Homo Religiosus?
Exploring the Roots of Religion and Religious Freedom in Human Experience

Examines whether religion is natural to human experience, and whether this helps to ground a universal right to religious freedom.

Timothy Samuel Shah (Edited by), Jack Friedman (Edited by)

9781108433952, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 January 2018

276 pages, 1 table
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

'In recent years, academic and policy debates over religious freedom have had the unexpected but welcome effect of encouraging researchers to revisit several long-neglected questions: just what we mean by 'religion', whether religion is universal, and the implications of religion's presence in societies for our understanding of human nature. Although these questions are being posed anew in many circles, Timothy Samuel Shah and Jack Friedman's Homo Religiosus? is the first book to bring together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to address the issues in a philosophically sophisticated and comparative manner. The result is a pathbreaking book. The exercise is also bracing: even as its contributors speak in varied voices, their shared effort highlights the most critical epistemological and ethical shifts underway today in the comparative study of religion and human freedom.' Robert W. Hefner, The Pardee School of Global Affairs, Boston University

Are humans naturally predisposed to religion and supernatural beliefs? If so, does this naturalness provide a moral foundation for religious freedom? This volume offers a cross-disciplinary approach to these questions, engaging in a range of contemporary debates at the intersection of religion, cognitive science, sociology, anthropology, political science, epistemology, and moral philosophy. The contributors to this original and important volume present individual, sometimes opposing points of view on the naturalness of religion thesis and its implications for religious freedom. Topics include the epistemological foundations of religion, the relationship between religion and health, and a discussion of the philosophical foundations of religious freedom as a natural, universal right, drawing implications for the normative role of religion in public life. By challenging dominant intellectual paradigms, such as the secularization thesis and the Enlightenment view of religion, the volume opens the door to a powerful and provocative reconceptualization of religious freedom.

Introduction Jack Friedman and Timothy Samuel Shah
1. Are human beings naturally religious? Christian Smith
2. Are human beings naturally religious? A response to Christian Smith Phil Zuckerman
3. On the naturalness of religion and religious freedom Justin L. Barrett
4. Sacred versus secular values: cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion and their implications for religious freedom Richard Sosis and Jordan Kiper
5. Theism, naturalism and rationality Alvin Plantinga
6. Alvin Plantinga on theism, naturalism and rationality Ernest Sosa
7. Research on religion and health: time to be born again? Linda K. George
8. Religion, health and happiness: an epidemiologist's perspective Jeff Levin
9. Why there is a natural right to religious freedom Nicholas Wolterstorff
10. Religious liberty, human dignity, and human goods Christopher Tollefsen
11. Human rights, public reason, and American democracy: a response to Nicholas Wolterstorff Stephen Macedo.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology: customs & traditions [JHBT], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Social & political philosophy [HPS]