A Trans-Species Definition of Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i3.327Keywords:
Religion definition, spirituality, anthropomorphism, evolution of religion, paleoanthropology, hominids, animal minds, symbolic behaviorAbstract
To advance knowledge of the evolution and prehistory of religions over the past two million years of human evolution, it would be useful to know whether other species, including great apes and extinct species of Australopithecines and Homo prior to Homo sapiens sapiens, exhibit behaviors that might be categorized as ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’. To determine this we need a precise and robust de?nition of religious behavior suitable for cross-species comparison. I develop a non-anthropocentric and non-anthropomorphic prototype de?nition of human religious behavior and then deconstruct it into a trans-species de?nition, which can be used to predict and identify religious behavior in other species.References
Atran, Scott. 2002. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Bataille, Georges. 1992 [1945]. Theory of Religion (New York: Zone).
Bednarik, Robert G. 1995. ‘Concept-Mediated Marking in the Lower Paleolithic’, Current Anthropology 36.4: 605-34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/204406.
———. 2003. ‘The Earliest Evidence of Palaeoart (with Comments)’, Rock Art Research 20.2: 89-135.
Bekoff, Marc. 2003. ‘Considering Animals—Not “Higher” Primates’, Zygon 38.2: 229-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9744.00497.
———. 2006. ‘Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Cognitive Ethology as the Unifying Science for Understanding the Subjective, Emotional, Empathic, and Moral Lives of Animals’, Zygon 41.1: 71-104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00727.x.
———. 2007. ‘Reflections on Animal Emotions and Beastly Virtues: Appreciating, Honoring and Respecting the Public Passions of Animals’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 68-81.
Bergson, Henri Louis. 1911. Creative Evolution (New York: Henry Holt).
———. [1994] 1932. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press).
Berry, George Ricker (ed.). 1962. The Classic Greek Dictionary (Chicago: Follett).
Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne et al. 2003. ‘The Detection of Contingency and Animacy from Simple Animations in the Human Brain’, Cerebral Cortex 13: 837-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/13.8.837.
Boyer, Pascal. 1994. The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press).
———. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books).
———. 2003. ‘Religious Thought and Behavior as By-Products of Brain Function’, Trends in Cognitive Science 7.3: 119-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00031-7.
———. 2004. ‘Out of Africa: Lessons from a By-Product of Evolution’, in Timothy Light and Brian C. Wilson (eds.), Religion as Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson (Boston: E.J. Brill): 27-43.
Boyer, Pascal, and Brian Bergstrom. 2008. ‘Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion’, Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 111-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085201.
Carbonell, Eudald et al. 2003. ‘Did the Earliest Mortuary Practices Take Place more Than 350,000 Years Ago at Atapuerca?’, L’Anthropologie 107: 1-14.
Chidester, David. 1987. Patterns of Action: Religion and Ethics in a Comparative Perspective (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing).
Darwin, Charles. 1998 [1889]. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: With Introduction, Afterward, and Commentaries by Paul Ekman (New York: Oxford University Press).
Deacon, Terrence, and Tyrone Cashman. 2009. ‘The Role of Symbolic Capacity in the Origins of Religion’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 3.4: 490-517.
Derrida, Jacques. 2001. ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone’, in Gil Anidjar (ed.), Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge): 1-39.
———. 2005. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
Donald, Merlin. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
———. 1993. ‘Précis of Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16: 737-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032647.
Dow, James W. 2007. ‘A Scientific Definition of Religion’, Anpere: Anthropological Perspectives on Religion. Online: www.anpere.net.
Durkheim, Emile. 1965 [1915]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press).
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper & Row).
———. 1978. A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Fisher, Christopher L. 2005. ‘Animals, Humans and X-Men: Human Uniqueness and the Meaning of Personhood’, Theology and Science 3.3: 291-324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14746700500317289.
Flood, Gavin. 2006. ‘Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.1: 47-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj012.
Frazer, Sir James. 1959 [1900]. The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgment of the Classic Work (ed. Theodor H. Gaster; New York: Criterion).
Fuller, Robert C. 2007. ‘Spirituality in the Flesh: The Role of Discrete Emotions in Religious Life’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75.1: 25-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfl064.
Gardaz, Michel. 2009. ‘The Trojan Horse of Philosophia Perennis: Mircea Eliade’s Quest of Spiritual Transformation’, Religion 38: 338-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.06.002.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books).
Goodall, Jane. 2005. ‘Primate Spirituality’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum): 1303-306.
Goodenough, Ursula, and Terrence W. Deacon. 2003. ‘From Biology to Consciousness to Morality’, Zygon 38.4: 801-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2003.00540.x.
Griffiths, Paul J. 2006. ‘On the Future of the Study of Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.1: 66-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj015.
Guthrie, Stewart. 1980. ‘A Cognitive Theory of Religion’, Current Anthropology 21.2: 181-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/202429.
———. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Harrod, James B. 1992. ‘Two Million Years Ago: The Origins of Art and Symbol’, Continuum 2.1: 4-29.
———. 2006. ‘Periods of Globalization over “The Southern Route” in Human Evolution (Africa, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Sahul and East Asia): A Meta-Review of Archaeology and Evidence for Symbolic Behavior’, Mother Tongue: Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory 11: 23-84.
———. 2007. ‘The Bhimbetka Glyphs’, in P. Chenna Reddy (ed.), Exploring the Mind of Ancient Man: Festschrift to Robert G. Bednarik (New Delhi: Research India Press): 317-30.
———. 2010. ‘Four Memes in the Two Million Year Evolution of Symbol, Metaphor and Myth’, paper presented at Exploratory Seminar on Comparative Mythology: Deep Reconstruction, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 6–8 October.
Hay, David, and Pawel M. Socha. 2005. ‘Spirituality as a Natural Phenomenon: Bringing Biological and Psychological Perspectives Together’, Zygon 40.3: 589-612. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2005.00691.x.
Helminiak, Daniel A. 2006. ‘The Role of Spirituality in Formulating a Theory of the Psychology of Religion’, Zygon 41.1: 197-224. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00733.x.
Howell, Nancy R. 2003. ‘The Importance of Being Chimpanzee’, Theology and Science 1.2: 179-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1474670032000124586.
James, William. 1958 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: New American Library of World Literature).
Jenson, Robert. 1999. Systematic Theology. Vol. 2, The Works of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
King, Barbara J. 2007. Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (New York: Doubleday).
———. 2008. ‘Primates and Religion: A Biological Anthropologist’s Response to J. Wentzel van Huyssteen’s Alone in the World?’, Zygon 43.2: 451-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00927.x.
Leahy, Michael P.T. 1994. Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective (London: Routledge).
Malan, Jacques. 1932. ‘The Possible Origin of Religion as a Conditioned Reflex’, The American Mercury 25: 314-17.
Mar, Raymond A. et al. 2007. ‘Detecting Agency from the Biological Motion of Veridical vs. Animated Agents’, SCAN 2: 199-205.
Maringer, Johannes. 1960. The Gods of Prehistoric Man (New York: Knopf).
Martin, Alex, and Jill Weisberg. 2003. ‘Neural Foundations for Understanding Social and Mechanical Concepts’, Cognitive Neuropsychology 20.3-6: 575-87.
McBrearty, Sally, and Alison S. Brooks. 2000. ‘The Revolution that Wasn’t: A New Interpretation of the Origin of Modern Human Behavior’, Journal of Human Evolution 39: 453-563. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2000.0435.
McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press).
———. 2007. ‘Studying Religion’, Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama. Online: http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/studyingreligion.html.
Meredith, Martin. 2004. Elephant Destiny: Biography of an Endangered Species in Africa (New York: Public Affairs).
Microsoft. 1999. Encarta World English Dictionary (Redmond: Microsoft).
Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (New York: Thames & Hudson).
Monty Python. 1971. ‘And Now for Something Completely Different’. Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Now_for_Something_Completely_Different.
Müller, F. Max. 1873. Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution with Two Essays on False Analogies, and the Philosophy of Mythology (London: Longmans, Green).
Otto, Rudolf. 1950. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (New York: Oxford University Press).
Pettitt, Paul B. 2002. ‘The Neanderthal Dead: Exploring Mortuary Variability in Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia’, Before Farming 1.4: 1-19.
Peuskens, Hendrik et al. 2005. ‘Specificity of Regions Processing Biological Motion’, European Journal of Neuroscience 21: 2864–75.
Pyles, John A. et al. 2007. ‘Visual Perception and Neural Correlates of Novel “Biological Motion”’, Vision Research 47: 2786-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2007.07.017.
Saler, Benson. 1993. Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories (Leiden: E.J. Brill).
———. 2008. ‘Conceptualizing Religion: Some Recent Reflections’, Religion 38: 219-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.03.008.
Schultz, Johannes et al. 2005. ‘Activation in Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus Parallels Parameter Inducing the Percept of Animacy’, Neuron 45: 625-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.12.052.
Smart, Ninian. 1983. Worldviews: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Scribner’s).
Smith, Brian K. 1989. Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1982. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
———. 1998. ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, in Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 269-84.
———. 2000. ‘Classification’, in Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Guide to the Study of Religion (London: Continuum): 35-44.
———. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1978. The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Harper & Row).
Spiro, Melford. 1966. ‘Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation’, in Michael Banton (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock): 85-126.
Stark, Rodney, and William Bainbridge. 1996. A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2005. ‘Introduction’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum): vii-xxvi.
———. 2007a. ‘Exploring Religion, Nature and Culture—Introducing the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 5-24.
———. 2007b. ‘Focus Introduction: Aquatic Nature Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75.4: 863-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfm065.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. 1959. The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row).
Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine).
Tylor, Edward B. 1958 [1871]. Primitive Culture: Religion in Primitive Culture (New York: Harper & Row).
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960 [1908]. The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Wach, Joachim. 1958. The Comparative Study of Religions (New York: Columbia University Press).
Wallace, Anthony F.C. 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House).
Watkins, Calvert (ed.). 2000. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (New York: Houghton-Mifflin).
Webster’s New World Dictionary. 1964. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language: College Edition (New York: The World Publishing).
Wheatley, Thalia, Shawn C. Milleville, and Alex Martin. 2007. ‘Understanding Animate Agents: Distinct Roles for the Social Network and Mirror System’, Psychological Science 18.6: 469-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01923.x.
Whitehouse, Harvey. 2002. ‘Modes of Religiosity: Towards a Cognitive Explanation of the Sociopolitical Dynamics of Religion’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 14.3/4: 293-315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006802320909738.
Xenophanes. 1964 [~540 BCE]. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (ed. G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Bataille, Georges. 1992 [1945]. Theory of Religion (New York: Zone).
Bednarik, Robert G. 1995. ‘Concept-Mediated Marking in the Lower Paleolithic’, Current Anthropology 36.4: 605-34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/204406.
———. 2003. ‘The Earliest Evidence of Palaeoart (with Comments)’, Rock Art Research 20.2: 89-135.
Bekoff, Marc. 2003. ‘Considering Animals—Not “Higher” Primates’, Zygon 38.2: 229-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9744.00497.
———. 2006. ‘Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues: Cognitive Ethology as the Unifying Science for Understanding the Subjective, Emotional, Empathic, and Moral Lives of Animals’, Zygon 41.1: 71-104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00727.x.
———. 2007. ‘Reflections on Animal Emotions and Beastly Virtues: Appreciating, Honoring and Respecting the Public Passions of Animals’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 68-81.
Bergson, Henri Louis. 1911. Creative Evolution (New York: Henry Holt).
———. [1994] 1932. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press).
Berry, George Ricker (ed.). 1962. The Classic Greek Dictionary (Chicago: Follett).
Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne et al. 2003. ‘The Detection of Contingency and Animacy from Simple Animations in the Human Brain’, Cerebral Cortex 13: 837-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/13.8.837.
Boyer, Pascal. 1994. The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press).
———. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books).
———. 2003. ‘Religious Thought and Behavior as By-Products of Brain Function’, Trends in Cognitive Science 7.3: 119-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00031-7.
———. 2004. ‘Out of Africa: Lessons from a By-Product of Evolution’, in Timothy Light and Brian C. Wilson (eds.), Religion as Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson (Boston: E.J. Brill): 27-43.
Boyer, Pascal, and Brian Bergstrom. 2008. ‘Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion’, Annual Review of Anthropology 37: 111-30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085201.
Carbonell, Eudald et al. 2003. ‘Did the Earliest Mortuary Practices Take Place more Than 350,000 Years Ago at Atapuerca?’, L’Anthropologie 107: 1-14.
Chidester, David. 1987. Patterns of Action: Religion and Ethics in a Comparative Perspective (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing).
Darwin, Charles. 1998 [1889]. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: With Introduction, Afterward, and Commentaries by Paul Ekman (New York: Oxford University Press).
Deacon, Terrence, and Tyrone Cashman. 2009. ‘The Role of Symbolic Capacity in the Origins of Religion’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 3.4: 490-517.
Derrida, Jacques. 2001. ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone’, in Gil Anidjar (ed.), Acts of Religion (New York: Routledge): 1-39.
———. 2005. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press).
Donald, Merlin. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
———. 1993. ‘Précis of Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16: 737-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00032647.
Dow, James W. 2007. ‘A Scientific Definition of Religion’, Anpere: Anthropological Perspectives on Religion. Online: www.anpere.net.
Durkheim, Emile. 1965 [1915]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press).
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper & Row).
———. 1978. A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Fisher, Christopher L. 2005. ‘Animals, Humans and X-Men: Human Uniqueness and the Meaning of Personhood’, Theology and Science 3.3: 291-324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14746700500317289.
Flood, Gavin. 2006. ‘Reflections on Tradition and Inquiry in the Study of Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.1: 47-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj012.
Frazer, Sir James. 1959 [1900]. The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgment of the Classic Work (ed. Theodor H. Gaster; New York: Criterion).
Fuller, Robert C. 2007. ‘Spirituality in the Flesh: The Role of Discrete Emotions in Religious Life’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75.1: 25-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfl064.
Gardaz, Michel. 2009. ‘The Trojan Horse of Philosophia Perennis: Mircea Eliade’s Quest of Spiritual Transformation’, Religion 38: 338-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.06.002.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books).
Goodall, Jane. 2005. ‘Primate Spirituality’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum): 1303-306.
Goodenough, Ursula, and Terrence W. Deacon. 2003. ‘From Biology to Consciousness to Morality’, Zygon 38.4: 801-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2003.00540.x.
Griffiths, Paul J. 2006. ‘On the Future of the Study of Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 74.1: 66-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfj015.
Guthrie, Stewart. 1980. ‘A Cognitive Theory of Religion’, Current Anthropology 21.2: 181-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/202429.
———. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Harrod, James B. 1992. ‘Two Million Years Ago: The Origins of Art and Symbol’, Continuum 2.1: 4-29.
———. 2006. ‘Periods of Globalization over “The Southern Route” in Human Evolution (Africa, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Sahul and East Asia): A Meta-Review of Archaeology and Evidence for Symbolic Behavior’, Mother Tongue: Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory 11: 23-84.
———. 2007. ‘The Bhimbetka Glyphs’, in P. Chenna Reddy (ed.), Exploring the Mind of Ancient Man: Festschrift to Robert G. Bednarik (New Delhi: Research India Press): 317-30.
———. 2010. ‘Four Memes in the Two Million Year Evolution of Symbol, Metaphor and Myth’, paper presented at Exploratory Seminar on Comparative Mythology: Deep Reconstruction, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, 6–8 October.
Hay, David, and Pawel M. Socha. 2005. ‘Spirituality as a Natural Phenomenon: Bringing Biological and Psychological Perspectives Together’, Zygon 40.3: 589-612. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2005.00691.x.
Helminiak, Daniel A. 2006. ‘The Role of Spirituality in Formulating a Theory of the Psychology of Religion’, Zygon 41.1: 197-224. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00733.x.
Howell, Nancy R. 2003. ‘The Importance of Being Chimpanzee’, Theology and Science 1.2: 179-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1474670032000124586.
James, William. 1958 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: New American Library of World Literature).
Jenson, Robert. 1999. Systematic Theology. Vol. 2, The Works of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
King, Barbara J. 2007. Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (New York: Doubleday).
———. 2008. ‘Primates and Religion: A Biological Anthropologist’s Response to J. Wentzel van Huyssteen’s Alone in the World?’, Zygon 43.2: 451-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2008.00927.x.
Leahy, Michael P.T. 1994. Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective (London: Routledge).
Malan, Jacques. 1932. ‘The Possible Origin of Religion as a Conditioned Reflex’, The American Mercury 25: 314-17.
Mar, Raymond A. et al. 2007. ‘Detecting Agency from the Biological Motion of Veridical vs. Animated Agents’, SCAN 2: 199-205.
Maringer, Johannes. 1960. The Gods of Prehistoric Man (New York: Knopf).
Martin, Alex, and Jill Weisberg. 2003. ‘Neural Foundations for Understanding Social and Mechanical Concepts’, Cognitive Neuropsychology 20.3-6: 575-87.
McBrearty, Sally, and Alison S. Brooks. 2000. ‘The Revolution that Wasn’t: A New Interpretation of the Origin of Modern Human Behavior’, Journal of Human Evolution 39: 453-563. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2000.0435.
McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press).
———. 2007. ‘Studying Religion’, Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama. Online: http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/studyingreligion.html.
Meredith, Martin. 2004. Elephant Destiny: Biography of an Endangered Species in Africa (New York: Public Affairs).
Microsoft. 1999. Encarta World English Dictionary (Redmond: Microsoft).
Mithen, Steven. 1996. The Prehistory of Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (New York: Thames & Hudson).
Monty Python. 1971. ‘And Now for Something Completely Different’. Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Now_for_Something_Completely_Different.
Müller, F. Max. 1873. Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution with Two Essays on False Analogies, and the Philosophy of Mythology (London: Longmans, Green).
Otto, Rudolf. 1950. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational (New York: Oxford University Press).
Pettitt, Paul B. 2002. ‘The Neanderthal Dead: Exploring Mortuary Variability in Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia’, Before Farming 1.4: 1-19.
Peuskens, Hendrik et al. 2005. ‘Specificity of Regions Processing Biological Motion’, European Journal of Neuroscience 21: 2864–75.
Pyles, John A. et al. 2007. ‘Visual Perception and Neural Correlates of Novel “Biological Motion”’, Vision Research 47: 2786-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2007.07.017.
Saler, Benson. 1993. Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories (Leiden: E.J. Brill).
———. 2008. ‘Conceptualizing Religion: Some Recent Reflections’, Religion 38: 219-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.03.008.
Schultz, Johannes et al. 2005. ‘Activation in Posterior Superior Temporal Sulcus Parallels Parameter Inducing the Percept of Animacy’, Neuron 45: 625-35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2004.12.052.
Smart, Ninian. 1983. Worldviews: Cross-Cultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New York: Scribner’s).
Smith, Brian K. 1989. Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).
Smith, Jonathan Z. 1982. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
———. 1998. ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, in Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press): 269-84.
———. 2000. ‘Classification’, in Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.), Guide to the Study of Religion (London: Continuum): 35-44.
———. 2004. Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1978. The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Harper & Row).
Spiro, Melford. 1966. ‘Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation’, in Michael Banton (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock): 85-126.
Stark, Rodney, and William Bainbridge. 1996. A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press).
Taylor, Bron. 2005. ‘Introduction’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Continuum): vii-xxvi.
———. 2007a. ‘Exploring Religion, Nature and Culture—Introducing the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 5-24.
———. 2007b. ‘Focus Introduction: Aquatic Nature Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75.4: 863-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfm065.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. 1959. The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row).
Turner, Victor W. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine).
Tylor, Edward B. 1958 [1871]. Primitive Culture: Religion in Primitive Culture (New York: Harper & Row).
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960 [1908]. The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Wach, Joachim. 1958. The Comparative Study of Religions (New York: Columbia University Press).
Wallace, Anthony F.C. 1966. Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House).
Watkins, Calvert (ed.). 2000. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (New York: Houghton-Mifflin).
Webster’s New World Dictionary. 1964. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language: College Edition (New York: The World Publishing).
Wheatley, Thalia, Shawn C. Milleville, and Alex Martin. 2007. ‘Understanding Animate Agents: Distinct Roles for the Social Network and Mirror System’, Psychological Science 18.6: 469-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01923.x.
Whitehouse, Harvey. 2002. ‘Modes of Religiosity: Towards a Cognitive Explanation of the Sociopolitical Dynamics of Religion’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 14.3/4: 293-315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157006802320909738.
Xenophanes. 1964 [~540 BCE]. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (ed. G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Published
2011-10-18
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Harrod, J. B. (2011). A Trans-Species Definition of Religion. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 5(3), 327-353. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v5i3.327
