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It is a bitter irony that today millions who claim to be religious - those who counsel peace, advocate the community of humankind, and voice concern for the welfare of others - often perpetrate madness, mayhem, and murder on a grand scale, and all in the name of some "righteous" cause. It would seem ...

It is a bitter irony that today millions who claim to be religious - those who counsel peace, advocate the community of humankind, and voice concern for the welfare of others - often perpetrate madness, mayhem, and murder on a grand scale, and all in the name of some "righteous" cause. It would seem that the crusades, inquisitions, and witch hunts of our dark and blood-drenched past have taught us nothing. In just the first few years of the 1990s the world has witnessed Sikh violence against Muslims in India; Serbian Orthodox Christians against Croatian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims in the shattered Yugoslavia; the extremism of Muslim holy laws throughout Africa and the Middle East; Catholics against Protestants in Northern Ireland; the Branch Davidian inferno in Waco, Texas; Hindus and Buddhists engaging in violent clashes in Sri Lanka; and the United States' first real experience of international religious terrorism on its own shores - namely the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. These are but a few of the horrific episodes that make so many people question the benign message of modern religion. In Holy Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the 1990s, renowned journalist James A. Haught, author of the widely acclaimed Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness, demonstrates in gruesome detail that humanity in general and the world's religions in particular have learned little from the brutal mistakes of their predecessors. Whether it be masses of Hindus storming the gates of a Muslim mosque in India; a car bombing in Belfast; the shotgun murder of an abortion-clinic physician in Florida; "ethnic cleansing" at the hands of Orthodox Serbs inBosnia-Herzegovina; or the bounties placed on the heads of those who dare to question the iron law of Islam; the frightening effects of "fractious faith" can be seen in virtually every part of the globe. But before rational people c

Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie ...

Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike. As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry. Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life.