Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures

Dunbar, Robin

Hardcover

Religion General AnthropologyGeneral Christianity

ISBN10: 0197631827
ISBN13: 9780197631829
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Apr 22 2022
Pages: 354
Weight: 1.44
Height: 1.22 Width: 6.53 Depth: 9.53
Language: English
One of the world's foremost scholars of evolution tackles one of its essential mysteries: why we believe.

Our species diverged from the great apes six to eight million years ago. Since then, our propensity toward spiritual thinking and ritual emerged. How, when, and why did this occur, and how did the earliest, informal shamanic practices evolve into the world religions familiar to us today? What is the evolutionary purpose of religion, and are some individuals more inclined than others to be religious?

In How Religion Evolved, Robin Dunbar explores these and other questions, mining the distinctions between religions of experience--as practiced by the earliest hunter-gatherer societies--and doctrinal religions, from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and their many derivatives.

Examining religion's origins, social functions, its effects on the brain and body, and its place in the modern era, Dunbar offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of the quintessentially human impulse to believe.

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