Research Paper Topic

[DrunkMonkey]

I am in a class on the biocultural evolution of religion. I have a term paper (about 8 pages double spaced) due in about a month that I need to come up with a topic for. I need to be able to find some kind of scholarly articles on it.

My current idea:

Growth rates of various religions with an examination of why certain religions are doing better than others (sort of a memetic analysis)
This book might be a good start

Does anybody have any good ideas to throw at me?

[Rhinoqulous]

I'd recommend Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomena , it's a very interesting look at how the religion meme functions. If nothing else, you could look into what Dennett used for sources for that book.

For a good synopsis of the fiction anthology now commonly referred to as the Old Testament, try Silberman and Finklestein's The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts

[Choobus]

DrunkMonkey wrote

Does anybody have any good ideas to throw at me?

why not discuss Cal's Christ psychotic hypothesis........

[Sternwallow]

Yay, that's IT!

[DrunkMonkey]

Rhinoqulous wrote

I'd recommend Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomena, it's a very interesting look at how the religion meme functions. If nothing else, you could look into what Dennett used for sources for that book.

Already read it for the class. :thumbsup:

Also reading "The God Delusion" and "The End of Faith". Good stuff.

[DrunkMonkey]

Choobus wrote

why not discuss Cal's Christ psychotic hypothesis........

As great a topic as that would be I think I need to find something with more research behind it. Any topic that I do will tend to treat religion as sort of a virus or meme (which is what the class is essentially about) but I don't know that doing a paper on it being a mental disorder would be relevant to the class, at least as long as there isn't much research on it.

A class treating religion as a memetic virus? Sweet.