This thesis is on Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) and its relevance for the rationality of religious beliefs. An epistemical model for rationality is developed according to which: a person (or group of persons) is rational to hold a certain belief a) if this belief can be assumed to have been generated by one or more reliable cognitive mechanisms, b) applies whether or not she is aware of what these mechanisms are, but c) only as long as it does not exist or arise some reasons (defeaters) to question the belief; if they occur, she must d) reflect on it and find other reasons or grounds to hold the belief in question.      Two different positions are examined, namely: 1) negative relevance: the findings and theories in CSR undermines the rationality of religious beliefs; 2) positive relevance: religious beliefs need not be irrational in the light of CSR, in fact CSR may actually support the rationality of religious beliefs.      Two lines of argument can be distinguished among those who argue for a negative relevance: a) the natural explanations that are provided by CSR are preferable; and b) religious beliefs are irrational because they are caused by unreliable cognitive mechanisms.      Among those who argue for positive relevance two arguments can be distinguised: a) religious beliefs seem to come naturally to humans and therefore are probably true; and b) CSR confirms empirically that we are equipped with a "divine mechanism" that there are reasons to believe is reliable.      The conclusions are: CSR has negative relevance to beliefs in "finite supernatural agency", but not for the faith of "infinite supernatural agency". First, the first type of beliefs is easier to explain by being generated by unreliable cognitive mechanisms; secondly they are difficult to integrate with what we otherwise know about the world. A category that falls outside the scope of CSR and thus not even potentially can be affected, is beliefs in "supernatural non-agency". / The Impact of Religion – Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy

This work reinterprets the idea of progress at the heart of Woodrow Wilson’s liberal internationalism through the lens of secularization theory, which holds that modern philosophies of progress stand on religious foundations and represent secularized vestiges of biblical eschatology. Previous applications of this insight reveal a selective pattern: Whereas totalitarian and illiberal narratives of progress such as Nazism and Marxism-Leninism have received lavish attention and spawned extensive political religions literature, liberal progressivism has been ignored. This dissertation rectifies this neglect. Initial chapters present the biblical conception of history as the myth of salvation, introduce secularization through the writings of Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg, respectively its principal proponent and main critic, and test the limits of the concept to confirm its applicability to liberal progressivism. The main part aims secularization theory at Wilson’s idea of progress in the broader context of American liberal thought. From the 17th-century Puritan vision of a “city upon a hill” to the 19th-century doctrine of “manifest destiny”, biblical eschatology defined the way Americans envisioned history and their role in it, giving rise to a sort of liberal-republican millennialism. Wilson was no exception: Considering faith essential to authentic knowledge, he regarded history as a providential process, the United States as a divinely appointed redeemer nation, and himself as a Christian statesman performing God’s work in a fallen world. His foreign policy was fundamentally a religious mission to transform international relations according to the Bible, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of salvation. The dissertation demonstrates the eschatological foundations of his statecraft through specific examples and draws attention to their illiberal and totalizing implications. Final passages note the enduring relevance of Wilson’s principles and, based on their reinterpretation in this work, reflect critically on their suitability as a guide for future American foreign policy.

Over the past thirty years, academic dialogues on the relationships between the sciences and religions have flourished, albeit primarily within Judeo-Christian historical, theological and philosophical contexts. Can a Hindu tradition be brought into this dialogue? The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most well-known sacred texts of India, and biology, Darwinism in particular, has become one of the most spirited areas of the science and religion dialogue in academia, as well as in the popular media. This thesis examines the possibility, scope and foundational topics involved in a dialogue between Vaisnava-Hindu theology as found in the Bhāgavata, and the theoretical, philosophical and theological issues surrounding contemporary biology. To examine the possibility and scope of a Bhāgavata-science dialogue, I focus on the theological, ontological, epistemological and teleological presuppositions that each tradition bring to the study of nature, outlining the similarities and differences in their approaches. I establish the grounds for further discussion through a comparative analysis of terms such as "consciousness," "knowledge" and "goal of knowledge" as they appear in the Bhagavata and noteworthy Darwinian texts. My argument is that although prima facie the two traditions appear different in their philosophical, scientific and theological approaches, there are a number of areas of common interest and parallels, especially in their epistemologies and teleologies. In the case of genuine differences, such as their views on the ontology of consciousness, I demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation. Clarifying the conceptual differences, establishing parallels and demonstrating areas of common interests opens the possibility and widens the scope for further dialogue.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao HELVANIA FERREIRA AGUIAR.pdf: 3230395 bytes, checksum: 040969b09fef9b61b14ece2904b1a5ec (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-06-07 / This dissertation has as its objective to investigate the Superinteressante magazine coverage towards to the religious theme and to characterize the type of vision that this publication diffuses about religion. Since the 90 s, the magazine has enlarged the space and frequency of the religious themes on its pages, especially, during the triennium 2000, 2001 and 2002. Starting from this confirmation, we formulate the questions that lead this research: What are the main religious themes that appeared on its pages? Do they reflect, somehow, the spiritual uneasiness from the post-modern society? Does the religion approach made by Superinteressante tend to the spectacle? Does the magazine fulfill a lack in the editorial market, considering that it is a secular publication that frequently deals with religion? Our preliminary suppositions lead to a journalistic coverage of the religious theme that would oscillate from the attempt to go deeper to the transformation of the information into a spectacle, which would reflect the spiritual uneasiness and the type of religiosity that permeates the pots-modern society, with a strong tendency to the elaboration of referential beliefs in a pretty much particular and individual way. In this aspect, the magazine would fulfill, also, a lack in the editorial market while dealing with religion without proselytism, going to contrary direction of the institutional means of communication, which have a confessional tone. To investigate the phenomenon, we have worked with two interpretative lines; one looking toward the content analysis using the multidisciplinary theoretical references indicated by the Science of Religion, based on the work of Guy Debord, Anthony Giddens, Zigmunt Bauman and Gianni Vattimo; and another one looking toward the analysis of the content delimited by Journalism referential. In the first line we have tried to establish specific characteristics of the object of study and in the second one, their general aspects. The first chapter aims to trace a wide profile of the magazine. The second one analyses the reporting contents, giving privilege to Science of Religion s approach. In the third, we look for the counterpoint, with a quantitative analysis under the focus of the Journalism and in the fourth chapter we have the crossing of the two theoretical lines / Esta dissertação tem como objetivo investigar a cobertura dada pela revista Superinteressante à temática religiosa e caracterizar o tipo de visão que a publicação veicula acerca da religião. A partir dos anos 90, a revista ampliou o espaço e a freqüência dos temas religiosos em suas páginas, sobretudo, no triênio 2000, 2001 e 2002. Partindo dessa constatação, formulamos as questões que nortearam a pesquisa: Quais as principais temáticas religiosas que aparecem em suas páginas? Elas refletem de alguma forma a inquietude espiritual da sociedade pós-moderna? A abordagem da religião por Superinteressante tende ao espetáculo? A revista supre uma lacuna no mercado editorial, levando-se em conta que é uma publicação laica, mas que trata freqüentemente de religião? Nossas suposições preliminares apontam para uma cobertura jornalística da temática religiosa que oscilaria entre a tentativa de aprofundamento e a espetacularização/superficialidade da informação, o que refletiria a inquietude espiritual e o tipo de religiosidade que permeia a sociedade pós-moderna, com forte inclinação para a elaboração de referenciais de crença bastante particulares e individuais. Nesse aspecto, a revista supriria, também, uma lacuna no mercado editorial ao tratar da religião sem proselitismo, ao contrário dos veículos institucionais, de tom confessional. Para investigar o fenômeno, trabalhamos com duas linhas interpretativas: uma voltada para a análise de conteúdo por meio de referenciais teóricos multidisciplinares indicados pelas Ciências da Religião, baseados nas obras de Guy Debord, Anthony Giddens, Zigmunt Bauman e Gianni Vattimo; e outra voltada para a análise de conteúdo balizada por referenciais advindos do Jornalismo. Na primeira tentou-se estabelecer características específicas do objeto de estudo e na segunda, seus aspectos gerais. O primeiro capítulo visa traçar um perfil abrangente da revista. O segundo analisa o conteúdo das reportagens, privilegiando o olhar das Ciências da Religião. No terceiro, busca-se o contraponto, com uma análise quantitativa sob o enfoque do Jornalismo e no quarto capítulo dá-se o cruzamento dessas duas vertentes teóricas

Earth Matters examines the relationships between alternative religion in North America and the natural world through the twin lenses of the history of religions and cultural anthropology. Throughout, nature remains a contested ground, defined simultaneously the limits of cultural activity and by an increasing expansion of claims to knowledge by scientific discourses. Less a historical review than a series of fugues of thought, Earth Matters engages with figures like the French vitalist, Georges Canguilhem, the American environmentalist, John Muir; the founder of Deep Ecology, Arne Næss; the collaborators on Gaia Theory, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis; the physicist and New Age scientist, Fritjof Capra; and the Wiccan writer and activist, Starhawk. These subjects move in spirals throughout the thesis: Canguilhem opens the question of vitalism, the search for a source of being beyond the explanations of the emerging sciences. As rationalism expands its dominance across the scientific landscape, this animating force moves into the natural world, to that protean space between the city and the wild and in the environmental thinkers who initially moved along those boundaries. As the twentieth century moves towards a close, mechanistic thinking simultaneously reaches heights of success previously unimagined and collapses under the demand for complexity posed by quantum physics, by research in genetic interactions, by the continued elusive relationship of mind to health. This allows the wild to return inside through the internalization of consciousness sparked by the American New Age, but also provides a new model to understand the natural world as complex zone open to a wide variety of strategies, including the multiplicities of understanding offered through contemporary neopaganisms. Earth Matters argues for the necessity of the notion of ecology, both as an environmental concern but also as an organizing principle for human thought and behavior. Ecologies are by their nature complex and multi-variegated things dependent upon the surprising and unpredictable interaction of radically different organisms, and it is through this model that we are best able to understand not only ourselves but also our communities and our efforts to make sense of the external world.

La question de la réalité, de la nature et du rôle de la relation entre science de l'univers et spiritualité dans l'oeuvre de connaissance scientifique, plus généralement dans l'histoire de la pensée, motive le présent travail. Afin de traiter cette question, l'auteur a choisi d'étudier la pensée de deux savants spiritualistes : Isaac Newton et Georges Lemaître, qui façonnent deux moments majeurs de l'histoire des sciences, celui de la fondation de la mécanique céleste, creuset de la science moderne, et celui de la fondation de la cosmologie moderne, lieu d'une définition radicalement nouvelle de l'univers et de la place de l'homme en son sein. Ces deux moments, newtonien et lemaîtrien, s'apparient l'un à l'autre, d'une part en raison de l'objet d'étude commun : le tout, et d'autre part en termes de succession et d'avancées dans l'histoire des sciences, puisqu'ils nous entraînent de la science du ciel en l'absolu newtonien, à la science du commencement et de l'évolution cosmologique en la relativité générale. La relation entre science de l'univers et spiritualité se révèle, sur la base de l'étude détaillée des deux pensées, comme une relation dynamique à double sens : de la science à la spiritualité et inversement, et une dimension cruciale de l'histoire conceptuelle, plus généralement de l'histoire de la pensée. Chez Newton et Lemaître, la recherche et les résultats scientifiques entraînent réflexion et conclusion spirituelles. Inversement, la recherche spirituelle représente une motivation de l'étude scientifique, conçue comme étude de l'ordre, de l'arrangement divin du monde. La présente thèse procure par conséquent des éléments de synthèse et de comparaison des deux pensées et permet d'asseoir plus largement, aux plans historique et philosophique, le choix du sujet. Celui-ci en ressort étayé. Mais au-delà des termes mêmes de l'histoire de la pensée, la démarche première de l'auteur a consisté à comprendre des acteurs éminents de celle-ci, comprendre, à travers leur démarche de pensée, l'être, l'esprit, par la lettre de l'histoire. Ce travail, le premier en son genre, en traitant de certains ressorts essentiels de la dynamique de l'esprit et de l'histoire de la pensée, traite des fondements de la connaissance.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-09-21T17:36:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 VANUZA WAGNY DE OLIVEIRA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCS 2013..pdf: 22397248 bytes, checksum: 81e19ff079247ff730961a26f12c3d70 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-21T17:36:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VANUZA WAGNY DE OLIVEIRA - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCS 2013..pdf: 22397248 bytes, checksum: 81e19ff079247ff730961a26f12c3d70 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Após a recente Reforma Psiquiátrica e a implementação de políticas públicas de atendimento aos portadores de transtornos mentais, os Centro de Atenção Psicossocial se tornaram um dos principais dispositivos de atenção e cuidado neste setor. Uma peculiaridade observada nos usuários do CAPS de Esperança-PB, é que recorrerem também a outras lógicas curativas como as práticas místico-religiosas e com frequência, declaram se sentir melhor do que antes. A presente pesquisa tem como objetivo principal investigar como se articulam os discursos científicos e religiosos nas estratégias dos usuários e famílias de portadores de transtornos mentais e os significados por elas atribuídos às consultas de terreiros de umbanda e/ou rezadores. Tomamos como referencial teórico a teoria de representações de Moscovici por sua visão dinâmica de realidade (2010), a teoria de campo de Bourdieu (1982) para interpretar as reações de poder entre os universos científico e místico-religioso e a interpretação do sagrado e profano de Durkheim (2000), segundo o qual, a vida social é permeada de simbolismo e que o sagrado é o principal elemento para obtenção do controle social. Nosso estudo identifica as representações dos usuários sobre a doença mental e as opiniões dos vizinhos e amigos, como também, as avaliações das práticas médicas e místico-religiosas baseada nos discursos dos entrevistados. A pesquisa desvela o contexto místico/religioso em que estão imersos e seus possíveis efeitos positivos sobre a doença mental. A metodologia utilizada foi o estudo de caso, a partir de uma amostra de 5. Sendo 2 usuários e 2 ex-usuários e 1 familiar. As técnicas utilizadas foram entrevistas semi-estruturadas e conversas em visitas domiciliares realizadas específicas para este fim. As narrativas revelam que apesar de alguns efeitos satisfatórios das práticas médicas há lacunas no tratamento, bem como, choques culturais em diferentes níveis. / After the recent psychiatric reform and the implementation of public policies that care for people with mental disorders, the Psychosocial Centra de AtençâoPsicossocial became one of the main devices of attention and care in this sector. A peculiarity observed in users of CAPS Esperança -PB, which is also resorting to other logical healing practices as mystical-religious and often claim to feel better than before. This research aims at investigating how to articulate the scientific and religious discourses in the strategies of users and families of people with mental disorders and the meanings they attributed to queries yards of Umbanda and/or chanters. We take as a theoretical representation theory of Moscovici for his dynamic vision of reality (2010), the field theory of Bourdieu (1982) to interpret the reactions of power between universes scientific and mystical-religious and Dürkheim (2000) interpretation of the sacred and profane, according to which social life is permeated with symbolism and that the sacred is the key element for achieving social control. Our study identifies the users' representations of mental illness and the opinions of neighbors and friends, as well as the assessments of medical practices and mystical-religious based on the interviews. The research reveals the mystical context / religious in which they are immersed and their possible positive effects on mental illness. The methodology used was the case study, based on a sample of 5. Being 2 users and 2 ex-users and 1 family. The techniques used were semi-structured interviews and talks in home visits for this specific purpose. The accounts show that satisfactory effects even though some medical practice there are gaps in the treatment, as well as culture shocks at different levels.

Born in Lisbon in an inaccurate date between 1460 and 1470, Judah Abravanel, since young, according to his biographer João Vila-Chã, devoted himself to study, contemplation and the typical teaching and learning model of the outstanding Jewish families of his time, or that is, a model marked by a substantial program of studies which included, in particular, Greek and Hebrew heritage. However, the first characteristic that differentiates his intellectual development is the condition of being the son of Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508), counselor and treasurer of D. Afonso V, whose prominence in the Portuguese court generated disagreements against the actions of the Jews. To his father, his personality is very much obliged; both in their public performance, in the synagogue and in the court, as well as in personal orientations; his father transmitted to him the initiation into the secrets of Kabbalah and the philosophical reflections of authors like Aristotle and Maimonides. Also known as the Leone Ebreo, the study of Judah Abravanel's historical-religious identity, contained in the book Dialogues of Love, proposes a perspective of wandering being-in-exile, ie experiencing the human condition in terms of passion and pain, proper of the sephardic mentality that is strengthened from that period, like dispersed Jew. The poetics present here manifests a theory of love produced with strong influence, among others, by Marsilio Ficino and Jochanan Alemanno, the latter one of the precursors Hebrew of the humanist Pico della Mirandola, and who is said to have provided a meeting between the two. Not only did his Dialogues of Love intertwines the Jewish Scriptures with the teaching of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Arabs (especially Averroes and Avicenna), but they also influenced the work of later authors such as Giordano Bruno. The Neoplatonic perspective there conceives love as a universal principle, uniting the inferior to the superior, the universe with its creator; moreover, he understands creation as an a priori given, hence "he indulges in the refutation of the Aristotelian thesis of the eternity of the world" (CALAFATE, 2000). The Neoplatonic writing of Judah Abravanel hides a structure of Kabbalah teaching, as learned from the wise Jewish theologians, who would have influenced the philosophy of Plato, as understood by Leone Ebreo. Therefore, this work has as general objective, to expose the conception of love of Judah Abravanel expressed in his Dialogues of Love, emphasizing the literary, philosophical and religious aspects that compose this work. / Nascido em Lisboa em data imprecisa entre 1460 e 1470, Judá Abravanel, desde novo, como atenta seu biógrafo João Vila-Chã, se dedicou ao estudo, à contemplação e ao típico modelo de ensino e aprendizagem das destacadas famílias judaicas de sua época, ou seja, um modelo marcado por um substancial programa de estudos em que incluíam, de modo especial, herança grega e hebraica. No entanto, a primeira característica que faz diferenciar seu desenvolvimento intelectual é a condição de ter sido filho de Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508), conselheiro e tesoureiro de D. Afonso V, cujo destaque na corte portuguesa gerou desavenças contra a atuação dos judeus. A seu pai, sua personalidade muito deve; tanto em seu desempenho público, na sinagoga e na corte, quanto em orientações pessoais; seu pai lhe transmitiu a iniciação nos segredos da Cabala e nas reflexões filosóficas de autores como Aristóteles e Maimônides. Também conhecido como Leão Hebreu, o estudo da identidade histórico-religiosa de Judá Abravanel, contida na obra Diálogos de Amor, propõe uma perspectiva de errância do ser-em-exílio, ou seja, a vivência da condição humana em termos de paixão e dor, própria da mentalidade sefardita que se fortalece a partir desse período, como judeu disperso. A poética ali presente manifesta uma teoria do amor produzida com forte influência, dentre outros, de Marsilo Ficino e Jochanan Alemanno, este último um dos precursores hebraicos do humanista Pico della Mirandola, e a quem se atribui ter proporcionado o encontro entre ambos. Não somente seus Diálogos de Amor entrelaçaram as Escrituras Judaicas com o ensino de Platão, Aristóteles, os estóicos e os árabes (sobretudo Averróis e Avicena), mas também influenciaram a obra de autores posteriores como Giordano Bruno. A perspectiva neoplatônica ali presente concebe o amor como princípio universal, unindo o inferior ao superior, o universo com o seu criador; aliás, ele entende a criação como dado apriorístico, por isto “ele se entrega à refutação da tese aristotélica da eternidade do mundo” (CALAFATE, 2000). A escrita neoplatônica de Judá Abravanel oculta uma estrutura de ensino da Cabala, como aprendida dos sábios teólogos judeus, os quais teriam influenciado a filosofia de Platão, assim entende Leão Hebreu. Portanto, esse trabalho tem como objetivo geral, expor a concepção de amor de Judá Abravanel expressa em seus Diálogos de Amor, ressaltando os aspectos literários, filosóficos e religiosos que compõem essa obra. / São Cristóvão, SE

The thesis has two aims. The first is to show that a more charitable approach to Manilius, such as Lucretian scholarship has exhibited in recent decades, yields a wealth of exciting discoveries that earlier scholarship has not thought to look for. The thesis' contributions to this project centre on three aspects of the poem: (I) the sophistication of its didactic techniques, which draw and build on various predecessors in the tradition of didactic poetry; (II) its cosmological, physical and theological basis, which has no exact parallel elsewhere in either astrology or natural philosophy, and despite clear debts to various traditions, is demonstrably the invention of our poet; (III) the extent to which rationales and physical bases are offered for points of astrological theory – something unparalleled in other astrological texts until Ptolemy. The second, related aim of the thesis is to offer a more satisfying interpretation of the poem as a whole than those that have hitherto been put forward. Again the cue comes from Lucretius: though the DRN is at first sight primarily an exposition of Epicurean physics, it becomes clear that its principal concern is ethical, steering its reader away from superstition, the fear of death and other damaging thought-patterns. Likewise, the Astronomica makes the best sense when its principal message is taken to be not the set of astrological statements that make up its bulk, but the poem’s peculiar world- view, for which those statements serve as an evidential basis. It is, on this reading, just as much a poem ‘on the nature of the universe', which provides the title of my thesis. At the same time, however, it finds new truth in the conventional assumption that Manilius is first and foremost an advocate of astrology: it reveals his efforts to defend astrology at all costs, uncovers strategies for making the reader more amenable to further astrological study and practice, and contends that someone with Manilius' set of beliefs must first have been a devotee of astrology before embracing a natural- philosophical perspective such as his. The thesis is divided into prolegomena and commentaries, which pursue the aims presented above in two different but complementary ways. The prolegomena comprise five chapters, outlined below: Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive survey of the evidence for the cosmology, physics and theology of the Astronomica, and discovers that a coherent and carefully thought-out world-view underlies the poem. It suggests that this Stoicising world- view is drawn exclusively from a few philosophical works of Cicero, but is nonetheless the product of careful synthesis. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between this world-view and earlier Academic criticism of astrology and concludes that the former has been developed as a direct response to these criticisms, specifically as set out in Cicero’s De divinatione. Chapter 3 examines the later impact of Manilius’ astrological world-view, as far as it can be detected, assessing the evidence for the early reception of his poem and its role in the history of philosophical astrology. The overwhelming impression is that the work was received as a serious contribution to debate over the physical and theological underpinnings of astrology; its world-view was absorbed into the mainstream of astrological theory and directly targeted in the next wave of Academic criticism of astrology. Chapter 4 looks at the more subtle strategies of persuasion that are at work in the Astronomica. It observes, first, a number of structural devices and word- patternings that set up the poem as a model of the universe it describes. This first part of the chapter concludes by asking what didactic and/or philosophical purpose such modelling could serve. The second part examines how, by a gradual process of habituation-through-metaphor, the reader is made familiar with the conventional astrological way of thinking about the world, which might otherwise have struck him as a baffling mass of contradictions. The third part looks at the use of certain rhetorical figures, particularly paradox, to re-emphasise important physical claims and assist the process of habituation. Chapter 5 takes on the task of making sense of the Astronomica as a whole, seeking out an underlying rationale behind the choice and ordering of material, accounting as well as is possible for its apparently premature end, and asking why, if it is a serious piece of natural-philosophical teaching, it so often appears to be self- undermining. A short epilogue asks what path can have led Manilius to embark on such a work as the Astronomica. It offers a sketch of the author as an adherent (but not a practitioner) of astrology, who had developed a philosophical system first as scaffolding for an art under threat, but had then come to see more importance in that philosophical underpinning than in the activities of prediction. The lemmatised commentaries that follow cover several passages from the first book of the Astronomica. As crucial as the remaining four books are to his natural-philosophical teaching, it is in this part of the poem that Manilius concentrates the direct expositions of his world-view. Like the chapters, the commentaries' two concerns are the nature and the exposition of the work's world-view. Each of the commentaries has its own focus, but all make full use of the format to tease out the poet's teaching strategies and watch his techniques operate 'in real time' over protracted stretches of text. Finally, an appendix presents the case for the Astronomica as the earliest evidence for the use of plane-image star maps. At two points in his tour of the night sky Manilius describes the positions of constellations in a way that suggests that he is consulting a stereographic projection of each hemisphere, and that he is assuming his reader has one to hand, too. This observation casts valuable new light on the development of celestial cartography.

This paper identifies theories and cognitive aspects that shed light on the transcultural unifying identity power of Masonic initiation rituals and illustrates this more closely using the case study of the German master ritual. It suggests that the potential of the unifying identity of Masonic rituals does not reside solely in their symbolism, but rather primarily in their enactment as performance. By breaking down the basic elements of the performative character of rituals and comparing the Masonic ritual to that of male initiation among the Chambri people of Papua New Guinea within Whitehouse’s theoretical model of modes of religiosity, this paper also explores the transcultural unifying identity power of rituals while outlining a novel explanatory framework in the field of Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) and Ritual Studies. The present paper suggests that religious and religiously connoted transcultural unifying identity, including its inherent capacity for meaning creation and meaning attribution, is more strongly and stably achieved the more Framed Cognitive Immersion (FCI) is engaged, that is, the more corresponding cognitive processes of the participants are triggered together.:1. Why ritual research? 1.2 The concept of religion used in this study 1.3 The concept of ritual used in this study 1.4 The three basic elements of a ritual 2. Symbols and the performative character of rituals 2.1 The holistic approach to human cognition (Embodiment) 3. The power of rituals: The performative dimension 3.1 The performance of the legend of Hiram Abif 3.2 Generation of Reality 3.3 Scenic Staging 3.4 Corporeality or Physical Presence 4. Framed Cognitive Immersion (FCI) in ritual context