Ideas about the origin and development of religion were initially based on the reports of missionaries and adventures about the nature of religion among the primitives. Hence when ever Magic fails, its failure is rationally explained as under: (i) The practitioner forgetting to perform some prescribed act, or, (ii) His ignoring to observe some prohibition, or. Since, these will make a loud rumbling sound, rain will follow. Before proceeding to discuss the intellectualist theories, we should, however, take note of another very strong theory about the origin of religion. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and Karl Marx (1818–1883) both authored prominent humanistic theories of religion with scientific or quasi-scientific pretensions. Even hair and nail clippings represent the concerned person. In his opinion grand natural objects gave people a feeling of the infinite as well as acted as symbols of the infinite. Individual psychology, however, cannot explain a social fact. Specifically religious concepts (as opposed to folklore, myths, etc.) Nature-Myth school was a German School, dealing with Indo-European Religions. Marett (1866-1943), another disciple of Tylor, criticized the animistic theory. 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). Robin Horton, for example, in a series of essays spanning thirty years (and collected in 1993) argues for an intellectualist explanation of religion. From cognitive psychology Boyer adopts the conclusion that humans display cognitive biases that predispose the mind to attend to certain kinds of information, to classify it in specific ways, and to draw certain sorts of conclusions about it. Myths nevertheless metaphorically express the experience of the infinite. With the passage of time, the symbolic representations came to have an independent identity and became separated from that which they represented. Whereas Hume deems belief in invisible, human-like beings to be the hallmark of religion, Durkheim argues that the category of religion includes systems without spiritual beings (or, at least, systems like Buddhism, where spiritual beings possess, he claims, only minor importance). Tylor’s definition of Religion is that Religion originated from a belief in spiritual beings. In The Mystical Mind (1999) they provide models of brain function to explain mystical experience, myth, and ritual. Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. on religion: speeches to its cultured despisers (1799), trans. berkeley: university of california press, 1994. boyer, pascal. Despite this diversity, he claims, all particular religious phenomena coincide in "the belief of invisible, intelligent power" (p. 21). Sometimes he portrays the primal crime as an historical phylogenetic truth. Religion is the sigh of the creature overwhelmed by misfortune, the senti­ ment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. Taking inspiration from Durkheim's injunction that "we must know how to reach beneath the symbol to grasp the reality it represents and that gives the symbol its true meaning" because the "most bizarre or barbarous rites and the strangest myths translate some human need and some aspect of life, whether social or individual," many twentieth-century scholars interpret religious beliefs primarily as symbolic expressions of existential concerns (p. 2). If God is conceived as love, for example, humanity must come to see that love, as an essential component of human nature, is divine. A French admirer of Hume's theory, Baron d'Holbach, coined the term anthropomorphism to capture the tendency Hume describes. 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. 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." The Ghost theory explains the origin of Religion in the idea of Ghosts. They are not an "original instinct or primary impression of nature," like self-love, sexual drive, or love of progeny (p. 21). Essay on the Intellectualist Theories of Religion (1620 Words) (1) The Nature-Myth School: To try to explain religion through a theory of the person entirely misses the social dynamics creating this social fact. Answer the following questions in about 250 words each. Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Society requires a periodic strengthening of the social bond through communal activity that reinforces collective feelings and ideas. Stewart Guthrie, on the contrary, adheres to Hume's anthropological approach. As a matter of fact, the concept of Soul and the concept of spirit are quite different. They believe that the Supreme being is responsible for all the activities that occur under the sun, they believe that the universe responds accortdibng to ones behavior, it punishes the wrong doers and it rewards those who practice good morals in the society. new haven, conn.: yale university press, 1987. proudfoot, wayne. 2. They criticized the Philological and Etymological approach to Religion. An enterprise fundamentally concerned with explanation, prediction, and control, religion, on Hume's view, directly competes with science. The reports of seafarers about exotic beliefs and practices introduced ethnographic data that could not easily be incorporated into the narratives of premodern Europe. totem and taboo: some points of agreement between the mental lives of savages and neurotics (1913), trans. Although Durkheim relies on irremediably faulty ethnography and untenable assumptions about the simplicity of "primitive" societies, his interpretation of Australian religion well illustrates his general theory. The people thought of celestial bodies, such as, moon, start, dawn and their attributes in terms of metaphor and symbol. To explain, Durkheim suggests that unlike science, “[r]eligion’s true purpose is not intellectual, but social” (Pals: Nine Theories, 102). Religiosity is a term used by social scientists to refer to religious behavior. In offering a sociological explanation of the personal beings that define religion, Horton departs from Hume. According to... 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