Description: This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches, it is a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, and its inextricable interdependence with language. It is also a detailed study of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions that we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from a range of disciplines.
Review Quotes: "Roy Rappaport's book is an admirable blend of rich information and analytical power. It is a committed and challenging reflection on the importance of religion and the constructive power of rituals for a postmodern world, seen in the light of its pre-modern and modern history. A courageous work in a period of overspecialized scholarship, I have never read such a comprehensive and penetrating treatise on rituals." Hans Kung, Universitat Tubingen