Dr. David Sloan Wilson, a renowned evolutionary biologist and one of the leading exponents of Evolutionary Religious Studies,
recently (05/17/2012) wrote a blog
article on the Huffington Post website which featured the following sentences:-
Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS) is the scholarly study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. Religion has been
studied from other scholarly perspectives for centuries. Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and James George Frazier were
early scholars of religion. Their goal was to explain religion as a purely human phenomenon, in the same way that
scholars try to explain any other human phenomenon, such as government or warfare. This is in contrast to theologians,
who are more likely to function as religious believers. A few religious scholars try to show that divine interventions
actually happen, but the vast majority subscribe to a position known as methodological naturalism, which restricts
explanations to naturalistic causes.
ERS is therefore one of the new kids on the block as far as religious studies is concerned. Its bold claim is that
modern evolutionary science can go beyond the many other scholarly perspectives in shedding light on the nature
of religion.
As to the nature of religion another of Dr. David Sloan Wilson's writings, his book, ''Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and
the Nature of Society'' (University of Chicago Press, 2002), argues that the religious impulse evolved early in hominid
history because it helped make groups of humans comparatively more cohesive, more cooperative and more fraternal,
and thus able to present a formidable front against bands of less organized or unified adversaries.
At age-of-the-sage.org we do not necessarily accept these approaches to what are referred to as Evolutionary Religious
Studies. Nevertheless, we believe that we all ~ as Human Beings ~ are individually capable of deep spiritual expression:-
We have undertaken exhaustive investigations into the Timeless Wisdoms that have been handed down by the Great Religions of
the World and believe that the results of those investigations should be of deep interest to many persons who live their lives
in the modern world.
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![[evolutionary religious studies, david sloan wilson]](enlightenment.gif)