Belief, Habit & Religion

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For evolutionary scientists studying religion, it's more fruitful to examine what people do in religious contexts, rather than listen to what they say they believe. There's a new recognition that as well as looking at behaviour, people studying religion must take account of the religious experience of believers. But how do you do that? And what does doing it tell us? Rana Mitter is joined by an evolutionary psychologist, an anthropologist, a historian and a poet to discuss.

Robin Dunbar is an evolutionary psychologist who’s written a book called Why Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures.

Dimitris Xygalatas is an anthropologist whose book is called Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living

Anna Della Subin has investigated people who have been declared divine in her book Accidental Gods

Poet Kaveh Akbar is editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
0:01.5	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:04.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:05.6	So nice.
0:06.5	There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.
0:08.8	Different paces, different heights.
0:10.6	The roof is buckling.
0:11.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.7	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:35.8	BBC Sounds, music, Radio, podcasts.
0:39.7	Hello, today I'll be finding out why religion endures and rituals are so crucial,
0:44.9	even in the modern world, as well as finding out why an African emperor became a god
0:49.5	on an island thousands of miles away. That's all after this word.
0:56.2	Hello, Donald McLeod here,
1:00.6	and I'm interrupting your podcast listening to tell you about something else I think you might enjoy.
1:06.2	Ray Fulm Williams can claim to be Britain's favourite classical composer, but what keeps us coming back to his music 150 years after his birth.
	...

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