Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
192.168.6.56/handle/123456789/1800| Title: | Introducing Anthropology of Religion |
| Authors: | Jack, David Eller |
| Keywords: | Culture to the Ultimate |
| Issue Date: | 2007 |
| Publisher: | Routledge |
| Description: | Anthropologist Pascal Boyer reports a conversation with a person whom he only identifies as a “prominent Catholic theologian” in which the person states, “This is what makes anthropology so fascinating and so difficult too. You have to explain how people can believe in such nonsense” (2001: 297). In one way the theologian was correct, and in another important way he was very wrong. Anthropology is fascinating and difficult, and anthropologists do observe many unfamiliar things. However, anthropology does not attempt to “explain how people can believe” in anything, and we would or should never call the beliefs and behaviors of others “nonsense.” Anthropology may attempt to explain what a society believes, but it is not ours to ask “how they can believe it,” since such a prejudicial attitude presupposes that it is a thing that is hard—or bad—to believe |
| URI: | http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/1800 |
| ISBN: | 0–415–40895–4 |
| Appears in Collections: | Religion |
Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.