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either that religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage; or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, saw religion as an exaptation or a spandrel, in other words: religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons.
The history of religion is the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BCE). [1] The prehistory of religion involves the study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the advent of written records.
The bulk of the human religious experience pre-dates written history, which is roughly 7,000 years old. [1] A lack of written records results in most of the knowledge of pre-historic religion being derived from archaeological records and other indirect sources, and from suppositions. Much pre-historic religion is subject to continued debate.
In simple terms, the functional approach sees religion as "performing certain functions for society" [7] Theories by Karl Marx (role of religion in capitalist and pre-capitalist societies), Sigmund Freud (psychological origin of religious beliefs), Émile Durkheim (social function of religions), and the theory by Stark and Bainbridge exemplify ...
Theistic evolution supporters can be seen as one of the groups who reject the conflict thesis regarding the relationship between religion and science – that is, they hold that religious teachings about creation and scientific theories of evolution need not contradict, what evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould called non-overlapping ...
The anthropology of religion, as a field, overlaps with but is distinct from the field of Religious Studies. The history of anthropology of religion is a history of striving to understand how other people view and navigate the world. This history involves deciding what religion is, what it does, and how it functions. [2]
Where early writers interpreted prehistoric peoples as primitive "cavemen" who could barely speak, let alone comprehend complex abstract ideas such as religion, [215] later work permits this abstraction and delves into the depths of religion's origin. [216] Some prehistoric fiction juxtaposes the religions of different hominins.
Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D. (September 8, 1857 – July 16, 1932), an American Sanskrit scholar, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts.. He graduated at Columbia College in 1878, studied at Leipzig, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1881, was an instructor at Columbia (1881–1885), and professor at Bryn Mawr (1885–1895), and became professor of Sanskrit and comparative ...