ABSTRACT

This volume examines the way in which cultural ideas about "the heavens" shape religious ideas and are shaped by them in return. Our approaches to cosmology have a profound effect on the way in which we each deal with religious questions and participate in the imaginative work of public and private world-building.

Employing an interdisciplinary team of international scholars, each chapter shows how religion and cosmology interrelate and matter for real people. Historical and contemporary case studies are included to demonstrate the lived reality of a variety of faith traditions and their interactions with the cosmos. This breadth of scope allows readers to get a unique overview of how religion, science and our view of space have, and will continue to, impact our worldviews.

Offering a comprehensive exploration of humanity and its relationship with cosmology, this book will be an important reference for scholars of Religion and Science, Religion and Culture, Interreligious Dialogue and Theology, as well as those interested in Science and Culture and Public Education.

chapter |4 pages

General introduction

part 1|74 pages

Intersections of astronomy and religion

chapter 1|10 pages

Religion and cosmology

chapter 2|10 pages

Calling down the spirits in the sky

Blackfoot astronomy and sense of the sacred

chapter 3|9 pages

To reverently bestow the seasons

Calendrical narratives in early China and Rome

chapter 7|7 pages

In search of the stars of David

Situating the Rabbinic Jewish astronomical tradition in world cultural astronomy scholarship

part 2|48 pages

Intersections of astronomy and religion

chapter 8|14 pages

The cosmos of a Big God

Brahe, Kepler, Bruno and the sizes of the stars in a Copernican universe

part 3|67 pages

Intersections of astronomy and religion

chapter 12|9 pages

Market predictions

Astrology in modern India

chapter 13|13 pages

Faster than the speed of NASA

The tenth planet, prophecy, and the universalization of a Gujarati village goddess

chapter 14|11 pages

Radiance and darkness

Japanese Buddhist cosmographies

chapter 15|12 pages

Abductions angelic and alien

The changing cosmologies of otherworldly journeys

chapter 16|9 pages

Astrophysics and religion

chapter 17|9 pages

The epistemology of Flat Earth theory

Evidentialism, suspicion, and the ethics of belief

part 4|34 pages

Intersections of astronomy and religion

chapter 20|9 pages

Wonder brokers

Scientific wonder as spiritual authority in the Cosmos series (1980 and 2014)

chapter |3 pages

Conclusion