TY - BOOK AU - Luhrmann,T.M. TI - How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others SN - 9780691211985 AV - BL624 .L84 2022 U1 - 202 23 PY - 2020///] CY - Princeton, NJ : PB - Princeton University Press, KW - Faith KW - RELIGION / Spirituality KW - bisacsh KW - Good Parsi KW - Of Two Minds KW - Our Most Troubling Madness KW - Persuasion of the Witch’s Craft KW - anthropology of mind KW - anthropology of religion KW - ethnography KW - feeling the presence of god KW - how prayer works KW - psychological anthropologist KW - psychological anthropology KW - psychology of prayer KW - psychology of religious experience KW - psychology of seeing god KW - understanding religious experience KW - understanding religious practice KW - what happens to religious worshippers KW - why prayer works N1 - Frontmatter --; CONTENTS --; Preface --; 1 The Faith Frame --; 2 Making Paracosms --; 3 Talent and Training --; 4 How the Mind Matters --; 5 Evidence for the Way Gods and Spirits Respond --; 6 Why Prayer Works --; 7 A God Who Responds --; Acknowledgments --; General Notes on Methods --; Bibliographic Essays and Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - The hard work required to make god real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faithHow do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith.Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more.A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691211985?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691211985 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780691211985/original ER -