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Apr 18, 2024
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2020-21 Graduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
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RE 425 How Climate Change, Geography, and Technology Shape Religion
The course explores of impact of climate change, geography, and technology on religion during the period of 11,000 BCE to 200 BCE. Utilizing scientific methodologies such as climatology, ethnobotany, biological anthropology, archeology, evolutionary psychology, and cultural ecology, the course uncovers the material forces that shape religion after the end of the ice age. Among the issues to be considered are the global warming that accompanies the end of the ice age, the development of agriculture and the subsequent population explosion, aggrandizers and the emergence of religious elites, the use of megaliths and stone monuments to honor the dead and urban life. The course continues with an examination of the crisis of meaning that occurs in the age of empires and the emergence of the concept of individual salvation during the Axial Age. Finally, the course speculates, as we enter into the age of information and the potential of a new period of global warming, as to the impact of climate change, social media, and new technologies on the character of religion.
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