RELIG200 Lecture Notes - Egalitarianism, Social Evolution, James George Frazer
7 Mar 2014
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They were utterly a product of their own cultural and historical situation. Victorian britain writing during a period when the idea of religion had lost a lot of its weight. Up until that point, christianity was usually seen as the only kind of religion and the pinnicle of human achievement. By this time people were seriously questioning this notion, questioning. He admitted the contiguity between many of the notions. Magic relies on associations that are indicative of all human thought. It is just that the premise is flawed. People are mistaking contingent associations with causal ones. If birds singing when the sun comes up are thought to be making the sun come up. Failure is thought to be a mistake on the part of the participant and not as proof that the causal relation is nonexistent. *the distinction between religion and magic seems to be arbitrary and made by people for political reasons.
