Digitalizing the religious niche (and vice versa)

pp. 215-227

in: Tommaso Bertolotti, Patterns of rationality, Berlin, Springer, 2015

Abstract

This brief chapter deals with the developments of online religiosity and its possible perversion. The first section examines whether the impact of Internet on traditional religions is fundamentally helpful in adding anything new to the world of spirituality and devotion. The second section deals with some instances of religious and spiritual behaviors that are being produced by digitalized lifestyle, even though they are not concerned with traditional religious beliefs, but emerging through the same inferential patterns as the one we witnessed in the previous chapter. The question underlying this research is whether we are looking the right way when we mean to study the link between computers, Internet and religiosity.