow empirical findings to have epistemic relevance. A novel feature is the theoretical application of analytical epistemology in virtue-epistemology to the central question of whether CSR undermines, supports, or is neutral with respect to religious belief. This book appeals to upper-level students and researchers in the field.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52138052256017,"sku":"NLS9783030831806","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9783030831806.jpg?v=1757560576"},{"product_id":"sensing-the-divine-book-michael-n-marsh-9783030673284","title":"Sensing the Divine","description":"This book proposes another unique basis for the origins of religion from disturbances in brain function. It proposes the novel idea that near-death and out-of-body experiences (ND\/OBE) engendered “a sense of the divine” in ancient man.  As the author points out, key aspects of ND\/OBE are thematic of all later established religions. These include journeys to heaven, sightings of brightly-lit godlike figures, and dead people now alive. Thus, ND\/OBE could be the originating source of these spiritual motifs. To this, the author adds a fourth factor: various brain influences contribute to or modulate ND\/OBE. Such cognate neurological disorders include REM-sleep intrusions, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, and the Guillain-Barré syndrome. Errors due to aberrant switching between key neural control centers disrupt critical state-boundaries between consciousness and dreaming. This may induce NDE. Thus, in this state, subjects temporarily fail to understand where they are, undergo loss of self, and detached from the world. They imagine a “union with Gods.” Here, then, is the biological basis of ineffability.  Ancient humans gained beliefs about the \"supernatural\" through day-to-day existence. This book argues that near death experiences and cognate neurological conditions, some genetically-determined, could have facilitated, even augmented such beliefs. 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It examines the decay of a Deist universe, and the idea of the pre-givenness of norms, laws and structures as challenged by evolutionary theory and social philosophy. It describes the different responses to the collapse of order: that given by Christian philosophy scholars who still argue for the idea of a pre-given world order, and that of other scholars who see this idea of stable creation order and\/or natural law as redundant and in need of a thorough rethinking. It studies the particular role that reformational philosophy has played in the discussion. It shows how, ever since its inception, almost a century ago, the concepts of order and law (principle, structure) have been at the heart of this philosophy, and that one way to characterise this tradition is as a philosophy of creation order. Reformational philosophers have maintained the notion of law as ‘holding’ for reality. 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Critically engaging philosopher Daniel Dennett's view on cultural evolution, the book argues that the relation between religious concepts and religious believers is one of continuous, creative dialogue. This dialogical relation allows meaning to emerge and leaves room for free will, thus contradicting Dennett's position. The book provides a concise introduction to the questions at play where religion and science meet. Drawing on sources from science, philosophy and theology, it offers an example of how a constructive interaction of different disciplines can lead to new perspectives on the complex phenomenon of religion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52153595724049,"sku":"NGR9783031673634","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9783031673634.jpg?v=1757620853"},{"product_id":"religious-speciation-book-ina-wunn-9783030044343","title":"Religious Speciation","description":"This book presents a consecutive story on the evolution of religions. It starts with an analysis of evolution in biology and ends with a discussion of what a proper theory of religious evolution should look like. It discusses such questions as whether it is humankind or religion that evolves, how religions evolve, and what adaptation of religions means. Topics examined include inheritance and heredity, religio-speciation, hybridization, ontogenetics and epigenetics, phylogenetics, and systematics. Calling attention to unsolved problems and relating the evolutionary subject matter to appropriate material, the book integrates and interprets existing data. Based on the belief that an unequivocal stand is more likely to produce constructive criticism than evasion of an issue, the book chooses that interpretation of a controversial matter which seems most consistent with the emerging picture of the evolutionary process.    “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” the evolutionary biologist and co-founder of the so-called New Synthesis in Evolutionary Biology, Theodosius Dobszhansky (1900-1975), wrote in his famous essay of 1973, opposing creationism in American society. Today, Dobszhansky’s statement is not only fully accepted in biology, but has become the scientific paradigm in disciplines such as psychology, archaeology and the study of religions. Yet in spite of this growing interest in evolutionary processes in religion and culture, the term \"evolution\" and the capability of an evolutionary account have to date still not been properly understood by scholars of the Humanities. 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This monograph will particularly appeal to researchers who are looking for a scientific explanation of religion and religious beliefs but who do not stop at the level of narrow cognitive and evolutionary accounts. 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This monograph will particularly appeal to researchers who are looking for a scientific explanation of religion and religious beliefs but who do not stop at the level of narrow cognitive and evolutionary accounts. 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The central argument is that the virtual is fundamentally incompatible with the ritual form—a concept developed by Romano Guardini and others, including Joseph Ratzinger—which holds that the sacred is not merely acknowledged but made present through ritualized actions that require tangible, participatory engagement. Even if the virtual realm were acknowledged as real and retained both the bodily presence of the faithful and the Divine Presence, the rite would still be ineffective. Virtuality prevents the proper enactment of the rite, rendering it ineffective. At its core, the ritual form is performative, embodied, and consecratory. It requires physical presence, material elements, and a structured sequence of gestures, symbols, and words that together make the divine encounter possible. 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