What Do Humans Believe?

This topic submitted by Alex Beougher, PJ Gassman, Matt Salter ( salterdm@muohio.edu ) on 2/6/06. [ Human Nature Team: Alex Beougher, PJ Gassman, Matt Salter-Section: Cummins/Wolfe]

Our group is interested in exploring human religious beliefs and the extent to which they differ from more empirical forms of perception. Through this study we hope to address questions about the ways that human perception forms both perceptual and metaphorical responses to the influence of the outside world. Those questions include:

- To what extent are religious beliefs meant to represent mundane, sensory reality?
- How much do people rely on both metaphorical thinking and temporal perception?
- How do religious and nonreligious forms of perception coexist?

We intend to approach this question through both quantitative and qualitative means. Quantitatively, we plan to survey multiple populations of Miami students on their professed beliefs, and the ways in which their actual worldview both resembles and differs from the doctrines espoused thereby. Qualitatively, we plan on studying major religious and sociological texts and comparing their reasoning about various important human questions to that averred by scientific authorities.

Possible texts:

The Bible
The Qu'ran
William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience
James Frazer - The Golden Bough

For Further Info on this Topic, Check out this WWW Site: www.sacred-texts.com .
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