Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Wonders In The Deep: Faith And Religious Practice In The Shipboard Writings Of American Sailors, 1810-1859, Valerie Sallis
Wonders In The Deep: Faith And Religious Practice In The Shipboard Writings Of American Sailors, 1810-1859, Valerie Sallis
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
While stereotypes of sailors as immoral, godless ne’er-do-wells flourish in mainland historical accounts, little attention has been paid to the records left by sailors that document their own faith and religious practices. This thesis examines the logbooks, journals, and diaries written by American sailors while at sea, sounding the depth of sailors’ religious beliefs through their own words. While American seamen certainly drank, swore, and caroused, sailors also frequently captured in their writing a much more religious nature than the mainland expected of them. Sailors’ position as highly mobile laborers on the ultimate borderlands—the sea itself—impacted their religious practice and …
On The Evolutionary Origins Of Religious Belief, Robert Duane Howard
On The Evolutionary Origins Of Religious Belief, Robert Duane Howard
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Religious belief is a byproduct of evolutionarily designed cognitive mechanisms. The ubiquity of religious belief and experience across human cultures is explained by our common human psychology; our domain-specific cognitive mechanisms give rise, collectively, to the phenomenon of byproduct religious belief/experience. In this thesis, I will examine what I call religion-generating cognitive mechanisms, and I will argue that byproduct raw god-beliefs are developed by cultures into refined god-beliefs. These refined god-beliefs are co-opted by evolutionary processes and are cultural adaptations. My conception of “religious belief” in terms of raw and refined god-beliefs allows a disambiguation of the term “religion,” and …