Ebook: An Unnatural History of Religions: Academia, Post-truth and the Quest for Scientific Knowledge

An Unnatural History of Religions examines the origins, development, and critical issues concerning the history of religion and its relationship with science. The book explores the ideological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted beliefs that surround the scientific foundations (or lack thereof) in the academic discipline of the history of religions, positioning them in today’s ‘post-truth’ culture.
Leonardo Ambasciano provides the necessary critical background to evaluate the most important theories and working concepts dedicated to the explanation of the historical developments of religion and covers the most important topics and paradigm shifts in the field, such as phenomenology, postmodernism, and cognitive science. These are taken into consideration chronologically, each time with case studies on topics such as shamanism, gender biases, ethnocentrism, and biological evolution.
Ambasciano argues that the roots of post truth may be deep in human biases, but that historical justifications change each time, resulting in different combinations. The surprising rise of once-fringe beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific claims, and so-called scientific creationism, demonstrates the alarming influence that post-truth ideas may exert on both politics and society. Recognising them before they spread anew may be the first step towards a scientifically renewed study of religion.
Unnatural History of Religion offers a comprehensive account of the academic discipline known as History of Religions, from its inception as a Victorian science of religion to the postmodern rejection of master narratives and the birth of contemporary Religious Studies to the recent resurgence of cognitive and evolutionary approaches. The story of the discipline is told chronologically through the lenses of the most important national schools and methods of the past two centuries. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the German-speaking countries, Italy, Romania, and the United States figure prominently through the life and works of their most renowned scholars.
One of the major themes to emerge from the Unnatural History of Religion is the constant disciplinary temptation to take over scientific explanations and favour fideistic redescriptions. Ever struggling to come to terms with science, the historical study of religions has reaffirmed time and again the absolute value of religion as epistemic truth, discarding or depreciating scientific tools as useless to grasp the inner core of human consciousness. Despite a stable scientific scaffolding conceived by brilliant precursors such as David Hume and Charles R. Darwin, and further improved by scholars such as Edward B. Tylor and James G. Frazer, this inclination has come to dominate the field and has eventually led to an academic U-turn towards antiscientific approaches. The field has thus lent its academic credibility to a wide array of antiscientific endeavours covering the whole gamut of the socio-political spectrum, from antidemocratic, reactionary Interwar politics, to the spiritual reawakening of the New Age.
As a successful belief system proved to survive any disconfirmation, the very existence of the History of Religions exemplifies the ongoing confrontation against science within both the Humanities and the social sciences. Notwithstanding a highly problematic epistemic status, a questionable methodological toolbox, and a troubling past, the field has been constantly reinvigorated by its intuitive cognitive appeal: folk religious ideas loom over the field, and with each generation their resurgence threatens to undo most of the previous scientific achievements.
The History of Religions has carved an academic niche where pseudoscience dictates the research agenda. The success of the field imposes a critical reconsideration of any triumphant account of scientific advancement and suggests a worrisome prospect for the future: will the scientific study of religion(s) survive the current post-truth era?