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The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and scientific disposition.
The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and scientific disposition.
Sigmund Freud saw human weakness and helplessness as a fundamental force behind the establishment of religion, [13] a view which might seem to draw support from the Inglehart–Welzel thesis that links the insecurities of traditional economies to a search for spiritual certainty, the affluence of modernization to a declining stress on religion.
Religion requires a system of symbolic communication, such as language, to be transmitted from one individual to another. Philip Lieberman states "human religious thought and moral sense clearly rest on a cognitive-linguistic base". [19] From this premise science writer Nicholas Wade states:
Belief in spirits grew out of attempts to explain life and death. Primitive people used human dreams in which spirits seemed to appear as an indication that the human mind could exist independent of a body. They used this by extension to explain life and death, and belief in the after life.
One modern academic theory of religion, social constructionism, says that religion is a modern concept that suggests all spiritual practice and worship follows a model similar to the Abrahamic religions as an orientation system that helps to interpret reality and define human beings, [6] and thus believes that religion, as a concept, has been ...
Animal faith is the study of animal behaviours that suggest proto-religious faith. It is commonly believed that religion and faith are unique to humans, [1] [2] [3] largely due to the typical dictionary definition of the word religion (see e.g. Wiktionary or Dictionary.com) requiring belief in a deity, which has not been observed in non-human animals. [4]
The history of religion is the written record of human religious feelings, thoughts, and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BCE). [1] The prehistory of religion involves the study of religious