Glossary
The human power to imagine a shared sacred world that becomes more real and authoritative than visible reality.
Topic brief
A Jiang Lens evidence brief for this topic, built from source tags, transcript matches, and linked source refs.
religious imagination
The human power to imagine a shared sacred world that becomes more real and authoritative than visible reality.
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Key Notes
normative
He rejects the prejudice that non-technological peoples are stupid, arguing that their religious imagination is sophisticated, complex, and vivid.
model
Jiang says this religion makes the visible world insignificant relative to the spirit world, because the spirit world controls what happens here.
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model
Jiang says religion can be more real than reality as long as everyone believes in it, and nonbelief threatens the religion's survival.
model
The religious imagination can make an imagined world more true, more powerful, and more real than the visible world when many people imagine it together.
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Timestamped Evidence
Transcript
"...is the power of religion okay how once we have the religious imagination we can create things that are actually for us more real..."
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"...true than this world, okay? That's a power of the human imagination. You can imagine a world, and this world, as long as many..."
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"...it's very imaginative, right? It's very imaginative. They have a vivid imagination. Okay? The other thing is that it's extremely sophisticated and complex. So,..."
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"They don't have cell phones. Therefore, they must be stupid. But clearly, from our understanding of their religious beliefs, they're actually extremely imaginative and..."
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"Why are bad things happening? Bad things are happening because the spirits are unhappy, right? Does that make sense? So therefore, you must go..."
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"yeah it's not a classroom it's not real this discussion is not real it's pointless you understand so that's what's happening here they're malembo..."
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"...so having revealed last class let's now talk about um the religious imagination okay so this is the pyramids um it was built 2400..."
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Relevant Lectures And Readings
Reading
For most of human history, Jiang argues, humans were peaceful, egalitarian, and artistic because the forest, animals, ancestors, and spirit world were not scenery.
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Related Topics
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