May 03, 2024  
2022-2023 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
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2022-2023 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

RE 330 The Dawn of Humanity and the Search for Religious Experience

The course embarks on a journey back through time in search for the earliest religious experiences. Along our way the class will recount the discovery of prehistory, explore cave paintings in France and Spain, decipher Venus Figurines, investigate archaic burial rites, and interpret the appearance of Homo sapiens. A key consideration is the cognitive evolution of the brain and the power of the brain to harness its own spiritual energy and power as manifested in the first religious specialist, the shaman. The evidence is explored from a multidisciplinary approach including evolutionary psychology, biological anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, archeology, archeo-astronomy, and art history. The link between these early forms of religious experience and the later forms of religion such as those found today is discussed. Students undertake individual and group projects that analyze these first religious experiences.