RE: Very first Religion?
November 2, 2008 at 5:16 pm
(This post was last modified: November 2, 2008 at 5:46 pm by Daystar.)
(August 27, 2008 at 11:14 am)StewartP Wrote: Probably some lazy, cunning son-of-a-bitch found that by dressing up in animal skins and talking funny he could frighten the tribe into feeding and looking after him.
Thus was born the first priest.
Like your avatar?
(August 27, 2008 at 11:09 am)Brick-top Wrote: What was the very first Religion in the world?
The New Encyclopædia Britannica says that "as far as scholars have discovered, there has never existed any people, anywhere, at any time, who were not in some sense religious."
English anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832 - 1917) theorized that Anamism was the earliest religion. He reasoned that dreams, visions, hallucinations and the lifelessness of corpses inspired primitive people to conclude that the body had a soul (Latin, anima). Since they dreamed of dead relitives their soul must live on in the afterlife. The soul then dwelt in trees, rocks, rivers etc. The objects as well as the sould began to be worshipped.
Another English anthropologist, R. R. Marett (1866 - 1943) introduced a refined animism that he called animatism. He studied the Melanesians of the Pacific islands as well as the natives of Africa and America who, he believed, preferred an impersonal force or supernatural power which animated everything. An emotional response to the unknown. Awe and fear. He liked to say that religion was "not so much thought out as danced out."
Scottish ancient folklore expert James Frazer (1854 - 1941) published The Golden Bough in 1890, and he argued that religion grew out of magic. That ancient man tried to control his life and environment by imitating nature - like invoking rain by sprinkling water on the ground with thunderlike drums and sticking pins in an effigy. He said that religion is "a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man."
Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939), in his book Totem and Taboo explained that the earliest religion grew out of a "father figure neurosis." He reasoned that like wild horses and cattle, in primitive society the loved / hated father dominated the clan - was rebelled against and killed to acquire his power.
He said "these cannibalistic savages ate their victim" but later felt remorse and so invented rites and rituals to atone. The Father became the god and the rituals became religion.
None of these possibilities are any more likely than any other because no one knows for sure.
(September 19, 2008 at 5:00 am)Giff Wrote: I think it´s not strange that people like 50 00+ years ago had a strong belief in spirits and all that. What other should they belive in? There where not any science back so its quite naturall that they tried to find an explenation to everything that is going on around them. Like why the sun rise and set.
I dont priest back then tried to fool anyone I think theuy too really belived in that they preached about or what they now did back then.
But today it strange that people still in stories about frogs raining from the sky and a person walking on water. Today people have the information to know that all that is just myths and stories from a very distant time.
I wonder - have any of you ever actually studied the history of science or do you just have some utopian idea that it is everything ever good and all knowing sort of spoonfed bullshit you think as a quasi messiah?
You all are pretty young, aren't you - not yet graduated to the more mature typical political science minded atheist ... hating some one elses 'fairy' tales and that sort of thing?
Just curious.
