Religion is virtually omnipresent in among most human societies宗教是人类社会中几乎无处不在的最.doc

A Proposal for a Dissertation on the Subject of Religion’s Effects on Bellicosity in the Post-Cold War Period: Nine Theses on Religion and War Eric Drummond Smith Religion is virtually omnipresent in among most human societies. Our civilizations are largely defined by and through our religions and their particular relationships, or lack thereof, with political, economic, and social activities and institutions. This is undeniable. And yet the various social sciences, excepting those explicitly dealing with religion or cultural traits, have largely ignored religion as a factor influencing human activity. There is no simple reason for this strange absence of interest. In part it is due to the secularism of the various systematic, non-sociohistorical modes of inquiry and the conflation of secular methodology with the material of inquiry. In part it is due to the bias of the social sciences towards modern Western civilization—a bias, in other words, towards the intellectual elite of an outlier civilization. In part it is due to a bias towards quantitative methods, a product of the Behavioralist Revolution. In part it is prejudice, disinterest and disparagement not only of what is different in terms of the contemporary world, but further of our own ancestors. In part it is the failure of Western educational systems to teach their students on any level about culture in a meaningful way, the purpose of history and social studies having been warped either by propagandistic forces or by the intellectual scouring of various interest groups in the name of political correctness or other equally non-academic values. Regardless, religion seems to have not only remained relevant in understanding human political, economic, and strategic behavior, but indeed seems to be increasing in relevance. Fundamentalism and multiculturalism are on the rise in every civilization and, as democracy becomes a more popular institutional arrangement, empowering religious nonelites, we can