HUM-10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: James Ussher, Animism, Industrial Revolution
Document Summary
4 different ways anthropologists have looked at religion: the study of origin, the study of function (what did religion do for society/people, the study of meaning, the study of experience (how do people experience it) Intellectual approach is the oldest (reaction to it was emotional) Before this no critical examination of religion (you were thought to be a heretic and burned at the stake) Rationalism/reason: positivism positive knowledge, rapid change, progress, age of empire expanding and dividing up the world, people questioning christianity (e. g. higher criticism of the bible came from. Germany and it looks at the bible and who wrote it;: history seen as a science. Geology criticized the bible: degenerationism the idea that people degenerated from civilized to savages (came from ussher who calculated the date of creation) The approach was that this was a savage belief it was irrational to believe in spirits and ghosts. Andrew lang they are not animistic, they believe in a single god.
