Editorial Reviews
Review
This book is the opus magnum of the greatest living sociologist of religion. Nobody since Max Weber has produced such an erudite and systematic comparative world history of religion in its earlier phases. Robert Bellah opens new vistas for the interdisciplinary study of religion and for global inter-religious dialogue. (Hans Joas, The University of Chicago and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg)
This is an extraordinarily rich book based on wide-ranging scholarship. It contains not just a host of individual studies, but is informed with a coherent and powerful theoretical structure. There is nothing like it in existence. Of course, it will be challenged. But it will bring the debate a great step forward, even for its detractors. And it will enable other scholars to build on its insights in further studies of religion past and present.
(Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age and Dilemmas and Connections)
Robert Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution is the most important systematic and historical treatment of religion since Hegel, Durkheim, and Weber. It is a page-turner of a bildungsroman of the human spirit on a truly global scale, and should be on every educated person's bookshelves. Bellah breathes new life into critical universal history by making ancient China and India indispensable parts of a grand narrative of human religious evolution. The generosity and breadth of his empathy and curiosity in humanity is on full display on every page. One will never see human history and our contemporary world the same after reading this magnificent book.
Robert Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution is the most important systematic and historical treatment of religion since Hegel, Durkheim, and Weber. It is a page-turner of a bildungsroman of the human spirit on a truly global scale, and should be on every educated person's bookshelves. Bellah breathes new life into critical universal history by making ancient China and India indispensable parts of a grand narrative of human religious evolution. The generosity and breadth of his empathy and curiosity in humanity is on full display on every page. One will never see human history and our contemporary world the same after reading this magnificent book.
(Yang Xiao, Kenyon College)
This great book is the intellectual harvest of the rich academic life of a leading social theorist who has assimilated a vast range of biological, anthropological, and historical literature in the pursuit of a breathtaking project. Robert Bellah first searches for the roots of ritual and myth in the natural evolution of our species and then follows with the social evolution of religion up to the Axial Age. In the second part of his book, he succeeds in a unique comparison of the origins of the handful of surviving world-religions, including Greek philosophy. In this field I do not know of an equally ambitious and comprehensive study.
This great book is the intellectual harvest of the rich academic life of a leading social theorist who has assimilated a vast range of biological, anthropological, and historical literature in the pursuit of a breathtaking project. Robert Bellah first searches for the roots of ritual and myth in the natural evolution of our species and then follows with the social evolution of religion up to the Axial Age. In the second part of his book, he succeeds in a unique comparison of the origins of the handful of surviving world-religions, including Greek philosophy. In this field I do not know of an equally ambitious and comprehensive study.
(Jürgen Habermas)
Religion in Human Evolution is a work of remarkable ambition and breadth. The wealth of reference which Robert Bellah calls upon in support of his argument is breath-taking, as is the daring of the argument itself. A marvellously stimulating book. (John Banville, novelist)
Bellah's reexamination of his own classic theory of religious evolution provides a treasure-chest of rich detail and sociological insight. The evolutionary story is not linear but full of twists and variations. The human capacity for religion begins in the earliest ritual gatherings involving emotion, music and dance, producing collective effervescence and shared narratives that give meaning to the utilitarian world. But ritual entwines with power and stratification, as chiefs vie with each other over the sheer length, expense, and impressiveness of ritual.
Religion in Human Evolution is a work of remarkable ambition and breadth. The wealth of reference which Robert Bellah calls upon in support of his argument is breath-taking, as is the daring of the argument itself. A marvellously stimulating book. (John Banville, novelist)
Bellah's reexamination of his own classic theory of religious evolution provides a treasure-chest of rich detail and sociological insight. The evolutionary story is not linear but full of twists and variations. The human capacity for religion begins in the earliest ritual gatherings involving emotion, music and dance, producing collective effervescence and shared narratives that give meaning to the utilitarian world. But ritual entwines with power and stratification, as chiefs vie with each other over the sheer length, expense, and impressiveness of ritual.
Archaic kingdoms take a sinister turn with terroristic rituals such as human sacrifices exalting the power of god and ruler simultaneously. As societies become more complex and rulers acquire organization that relies more on administration and taxation than on sheer impressiveness and terror, religions move towards the axial breakthrough into more abstract, universal and self-reflexive concepts, elevating the religious sphere above worldly goods and power.
Above all, the religions of the breakthrough become ethicized, turning against cruelty and inequality and creating the ideals that eventually will become those of more just and humane societies.
Bellah deftly examines the major historical texts and weighs contemporary scholarship in presenting his encompassing vision.
(Randall Collins, author of The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change)
In this magisterial effort, eminent sociologist of religion Bellah attempts nothing less than to show the ways that the evolution of certain capacities among humans provided the foundation for religion...[Readers] will be rewarded with a wealth of sparkling insights into the history of religion. (Publishers Weekly 2011-08-08)
Bellah's book is an interesting departure from the traditional separation of science and religion. He maintains that the evolving worldviews sought to unify rather than to divide people. Poignantly, it is upon these principles that both Western and Eastern modern societies are now based. What strikes the reader most powerfully is how the author connects cultural development and religion in an evolutionary context. He suggests that cultural evolution can be seen in mimetic, mythical, and theoretical contexts. (Brian Renvall Library Journal 2011-08-01)
Religion in Human Evolution is not like so many other "science and religion" books, which tend to explain away belief as a smudge on a brain scan or an accident of early hominid social organization. It is, instead, a bold attempt to understand religion as part of the biggest big picture--life, the universe, and everything...One need not believe in intelligent design to look for embryonic traces of human behavior on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder. [Bellah's] attempt to do just that, with the help of recent research in zoology and anthropology, results in a menagerie of case studies that provide the book's real innovation. Not only the chimps and monkeys evoked by the word "evolution" in the title, but wolves and birds and iguanas all pass through these pages. Within such a sundry cast, Bellah searches for a commonality that may give some indication of where and when the uniquely human activity of religion was born. What he finds is as intriguing as it is unexpected...Bellah is less concerned with whether religion is right or wrong, good or bad, perfume or mustard gas, than with understanding what it is and where it comes from, and in following the path toward that understanding, wherever it may lead...In a perfect world, the endless curiosity on display throughout Religion in Human Evolution would set the tone for all discussions of religion in the public square. (Peter Manseau Bookforum 2011-09-01)
Ever since Darwin, the theory of evolution has been considered the deadly enemy of religious belief; the creation of Adam and Eve and the process of natural selection simply do not go together. In Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, the sociologist Robert Bellah offers a new, unexpected way of reconciling these opposites, using evolutionary psychology to argue that the invention of religious belief played a crucial role in the development of modern human beings. (Barnes and Noble Review 2011-09-14)
About the Author
Robert N. Bellah was Elliott Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
In this magisterial effort, eminent sociologist of religion Bellah attempts nothing less than to show the ways that the evolution of certain capacities among humans provided the foundation for religion...[Readers] will be rewarded with a wealth of sparkling insights into the history of religion. (Publishers Weekly 2011-08-08)
Bellah's book is an interesting departure from the traditional separation of science and religion. He maintains that the evolving worldviews sought to unify rather than to divide people. Poignantly, it is upon these principles that both Western and Eastern modern societies are now based. What strikes the reader most powerfully is how the author connects cultural development and religion in an evolutionary context. He suggests that cultural evolution can be seen in mimetic, mythical, and theoretical contexts. (Brian Renvall Library Journal 2011-08-01)
Religion in Human Evolution is not like so many other "science and religion" books, which tend to explain away belief as a smudge on a brain scan or an accident of early hominid social organization. It is, instead, a bold attempt to understand religion as part of the biggest big picture--life, the universe, and everything...One need not believe in intelligent design to look for embryonic traces of human behavior on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder. [Bellah's] attempt to do just that, with the help of recent research in zoology and anthropology, results in a menagerie of case studies that provide the book's real innovation. Not only the chimps and monkeys evoked by the word "evolution" in the title, but wolves and birds and iguanas all pass through these pages. Within such a sundry cast, Bellah searches for a commonality that may give some indication of where and when the uniquely human activity of religion was born. What he finds is as intriguing as it is unexpected...Bellah is less concerned with whether religion is right or wrong, good or bad, perfume or mustard gas, than with understanding what it is and where it comes from, and in following the path toward that understanding, wherever it may lead...In a perfect world, the endless curiosity on display throughout Religion in Human Evolution would set the tone for all discussions of religion in the public square. (Peter Manseau Bookforum 2011-09-01)
Ever since Darwin, the theory of evolution has been considered the deadly enemy of religious belief; the creation of Adam and Eve and the process of natural selection simply do not go together. In Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, the sociologist Robert Bellah offers a new, unexpected way of reconciling these opposites, using evolutionary psychology to argue that the invention of religious belief played a crucial role in the development of modern human beings. (Barnes and Noble Review 2011-09-14)
About the Author
Robert N. Bellah was Elliott Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Wringing water from a stone...
ByBrian C.on August 17, 2016
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Robert Bellah attempts in this work to provide a “deep history” of religion, one that probes beyond the limits of recorded history, in an attempt to trace the evolutionary origins of the capacities that lie at the root of religion, and provide a synopsis of the interconnected and non-linear history of social and religious evolution up to the axial age. Since the axial age is defined as the period of history when our “cultural world and the great traditions that still in so many ways define us, all originate” (269) the book is really an attempt to trace religion from its earliest evolutionary precursors up to modern times, though the book ends before the development of Christianity and Islam. This is an ambitious project, and an exciting one, and perhaps even a necessary one, but I did not feel this book was successful in living up to its promise.
The book can be divided into roughly three sections. The first section is comprised of the first two chapters entitled “Religion and Reality” and “Religion and Evolution.” In the chapter on “Religion and Reality” Bellah provides a preliminary definition of religion, based on the definition offered by Clifford Geertz, and he attempts to describe the relationship between religion and everday practical reality. Using the theories of Alfred Schultz and Abraham Maslow he tries to get at the distinctiveness of religion by drawing contrasts between the world of “practical or pragmatic interest” and “non-ordinary reality”, on the one hand, and what Maslow called “D-Cognition” (short for deficiency-cognition) and “B-Cognition” (short for being-cognition) on the other.
In the chapter on “Religion and Evolution” Bellah discusses the notion of conserved core-processes (processes that have origins deep in evolutionary history and are conserved throughout later mutations, like metabolism), the evolutionary origins of empathy and play, and he introduces Merlin Donald’s three-stage theory of human cognition and cultural evolution. Merlin’s theory is one of the primary structuring principles of the book. Bellah’s history of religion begins with tribal religions, in which mimetic culture, where meanings are enacted through bodily movement and song, is primary, proceeds through the religions of archaic states where narrative and mythospeculation transform earlier mimetic culture, and terminates in the axial age where theoretic culture further transforms inherited narratives and mythologies.
The second section of the book is comprised of the middle three chapters which are devoted to religious history in mimetic and mythological cultures. The history proceeds from the largely mimetic, and roughly egalitarian, societies of the Kalapalo Indians up to the mythological and hierarchical socieities of ancient Egypt and Shang and Western Zhou China. Bellah peppers his narrative with case histories of the Kalapalo Indians, the Navaho, the Tikopia of Polynesia and the Hawaiians among others. In each case history Bellah attempts to analyze the forces operative in the creation, maintenance and transformations of social institutions and he attempts to tie those to developments in religious thought and practice.
The third section of the book is comprised of the last four chapters of the book and it consists in a fairly detailed analysis of the four axial civilizations: Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, Ancient China, and Ancient India. In these chapters, Bellah attempts to define in each case what the “axial breakthrough” actually consisted of and he attempts to tie those breakthroughs to the social conditions that prevailed at the time. This last section is over half of the book and seems to be the primary subject of Bellah’s book. The primary question Bellah seems to be addressing is: What accounts for the breakthrough to theoretic or critical thought and to an ideal standpoint in religion from which a criticism of existing social structures becomes possible?
While Bellah offers plenty of interesting insights along the way the book suffered from many flaws. The first section of the book, where Bellah seems to lay the groundwork for a “theory of religion” in the true sense, plays very little role in the more historical sections of the book, with the exception of Merlin Donald’s theories. The notions of non-ordinary reality, B versus D cognition, core conserved processes and empathy do not really appear after the first two chapters (the last mention of “conserved core processes” is page 87, for example). Even the notion of play, which reappears in the conclusion, plays virtually no role in the historical sections, and it is never entirely clear how all of these concepts relate to religion in the proper sense. Readers who are looking for a new “theory of religion” that explains the evolutionary origins of religion, its adaptive or non-adaptive functions, and the causal relations between religion and other forms of social life are going to be disappointed.
The book seems to lack a theoretical core. Bellah points to many fascinating correlations. For example, the historical and social context for the rise of the prophets in ancient Israel. However, it is never clear whether the causal arrow is supposed to run from material social relations to religious ideology or the other way around. I saw a panel on Bellah’s book online, at which Bellah was present, and he seemed to admit that he ignored the issue of causality because it was just too difficult to determine which way the causal arrow runs but, in my opinion, science is inseparable from the search for causal mechanisms and it is worth putting forward a causal story even if the story turns out to be wrong. The causal stories that Marx or Durkheim tell about religion are probably wrong, at least in some respects, but they both had a theoretical core - that took a stance on causality - and made it possible to criticize their theories and develop alternative theories. Bellah’s analysis seems to me to lack such a core and I think it suffers for that. I think being wrong would have been more interesting than not taking a stance on the issue at all.
I was disappointed in the lack of theory but even the descriptive historical sections of the book fell short of what I was expecting. Much of the book is simply Bellah summarizing the work of other scholars. It is possible to learn something from these summaries but I constantly felt like my time would have been used more effectively by simply reading Bellah’s sources (which I intend to do). Bellah spends a fair amount of his time getting into esoteric scholary debates. For example, in the chapter on China, Bellah gets into the debate about whether ren or li was more important in Confucian philosophy. It was not at all clear to me that reaching a decision on that question was all that important for Bellah’s overall argument. It felt like Bellah was getting sidetracked and I think the narrative would have been better served if Bellah had spent more time going into the essentials of Confucian philosophy and the relationship between its tenets and social institutions at the time. This would have made the chapter a more satisfactory introduction to the subject for people like me who are not already well versed in ancient Chinese history and philosophy.
Finally, I have to make a final comment about something that I just found bizarre. In the conclusion of the book Bellah raises what I think is an interesting question: What place does a metanarrative have in his analysis? Bellah is rightfully somewhat suspicious of metanarratives and one virtue of his book is that his history of religion is not a linear history of “progress”. However, Bellah argues that metanarratives are essential for our pragmatic engagements in trying to bring about a better world (599). I agree with all of this, but then Bellah goes on to say that the “primary practical intent” of his work is that humans need to “wake up” to the ecological crisis we are currently facing in the form of a sixth great extinction event. While I am in full sympathy with this “practical intent” it seems to me to come totally out of left field.
Bellah’s book is about the history of religion, and the first time this ecological crisis is even mentioned is on page 602 (the book itself is 606 pages long), so it is not at all clear to me how anyone reading this book could ever have gotten the idea that the primary practical import of the whole thing had to do with our need to address our current ecological crisis or how this concern could possibly serve as a coherent metanarrative tying everything in the book together. This is perhaps a minor point but I think the bigger issue is: this book seemed to me to be a giant hodge podge. Bellah just threw everything he had in without worrying about whether it was coherent. The fact that he claims, at the very end of his story, that the major practical import of a book on the sociology of religion is inspiring us to take action regarding our current ecological crisis seemed to me to illustrate this bigger issue.
I realize some very intelligent people reviewed this work very positively so any reader of this review will have to put my opinion into the scales with much weightier opinions. I am thinking of Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas in particular. I have a great deal of respect for both of them and partially out of deference to them I made every effort to wring whatever I could out of this book. I began re-reading sections early on because I was not getting as much out of the book as I expected based on the glowing reviews and I felt like I must be missing something, but eventually it began to feel like I was trying to wring water out of a stone. Ultimately, what this book gave me is a series of topics I would like to study in more depth, and a list of books to get me started, which is not nothing, but is a lot less than I expected.
Comment| 17 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
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3.0 out of 5 stars
ByBrian C.on August 17, 2016
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Robert Bellah attempts in this work to provide a “deep history” of religion, one that probes beyond the limits of recorded history, in an attempt to trace the evolutionary origins of the capacities that lie at the root of religion, and provide a synopsis of the interconnected and non-linear history of social and religious evolution up to the axial age. Since the axial age is defined as the period of history when our “cultural world and the great traditions that still in so many ways define us, all originate” (269) the book is really an attempt to trace religion from its earliest evolutionary precursors up to modern times, though the book ends before the development of Christianity and Islam. This is an ambitious project, and an exciting one, and perhaps even a necessary one, but I did not feel this book was successful in living up to its promise.
The book can be divided into roughly three sections. The first section is comprised of the first two chapters entitled “Religion and Reality” and “Religion and Evolution.” In the chapter on “Religion and Reality” Bellah provides a preliminary definition of religion, based on the definition offered by Clifford Geertz, and he attempts to describe the relationship between religion and everday practical reality. Using the theories of Alfred Schultz and Abraham Maslow he tries to get at the distinctiveness of religion by drawing contrasts between the world of “practical or pragmatic interest” and “non-ordinary reality”, on the one hand, and what Maslow called “D-Cognition” (short for deficiency-cognition) and “B-Cognition” (short for being-cognition) on the other.
In the chapter on “Religion and Evolution” Bellah discusses the notion of conserved core-processes (processes that have origins deep in evolutionary history and are conserved throughout later mutations, like metabolism), the evolutionary origins of empathy and play, and he introduces Merlin Donald’s three-stage theory of human cognition and cultural evolution. Merlin’s theory is one of the primary structuring principles of the book. Bellah’s history of religion begins with tribal religions, in which mimetic culture, where meanings are enacted through bodily movement and song, is primary, proceeds through the religions of archaic states where narrative and mythospeculation transform earlier mimetic culture, and terminates in the axial age where theoretic culture further transforms inherited narratives and mythologies.
The second section of the book is comprised of the middle three chapters which are devoted to religious history in mimetic and mythological cultures. The history proceeds from the largely mimetic, and roughly egalitarian, societies of the Kalapalo Indians up to the mythological and hierarchical socieities of ancient Egypt and Shang and Western Zhou China. Bellah peppers his narrative with case histories of the Kalapalo Indians, the Navaho, the Tikopia of Polynesia and the Hawaiians among others. In each case history Bellah attempts to analyze the forces operative in the creation, maintenance and transformations of social institutions and he attempts to tie those to developments in religious thought and practice.
The third section of the book is comprised of the last four chapters of the book and it consists in a fairly detailed analysis of the four axial civilizations: Ancient Israel, Ancient Greece, Ancient China, and Ancient India. In these chapters, Bellah attempts to define in each case what the “axial breakthrough” actually consisted of and he attempts to tie those breakthroughs to the social conditions that prevailed at the time. This last section is over half of the book and seems to be the primary subject of Bellah’s book. The primary question Bellah seems to be addressing is: What accounts for the breakthrough to theoretic or critical thought and to an ideal standpoint in religion from which a criticism of existing social structures becomes possible?
While Bellah offers plenty of interesting insights along the way the book suffered from many flaws. The first section of the book, where Bellah seems to lay the groundwork for a “theory of religion” in the true sense, plays very little role in the more historical sections of the book, with the exception of Merlin Donald’s theories. The notions of non-ordinary reality, B versus D cognition, core conserved processes and empathy do not really appear after the first two chapters (the last mention of “conserved core processes” is page 87, for example). Even the notion of play, which reappears in the conclusion, plays virtually no role in the historical sections, and it is never entirely clear how all of these concepts relate to religion in the proper sense. Readers who are looking for a new “theory of religion” that explains the evolutionary origins of religion, its adaptive or non-adaptive functions, and the causal relations between religion and other forms of social life are going to be disappointed.
The book seems to lack a theoretical core. Bellah points to many fascinating correlations. For example, the historical and social context for the rise of the prophets in ancient Israel. However, it is never clear whether the causal arrow is supposed to run from material social relations to religious ideology or the other way around. I saw a panel on Bellah’s book online, at which Bellah was present, and he seemed to admit that he ignored the issue of causality because it was just too difficult to determine which way the causal arrow runs but, in my opinion, science is inseparable from the search for causal mechanisms and it is worth putting forward a causal story even if the story turns out to be wrong. The causal stories that Marx or Durkheim tell about religion are probably wrong, at least in some respects, but they both had a theoretical core - that took a stance on causality - and made it possible to criticize their theories and develop alternative theories. Bellah’s analysis seems to me to lack such a core and I think it suffers for that. I think being wrong would have been more interesting than not taking a stance on the issue at all.
I was disappointed in the lack of theory but even the descriptive historical sections of the book fell short of what I was expecting. Much of the book is simply Bellah summarizing the work of other scholars. It is possible to learn something from these summaries but I constantly felt like my time would have been used more effectively by simply reading Bellah’s sources (which I intend to do). Bellah spends a fair amount of his time getting into esoteric scholary debates. For example, in the chapter on China, Bellah gets into the debate about whether ren or li was more important in Confucian philosophy. It was not at all clear to me that reaching a decision on that question was all that important for Bellah’s overall argument. It felt like Bellah was getting sidetracked and I think the narrative would have been better served if Bellah had spent more time going into the essentials of Confucian philosophy and the relationship between its tenets and social institutions at the time. This would have made the chapter a more satisfactory introduction to the subject for people like me who are not already well versed in ancient Chinese history and philosophy.
Finally, I have to make a final comment about something that I just found bizarre. In the conclusion of the book Bellah raises what I think is an interesting question: What place does a metanarrative have in his analysis? Bellah is rightfully somewhat suspicious of metanarratives and one virtue of his book is that his history of religion is not a linear history of “progress”. However, Bellah argues that metanarratives are essential for our pragmatic engagements in trying to bring about a better world (599). I agree with all of this, but then Bellah goes on to say that the “primary practical intent” of his work is that humans need to “wake up” to the ecological crisis we are currently facing in the form of a sixth great extinction event. While I am in full sympathy with this “practical intent” it seems to me to come totally out of left field.
Bellah’s book is about the history of religion, and the first time this ecological crisis is even mentioned is on page 602 (the book itself is 606 pages long), so it is not at all clear to me how anyone reading this book could ever have gotten the idea that the primary practical import of the whole thing had to do with our need to address our current ecological crisis or how this concern could possibly serve as a coherent metanarrative tying everything in the book together. This is perhaps a minor point but I think the bigger issue is: this book seemed to me to be a giant hodge podge. Bellah just threw everything he had in without worrying about whether it was coherent. The fact that he claims, at the very end of his story, that the major practical import of a book on the sociology of religion is inspiring us to take action regarding our current ecological crisis seemed to me to illustrate this bigger issue.
I realize some very intelligent people reviewed this work very positively so any reader of this review will have to put my opinion into the scales with much weightier opinions. I am thinking of Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas in particular. I have a great deal of respect for both of them and partially out of deference to them I made every effort to wring whatever I could out of this book. I began re-reading sections early on because I was not getting as much out of the book as I expected based on the glowing reviews and I felt like I must be missing something, but eventually it began to feel like I was trying to wring water out of a stone. Ultimately, what this book gave me is a series of topics I would like to study in more depth, and a list of books to get me started, which is not nothing, but is a lot less than I expected.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
This book was a wonderfully ambitious undertaking
ByJohn K. Skousenon July 27, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
This book was a wonderfully ambitious undertaking, but it lacks a certain conceptual tightness I was hoping for. I appreciated the honesty of attributing many of his thoughts to the work of others, and to that degree, I can see this man does not have a large ego to feed and is willing to invite others to his dialog. And that he certainly did .... With the complexity and dense nature of the material, I may have missed it along the way, but I would have enjoyed more of his personal analysis and conclusions. I loved his discussion of play and the world of work, and how these two worlds can be woven together into the tapestry of life. His suggestion was that religion is merely an elaboration, at least in part, of the propensity of all creatures to engage in play. Although this may seem offensive to some, I got his point without agreeing totally with his (or his sources') analysis. Although I found myself wondering whether the content was consistently true to the theme of book, and I was tempted many times to simply give it up, I endured to the end and found some helpful focusing in the final conclusion. But even the conclusion was not what I hoped it would be. The author is undoubtedly a lot smarter than I am, and being put at a disadvantage if I analyze this, I give it 3 stars.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
ByJohn K. Skousenon July 27, 2014
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
This book was a wonderfully ambitious undertaking, but it lacks a certain conceptual tightness I was hoping for. I appreciated the honesty of attributing many of his thoughts to the work of others, and to that degree, I can see this man does not have a large ego to feed and is willing to invite others to his dialog. And that he certainly did .... With the complexity and dense nature of the material, I may have missed it along the way, but I would have enjoyed more of his personal analysis and conclusions. I loved his discussion of play and the world of work, and how these two worlds can be woven together into the tapestry of life. His suggestion was that religion is merely an elaboration, at least in part, of the propensity of all creatures to engage in play. Although this may seem offensive to some, I got his point without agreeing totally with his (or his sources') analysis. Although I found myself wondering whether the content was consistently true to the theme of book, and I was tempted many times to simply give it up, I endured to the end and found some helpful focusing in the final conclusion. But even the conclusion was not what I hoped it would be. The author is undoubtedly a lot smarter than I am, and being put at a disadvantage if I analyze this, I give it 3 stars.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
meticulously constructed work by a true subject matter expert
ByGreg Smith (aka sowhatfaith)on February 28, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Religion in Human Evolution is a meticulously constructed academic tome (700+ pages) that effectively explores Bellah's understanding of how religion developed within the larger framework of human evolution from the paleolithic to the axial age. The account of religious beginnings and formation is interdisciplinary and comparative, displaying the author's incredible knowledge of the subject matter. Finally, the extended treatment of four axial cases (Israel, Greece, China, and India) provides a solid summary of recent scholarship while also displaying the author's humility (e.g., his appraisal of his own limited knowledge about ancient India prior to his research for this book - p. 481).
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByGreg Smith (aka sowhatfaith)on February 28, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Religion in Human Evolution is a meticulously constructed academic tome (700+ pages) that effectively explores Bellah's understanding of how religion developed within the larger framework of human evolution from the paleolithic to the axial age. The account of religious beginnings and formation is interdisciplinary and comparative, displaying the author's incredible knowledge of the subject matter. Finally, the extended treatment of four axial cases (Israel, Greece, China, and India) provides a solid summary of recent scholarship while also displaying the author's humility (e.g., his appraisal of his own limited knowledge about ancient India prior to his research for this book - p. 481).
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Splendid from cover to cover
ByLaurence Chalemon February 18, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Few books are written that explain a subject so carefully and masterfully as RELIGION IN HUMAN EVOLUTION by Professor Robert N. Bellah. What I appreciated most is that I could tell it was written by someone that has spent years researching the subject, probably his whole life, at least from his own "Axial Age." This book explains human life on Earth from a wide swath of time, from about 1300 BCE up until the Axial Age, which was; well, he takes great pains to explain when that was. There's something interesting to read on each page, and it was like reading something from someone that cares about the subject enough to gently explain it. RELIGION IN HUMAN EVOLUTION is certainly not half about evolution and half about religion. In fact, it's mostly about religion, though his evolutionary discussion is a fair and balanced account, albeit brief. Here is a book written to give a general reader an overview--a carefully cited and concise overview--about the two subjects juxtaposed that leaves a lasting impression. Prof. Bellah has provided great insight and I highly recommend this book, all the more because of the two or three other books that I read--and the twenty others that are on my list to be read--as a result of his recommendations. Cheers... - lc
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4.0 out of 5 stars
ByLaurence Chalemon February 18, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Few books are written that explain a subject so carefully and masterfully as RELIGION IN HUMAN EVOLUTION by Professor Robert N. Bellah. What I appreciated most is that I could tell it was written by someone that has spent years researching the subject, probably his whole life, at least from his own "Axial Age." This book explains human life on Earth from a wide swath of time, from about 1300 BCE up until the Axial Age, which was; well, he takes great pains to explain when that was. There's something interesting to read on each page, and it was like reading something from someone that cares about the subject enough to gently explain it. RELIGION IN HUMAN EVOLUTION is certainly not half about evolution and half about religion. In fact, it's mostly about religion, though his evolutionary discussion is a fair and balanced account, albeit brief. Here is a book written to give a general reader an overview--a carefully cited and concise overview--about the two subjects juxtaposed that leaves a lasting impression. Prof. Bellah has provided great insight and I highly recommend this book, all the more because of the two or three other books that I read--and the twenty others that are on my list to be read--as a result of his recommendations. Cheers... - lc
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Heavy Reading...
ByBernard Con May 28, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
This is a slow read, for me and I would presume a slow read for most. Religion and philosophy - This is basically a book on how and why the human race created them. The subject of God will most likely come up and our relationship with God. Possibly how we have come to create so many different gods and how they have changed into the variety we have today. After all, the human race has done a wonderful job creating God in its own image through out the millenniums. But for me, these three - God, Religion, Philosophy - and their interaction with each other and the human race, has always fascinated me. Knowing my interest, my medical doctor suggested this book and he too said it was, 'Heavy Reading.' So far, I have read the introduction, which was long, and Chapter One. It's like reading a text book, I read a few pages and then think about it till next time I read. It isn't a novel!!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByBernard Con May 28, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
This is a slow read, for me and I would presume a slow read for most. Religion and philosophy - This is basically a book on how and why the human race created them. The subject of God will most likely come up and our relationship with God. Possibly how we have come to create so many different gods and how they have changed into the variety we have today. After all, the human race has done a wonderful job creating God in its own image through out the millenniums. But for me, these three - God, Religion, Philosophy - and their interaction with each other and the human race, has always fascinated me. Knowing my interest, my medical doctor suggested this book and he too said it was, 'Heavy Reading.' So far, I have read the introduction, which was long, and Chapter One. It's like reading a text book, I read a few pages and then think about it till next time I read. It isn't a novel!!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An EPIC, rigorous scientific and humanistic REVIEW of HUMANITy's voyage and mental maturation
ByA. D.on January 25, 2015
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Incredible voyage. Buckminster Fuller said UNIVERSE is everything experienced so far by all of humanity... this book is a glimpse of the UNIVERSE touching a little bit from everything that is relevant in the HUMANITY'S VOYAGE of growth and of becoming...HUMAN. Rigorous, wide, scientific, humanistic and with a touch of EPIC
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4.0 out of 5 stars
ByA. D.on January 25, 2015
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Incredible voyage. Buckminster Fuller said UNIVERSE is everything experienced so far by all of humanity... this book is a glimpse of the UNIVERSE touching a little bit from everything that is relevant in the HUMANITY'S VOYAGE of growth and of becoming...HUMAN. Rigorous, wide, scientific, humanistic and with a touch of EPIC
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good for Understanding the Origins and Motivations for Religion
ByAkhilesh Pillalamarrion October 29, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
How many other such books are out there? For this very reason, this book is a must read. Whether or not one agrees or disagrees with religion, it is obviously one of the most, if not the most, important and influential aspect of human civilization. There has been little separation between the concept of the divine and the concept of the human order throughout most of history. Religion is a very complex phenomenon whose origins and motivations are well discussed in this book (it is not, as some religion haters suggest a conspiracy to control people, that was not its intention or its origin). For its uniqueness, this book is a must read, and is a stepping stone for further research on religion.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByAkhilesh Pillalamarrion October 29, 2012
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
How many other such books are out there? For this very reason, this book is a must read. Whether or not one agrees or disagrees with religion, it is obviously one of the most, if not the most, important and influential aspect of human civilization. There has been little separation between the concept of the divine and the concept of the human order throughout most of history. Religion is a very complex phenomenon whose origins and motivations are well discussed in this book (it is not, as some religion haters suggest a conspiracy to control people, that was not its intention or its origin). For its uniqueness, this book is a must read, and is a stepping stone for further research on religion.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars
ByAmazon Customeron September 11, 2016
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Book was in perfect condition!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByAmazon Customeron September 11, 2016
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
Book was in perfect condition!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderfully Readable
ByJoan C Wrennon February 17, 2013
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
I bought this hefty book fully expecting it to be rough going, but as a student of the anthropology of religion as well as of evolution, wanting to see what Bellah had to say.
I was SO not disappointed! Sociologist Bellah, in what he calls his master work, brings in many fully attributed scholarly understandings as he builds a coherent argument for the development of religious practice and thought from the very beginning of humanity, through tribal (mimetic ritual), then archaic (mythic ritual), then axial phases of development, with detailed discussions of exemplar societies. Bellah's genius, for me, is his ability to pull all this seemingly disparate information into a unified whole, a vision of how humanity came to this point.
Basically, once I started this, I have not been able to put it down, fascinated by his theory and his examples, as well as by the resultant evolutionary process. I'm up to the Greeks' axial advancements, greatly anticipating his discussions of India and China to round it all out, and wanted to let other readers know that it's a marvelous read.
1 comment| 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
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5.0 out of 5 stars
ByJoan C Wrennon February 17, 2013
Format: Hardcover|Verified Purchase
I bought this hefty book fully expecting it to be rough going, but as a student of the anthropology of religion as well as of evolution, wanting to see what Bellah had to say.
I was SO not disappointed! Sociologist Bellah, in what he calls his master work, brings in many fully attributed scholarly understandings as he builds a coherent argument for the development of religious practice and thought from the very beginning of humanity, through tribal (mimetic ritual), then archaic (mythic ritual), then axial phases of development, with detailed discussions of exemplar societies. Bellah's genius, for me, is his ability to pull all this seemingly disparate information into a unified whole, a vision of how humanity came to this point.
Basically, once I started this, I have not been able to put it down, fascinated by his theory and his examples, as well as by the resultant evolutionary process. I'm up to the Greeks' axial advancements, greatly anticipating his discussions of India and China to round it all out, and wanted to let other readers know that it's a marvelous read.
1 comment| 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Extra anthropology of religion
ByAndrzej Wojtowiczon June 16, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Absolutely refreshing studies, something classic and equal something revolutionary , emboldens extra anthropological study of religion in modern social studies
ByAndrzej Wojtowiczon June 16, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Absolutely refreshing studies, something classic and equal something revolutionary , emboldens extra anthropological study of religion in modern social studies
