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The Michael Shermer Show

The Formation, Diversification, and Extinction of World Religions

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4921 Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2024

⏱️ 121 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Thousands of religions have adherents today, and countless more have existed throughout history. What accounts for this astonishing diversity?

This extraordinarily ambitious and comprehensive book demonstrates how evolutionary systematics and philosophy can yield new insight into the development of organized religion. Lance Grande―a leading evolutionary systematist―examines the growth and diversification of hundreds of religions over time, highlighting their historical interrelationships. Combining evolutionary theory with a wealth of cultural records, he explores the formation, extinction, and diversification of different world religions, including the many branches of Asian cyclicism, polytheism, and monotheism.

Lance Grande is the Negaunee Distinguished Service Curator, Emeritus, of the Field Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Chicago. He is a specialist in evolutionary systematics, paleontology, and biology who has a deep interest in the interdisciplinary applications of scientific method and philosophy. His many books include Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums (2017) and The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time (2013). His new book is The Evolution of Religions: A History of Related Traditions.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. The Michael Sherber Show All right,

0:29.5

All right, everybody. It's Michael Schmer here in the offices of Skeptic magazine and the Skeptic Society amongst the many things we do like the podcast the magazine

0:33.3

our media outreach we also co-sponsor what we call geology tours that we've been doing

0:37.9

for many many years

0:39.6

uh... the latest one we have coming up j 2nd through 16 a passage from ice Ireland to

0:45.4

Iceland this beautiful, beautiful scenery here and guess who's going none

0:50.0

other than Richard Dawkins the author of and here's his memoir that we sell,

0:55.1

carry in our store.

0:56.3

Richard is a long time good friend and also one of the most interesting, thoughtful,

1:00.7

intelligent people I've ever met.

1:02.2

It's incredible. I mean, I've met a lot of really

1:04.4

smart thoughtful people and Richard, I mean he's just like on another level, it's truly

1:09.2

astoundion. And on a cruise like this you just hang out, You're just sitting there at breakfast or lunch or dinner.

1:14.0

There he is. So go to skeptic.com, click on the little ad, you'll see it pop right up on the home page there for our geology tours.

1:22.0

The next tour here available all right check it out

1:25.1

thanks for listening I have a special episode for you today on religion oh Oh, this is epic. My guest is Lance Grande. He is the

1:37.1

Nagani Distinguished Service Curator Emeritus of the Field Museum of

1:42.0

Natural and Cultural History in Chicago.

1:45.0

This is an epic place.

1:47.0

He's a specialist in evolutionary systematics,

1:50.0

paleontology and biology, who has a deep interest in the interdisciplinary applications of scientific

1:55.6

method and philosophy.

...

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