They made reasonable, though weak, inferences with regard to natural phenomena. In Hume's naturalistic anthropology, religious principles are derivative. The prevalence of the idea of Ghosts of ancestors or other superior beings becoming divinities among the primitives in many parts of the world, shows that Spencer’s theory has some plausibility. This fact, he argues, helps explain the tendency of Western scholars to dismiss intellectualist explanations of religion. In Religion Explained (2001), Pascal Boyer supplies a complementary cognitive theory that likewise characterizes religion as essentially concerned with person-like beings and explains it as a by-product of evolved mental dispositions. Others, like Mary Douglas and Edmund Leach, who follow even more closely in Durkheim's footsteps, have documented rich correlations between social arrangements and religious representations. This approach enjoys considerable advantages. 5. It includes the study of the relation of…, private religion In conventional sociological terms, religion is a public activity involving communal practices (such as worship and sacraments), and…, Religion, Naturalistic Reconstructions of, Religion in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, Religion in Mexico, Catholic Church and Beyond, Religion in Canada: A Historical Survey, 1500 to the Present, Religion, Western Perceptions of Traditional Religions, Religion, Western Perceptions of World Religions, Religion, Western Presence in Southeast Asia, Religion, Western Presence in the Pacific, Religion: Indigenous Peoples' View, South America, https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/religion-theories. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Karl Marx (1818–1883) both authored prominent humanistic theories of religion with scientific or quasi-scientific pretensions. the naturalness of religious ideas: a cognitive theory of religion. INTRODUCTION Anthropological theories of religion are diverse. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. new york: free press, 1995. eliade, mircea. Only a standpoint that abstracts from contested religious criteria could resolve such a dispute. religion explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought. The primitives do not, for good reasons, see the futility of Magic. Yet, they believe this humanistic theory culminates in what they call neurotheology, a "megatheology" whose content could be adopted by most of the world's major religions. A subjective supposition of some connection in terms of ideas is mistaken for an objective link. According to Tylor these spiritual beings later develop into Gods. Humans, Hume argues, anthropomorphize the unknown causes behind significant events and, thereby, create gods. In his opinion grand natural objects gave people a feeling of the infinite as well as acted as symbols of the infinite. R.R. manuel, frank. Despite this diversity, he claims, all particular religious phenomena coincide in "the belief of invisible, intelligent power" (p. 21). What is secularism? explaining religion: criticism and theory from bodin to freud. However, the date of retrieval is often important. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1993. hume, david. The Reformation made possible a nonreligious position from which to reflect critically on religion, conceived as a general category identifying one aspect of human intellectual, emotional, and social life. He describes a primal crime in which jealous sons kill and devour their father. london: athlone, 1954. leach, edmund. The phenomenon called religion is extremely variegated, complex, intricate and full of paradoxes. Robin Horton (the first man who wrote the article in April of 1971), basically introduces what he calls the “Intellectualist Theory”. These four could be arranged in a unified narrative by any of the three latter groups. As early as 1799, however, an alte… The belief in a God was first which later became degraded as Animism. It almost seems, on Hume's view, as if each individual concocts religion independently. The term "theory" in science can mean something much different from a hunch, which is how the public generally uses the word.Many leading scientists consider the Theory of Evolution of plant and animal species as far more than a simple idea. "religion as a cultural system." As a matter of fact, the concept of Soul and the concept of spirit are quite different. The people thought of celestial bodies, such as, moon, start, dawn and their attributes in terms of metaphor and symbol. Our mission is to provide an online platform to help students to discuss anything and everything about Essay. They are not an "original instinct or primary impression of nature," like self-love, sexual drive, or love of progeny (p. 21). In this last judgment Hume attends to the extraordinary diversity of religious beliefs. Compare and contrast between Bhakti and Sufism. They gain this additional salience from their "aggregate relevance" to important social and moral processes. Intellectualist Theories. oxford: oxford university press, 1993. horton, robin. Stewart Guthrie, on the contrary, adheres to Hume's anthropological approach. One should ground explanations of social facts in sociology, or a theory of society. introduction to the science of religion (1873). journal of the royal anthropological institute 88 (1958): 147–164. Feuerbach complicates matters, however, by insisting that theological statements predicating attributes of God must be inverted. The basic notion is the belief that any belonging of an individual, somehow represents a part of the person. Likewise, they get the idea of a person’s duality from dreams. It produced different and warring "religions" (i.e., conceptions of piety and worship), justified by competing criteria of religious authority. Encyclopedia.com. Therefore they believed that a greater stronger being was in control and caused these effects. By repression Freud meant that civilized society demands that we not fulfill all our desires immediately, but that they have to be repressed. World’s Largest Collection of Essays! minneapolis, minn.: fortress press, 1991. spencer, herbert. edition. the varieties of religious experience (1902). The idea of Ghosts grows into the idea Gods and the Ghosts of ancestors become divine beings. Section 2. willard trask. The comparative study of religion formed a central building block of anthropology as the discipline emerged in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. totem and taboo: some points of agreement between the mental lives of savages and neurotics (1913), trans. The social function of religion manifests itself as it “serves as the carrier of social sentiments providing symbols and rituals that enable people to express the deep…show more content… : university of notre dame press, 1981. tylor, edward. A French admirer of Hume's theory, Baron d'Holbach, coined the term anthropomorphism to capture the tendency Hume describes. TOS4. Society requires a periodic strengthening of the social bond through communal activity that reinforces collective feelings and ideas. 3. the mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Retrieved December 20, 2020 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/religion-theories. Society subjects individuals to restraints and privations, but social interaction also fosters courage and confidence. Conceived by Jansenists to defend their theology against papal condemnation, modern probability theory, for example, both rendered religious presuppositions optional, and facilitated modern science (Stout, 1981). Concepts involving "full-access strategic agents" gain plausibility and significance from the role they can play in moral reasoning, their congruity with human intuitions about the causes of misfortune, and their capacity to explain the social effects created in ritual. The human beings and nature stand in a relationship of awe, wonder and terror etc. Examine the nexus between religion and politics of the state. The individual depends on society for his or her well-being, yet society demands service from the individual and frequently requires that the individual set aside his or her own interests and inclinations. Worship, undertaken to maintain the relationship between the individual and the sacred, actually maintains the relationship between the individual and the reality behind the sacred—society. Nature-Myth school was a German School, dealing with Indo-European Religions. Not everything that exists, of course, serves a beneficial purpose (some things work to the detriment of individuals and societies) and not everything that has beneficial effects exists for the sake of its effects. James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, first published in 1890, traced magical and religious threads throughout history and weaved them into a pattern depicting the p… Sometimes they both also explain away and stigmatize objections, rather than meeting them. In the service of religious polemic, early modern thinkers devised canons of inquiry and argument that were independent of religious presuppositions. Explain the intellectualist theories of religion. the divine comedy, vol. Religion-as-theory and religion-as-communion represent two poles or aspects of religion with varying relative salience depending on circumstance. Most importantly, perhaps, the Protestant Reformation shattered the relative uniformity of religious thought and culture in Christian Europe. Rituals, meant to strengthen society's relationship to the sacred, strengthen society. The intellectualist option states that ethics are not outside or above God, but ethics must be interpreted by God. On this interpretation, Feuerbach's humanistic theory has religious inspiration; it articulates a religious naturalism. Sir James Frazer (1922) in his work, The Golden Bough, wrote about magic and primitive superstition. He shows that the primitives were rational though with a limited quantum of knowledge. How is his story about that process consistent with the intellectualist approach to religion in general ? Section 2. london: routledge and kegan paul, 1966. douglas, mary. According to... (2) The Ghost Theory: the essence of christianity (1841), trans. berkeley: university of california press, 1994. boyer, pascal. Prevalent in biology, functional explanations explain something by its function, or what it does. Because they need "to form some particular and distinct idea" of the causes and because science "exceeds" their comprehension, "the ignorant multitude" allow the imagination to clothe the unknown causes with human features (p. 29). Published by Experts, Essay on the Evolutionary and Functional Theories of Religion (719 Words), Essay on the Relation between Religion and Social Change (2407 Words), Short Essay on Sects, Cults and Denominations (284 Words), Essay on Evolutionism and its Roots (830 Words), Essay on Leadership: Introduction, Functions, Types, Features and Importance. See also Freud, Sigmund; Hume, David; Mysticism; Neurotheology; Sociology. new york: harper, 1957. fraser, james. If religion itself is not universal, it is, nevertheless, a response to universal feelings. Share Your Essays.com is the home of thousands of essays published by experts like you! https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/religion-theories, "Religion, Theories of Tylor could not see the difference between the two concepts. (ii) According to the many-gods objection, Pascals wager begs the question and hence is irrational. the elementary forms of religious life (1912), trans. london: murray, 1871. Durkheim argues that the members of a society objectify and project outside their minds the feelings that the social collectivity inspires in them. Rather, the latter simply make some supernatural concepts—the one's concerning full access strategic agents—more relevant. Max Muller, a German linguist, propounded this theory. Social scientists generally v…, Psychology of Religion This may well be correct. Hume's theory explains religion in intellectual terms: as an account of the unknown causes at work in the natural and social worlds. In the mid-twentieth century Mircea Eliade interpreted religious symbolism in light of what he called hierophanies, the religious experiences wherein one perceives a mode of the transcendent, wholly other "sacred" in a mundane object. The Animism or the Soul theory says the same thing in terms of the idea of Soul. They feel acted on by a mighty moral force to which they are subject, and, not surprisingly, they imagine it external to them. Failure of Magic is due to Magician’s wrong inferences about a mystical link between various objects. Myths nevertheless metaphorically express the experience of the infinite. Ludwig Feuerbach, for instance, argued in The Essence of Christianity (1841) that humans unconsciously project the essential characteristics of the human species outside themselves and reify them in the form of a divine being. So in a sense, Africa becomes a good place to look at how traditional religion adapts or responds to the coming in of monotheistic religion. The Soul theory of Tylor has elements of the sacred and the supernatural. First, Durkheim argues that religious beliefs and rites, the beliefs and practices related to sacred things, symbolize society and social relations. With the passage of time, the symbolic representations came to have an independent identity and became separated from that which they represented. The emergent theoretical study of religion had its inception in apologetics and polemics. Taken literally, religion, like science, represents an attempt to explain, predict, and control the environment. cambridge, mass. These features, together with the all-encompassing nature of their theories and the reverence accorded to the founders and the founding texts, leads some critics to liken Marxism and psychoanalysis to religions. In their opinion, primitive societies offered an evidence of the earliest forms of Religion. Elster, nevertheless, rightly criticizes the all too frequent assumption in social scientific theory that unintended beneficial effects provide sufficient explanation for their cause. Early human beings were unable to understand or explain the world of nature. As early as 1799, however, an alternative explanation of religion emerges. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). first principles. Lang (1989:2) argued that the idea of God cannot have evolved out of reflections on dreams and “Ghosts”, because the two have entirely different origins. These latter are all universal, he claims, and have a "precise determinate object," whereas religion is not universal and is not uniform in its "ideas." Boyer contends that supernatural concepts preserve most intuitive expectations, but conspicuously violate a few (e.g., invulnerable organisms or percipient artifacts). Section – II . As part of his larger project to create a science of human nature, Hume seeks both to isolate the causes of religion in human nature and to identify the consequences of religion in light of human nature. The Age of Exploration and Empire increased European contact with non-European cultures and non-Western religions. As an adult, Freud considered himself an atheist, but his Jewish background and upbringing and background played an important role in the development of his ideas. The study of the relationship of religion to social structures and social processes. An enterprise fundamentally concerned with explanation, prediction, and control, religion, on Hume's view, directly competes with science. Discuss the social significance of pilgrimages. In his book, The Principles of Sociology, Spencer (1876-96) discuss primitive beliefs. Individual psychology, however, cannot explain a social fact. Religionists of one persuasion or another sought out the origin of religion to defend their view from competing religious accounts or irreligious explanations. To characterize religion most generally, he introduces a notion that influenced Eliade and his followers, and that eventually succumbed to ethnographic counterexamples. Unlike Max Muller, Herbert Spencer and … Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1996. smith, wilfred cantwell. This theory was superseded by the ghost theory and the soul theory. Though the polemical inspiration for theories of religion has receded in many quarters, one can nevertheless profitably make a heuristic distinction between humanistic theories of religion and religious theories of religion. He claimed that the primitive belief in an impersonal force preceded beliefs in spiritual beings. According to Tylor, experiences of death, disease, visions and dreams lead the primitives to think about the existence of immaterial power, i.e., the Soul. INVISIBLE RELIGION . (December 20, 2020). "Religion, Theories of Compare and contrast between Bhakti and Sufism. EMILE DURKHEIM, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life This paper proposes a … the meaning and end of religion (1962). Science as an institution, by contrast, has historically resisted the tendency to anthropomorphize. Religion is the sigh of the creature overwhelmed by misfortune, the senti­ ment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. political system of highland burma. Blatant contradictions in theologies of all types manifest the tension between these needs. While allowing that religious beliefs can reflect social preoccupations, he rejects symbolic understandings of religion because the subjects of his fieldwork in Africa construe their religious beliefs literally. 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