Is God Dead? Part 3

Evolutionary Theories of Religion

Nineteenth-century evolutionary theories of religion primarily sought to understand the origin, development, and function of religion in human societies rather than in the heavens. These theories emerged in the context of the broader intellectual movement of evolutionism, which gained prominence following Charles Darwin's works on biological evolution. Religions, akin to other entities, have undergone a historical process of evolution, transitioning from rudimentary to more intricate forms. This perspective views religion as a product of earthly development and cultural progression, rather than as an entity bestowed from a celestial, heavenly origin. Key aspects of these theories include:

Progression from Simple to Complex: Early theorists like Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer and Herbert Spencer suggested that religion evolved in a linear fashion from simple to complex forms. Tylor's theory of animism, for instance, posited that religion originated in primitive cultures as a belief in spiritual beings and evolved into more complex religious systems.

Social and Psychological Functions: Many theorists argued that religion, due to primitive ignorance, evolved as a means of explaining natural phenomena, instilling moral values, and maintaining social cohesion. Émile Durkheim's sociological approach, for example, emphasized the role of religion in creating and reinforcing agreed-upon social norms, values, and solidarity.

Survival and Adaptation: Drawing from Darwin's ideas, some theorists viewed religion through the lens of survival and adaptation. They proposed that religious beliefs and practices might have conferred certain advantages, contributing to the survival and cohesion of early human groups.

Psychological Theories

Many of these evolutionary theories concentrated on the psychological elements of human existence, whereas others emphasized the sociological underpinnings. Religion as such was a creation of human psychology or society. “We cannot take a step towards constructing an idea of God,” argued the English polymath H. Spencer (1820–1903), the famous nineteenth-century anthropologist, “without the ascription of human attributes.”

Edward Tylor

Edward Tylor, an influential anthropologist living from 1823 to 1917, developed a significant theory regarding the origins of religion. His theory is often considered foundational in the field of anthropology of religion. Tylor proposed that religion originated as people sought to understand and explain natural phenomena that they couldn't otherwise explain. He believed that early humans, observing the world around them, attributed life and a soul to inanimate objects and natural phenomena, a belief known as animism.

According to Tylor, this animistic perspective was the earliest form of religious belief. He theorized that humans initially saw spirits and supernatural forces in everything around them, from trees and rivers to rocks and weather patterns. These spirits were seen as responsible for the various phenomena that people encountered in their daily lives. That is why they worshiped the spirits/gods of rain, lightning, rivers, and other natural phenomena.

Tylor's theory also posits that as societies evolved, so did their religious beliefs. From animism, he believed that polytheism (worship of multiple gods) developed, and eventually, this evolved into monotheism (worship of a single god). He saw this progression as a part of the broader evolution of human culture and thought, moving from simple to increasingly complex forms. Tylor advocated an evolutionary/ developmental rather than a degradation theory of religion. Traditional theistic scholars have all along argued that the original stage in religious thinking had been that of monotheism; polytheism being the result of a degradation of human religious thought. Tylor argued that it was the other way around. Recognizing the survival of earlier cultural elements in new cultures, Tylor defined these elements as “processes, customs, opinions…carried on by force of habit into a new state of society…and they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved.” Tylor propounded a plausible theory of “animism,” in which “the conception of the human soul is the very ‘fons et origo’ of the conception of the spirit and deity in general.”

Tylor's approach to the study of religion was part of a broader trend in 19th-century anthropology that sought to explain human culture and society in evolutionary terms. His work laid the groundwork for future studies in the anthropology of religion, influencing many scholars who came after him. However, it's important to note that his theories, like many others from that era, reflect a Eurocentric and somewhat colonial perspective, and have been critiqued and revised in light of more contemporary understanding.

Animism and Religion

Animism, to Tylor, was the primary formation of religious beliefs that developed into modern higher forms of religion. He argued that such a belief stemmed from man’s efforts to explain dream experiences and the phenomenon of death. Tylor believed that animism of the lower tribes could have easily continued had man not risen from his savage conditions. Therefore, instead of a lofty divine origin, religious phenomenon had rather originated in the confused cognitive experiences of primitive savages only later developing into higher forms such as polytheism, henotheism, and monotheism.

French Sociologist Emile Durkheim

French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Austrian father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) agreed with Tylor that religion was no longer “true” in the literal sense of the statements it made about the world and gods. They also agreed that human beings anthropomorphize, projecting themselves into the cosmos and that religion results from this process. However, they disagreed with Tylor that religion originated in mere speculation. Freud argued that men were not inspired to create their first system of the universe by pure speculative curiosity. The practical need for controlling the world around them must have played its part. Instead, “Animism came to primitive man naturally and as a matter of course... primitive man transposed the structural conditions of his own mind into the external world.” It is our responsibility to “ask where the inner force of those doctrines lies and to what it is that they owe their efficacy, independent as it is of recognition by reason.”

Durkheim thought religion to be a sociological problem, while Freud took it as a psychological problem.

Durkheim presented a significant sociological theory on the origins of religion, which was a key part of his broader work on the role of society in shaping human behavior and beliefs. His theory is detailed in his influential book "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life" published in 1912.

Durkheim's theory stands out for its focus on the social aspects of religion, rather than individual psychology or supernatural explanations. He argued that religion is fundamentally a collective, social phenomenon and that the origins and functions of religion are deeply embedded in the needs and structures of society. Key aspects of Durkheim's theory include:

Collective Consciousness: Durkheim believed that religion arises from the collective consciousness of society rather than individual needs and insecurities. This collective consciousness is composed of the shared beliefs and moral attitudes (law) that act as a unifying force within a community.

Social Cohesion and Group Solidarity: He saw religion as playing a crucial role in creating and maintaining social cohesion and solidarity. Religious rituals and beliefs, according to Durkheim, are ways in which members of a society affirm and reinforce the bonds that tie them together, creating a sense of social unity.

Sacred vs. Profane: Durkheim made a fundamental distinction between the sacred (things set apart and forbidden, associated with religious awe and reverence) and the profane (the ordinary, everyday elements of life). He posited that this distinction is central to all religions and is crucial in understanding how religious beliefs function within a society.

Totemism as an Example: Durkheim used the example of totemism in Australian Aboriginal societies to illustrate his theory. He argued that the totem, a symbol representing both a clan and its god, was an embodiment of the society itself. The reverence shown to the totem was essentially reverence for society and its collective values.

Religion as a Reflection of Society: For Durkheim, religion was in many ways a reflection of the society itself. The characteristics of a society’s gods and religious practices mirrored the structure and values of the society. In essence, God represented society itself, rewarding adherence to its norms and penalizing departures from them.

Durkheim's theory has been highly influential in the sociology of religion. It shifted the focus from individual religious experience to the societal functions of religion, emphasizing the role religion plays in maintaining social order and cohesion. However, it's important to note that his work is a product of its time and has been critiqued and expanded upon by later scholars. Nevertheless, Durkheim's insights continue to be a pivotal part of sociological discussions about religion and its role in human societies.

Sigmund Freud and Psychological Illusion

Freud, on the other hand, argued that belief in God and religion was a psychological illusion, a childhood experience of an exalted father figure, and a projection of desires, fears, and a sense of helplessness (echoing Hume and Feuerbach) into the cosmos. In other words, religion was not unreal or a lie, for it was a reality but of the unconscious experience of infancy that needed to be decoded by psychoanalysis. Freud differed from past philosophers, poets, and psychologists by giving a new interpretation of the unconscious experience. To Freud, the unconscious was the repressed conscious incapable of consciousness. The dynamic content of this unconscious was wishes, desires, and dreams.

Dreams

In "The Interpretation of Dreams," Freud describes a wish as a psychological current that emerges from discomfort (an accumulation of excitation) and seeks satisfaction (a reduction of this excitation through fulfillment). He posits that every dream represents the fulfillment of a wish and is crucial for comprehending neurosis. Freud further asserts that wishes, rather than speculation or reasoning, underpin all mental processes. He suggests that human value judgments are closely tied to the pursuit of happiness and often serve to rationalize personal illusions with logical reasoning.

Natural Forces

Freud believed man to be surrounded by relentless, unfriendly, and untamed forces of nature: There are the elements, which seem to “mock at all human control: the earth, which quakes and is torn apart and buries all human life and its works; water, which deluges and drowns everything in a turmoil; storms...diseases...and finally there is the painful riddle of death, against which no medicine has yet been found, nor probably will be. With these forces nature rises up against us, majestic, cruel and inexorable; she brings to our mind once more our weakness and helplessness, which we thought to escape through the work of civilization.”

Religion: A Civilizational Strategy

Chief among these strategies of civilization is religion. Freud declares: “I have tried to show that religious ideas have arisen from the same need as have all the other achievements of civilization.” Therefore, religion serves as a palliative when life comes down hard on us, when we are hurt, disappointed, and dismayed. In reality, it does not solve our problems but offers simply a psychological mechanism of shunning problems and finding artificial solace in unseen powers and unconscious experiences. Freud believed that man’s childhood experience provided the clue, in that the helpless small child received protection from his parents. Similarly, wrote Freud, “A man makes the forces of nature not only into persons with whom he can associate as he would with his equals – that would not do justice to the overpowering impression which those forces make on him – but he gives them the character of a father.”

Freud's Theories of Religion

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, proposed several theories on the origins of religion. His views are primarily outlined in his books "Totem and Taboo" (1913) and "The Future of an Illusion" (1927). Freud's perspective on religion was influenced by his broader theories of the psyche and the development of human civilization. His ideas can be summarized in the following points:

Projection of Father Figure: Freud suggested that the concept of God in most religions is a projection of a father figure. He argued that, as children, humans see their fathers as all-powerful beings who protect and punish. As adults, this image is projected onto an imagined divine being, resulting in the formation of religious deities.

Collective Neurosis: In "The Future of an Illusion," Freud described religious beliefs as a collective neurosis. He believed that religion was a system of wishful illusions that humans created to fulfill their deep psychological desires and fears, such as the fear of death and the need for protection.

Totemism and the Oedipus Complex: In "Totem and Taboo," Freud explored the idea that primitive religions, especially totemism (worship of a specific animal or object as a sacred symbol), were linked to the Oedipal complex. He theorized that early human societies were structured around totem clans, which were formed around the exalted memory of a once-feared and hated father figure. This figure was later revered as a totem, and the complex emotions surrounding the father figure were expressed in totemic rituals.

Guilt and Expiation: Freud also posited that religious rituals and beliefs often stem from collective feelings of guilt and the need for expiation. He believed that the primal parricide (killing of the father by the sons of the primal horde) was a central event in human psychological and cultural development, and that the guilt from this act was alleviated through religious rituals.

Civilization and Religion: Freud viewed the development of religion as intertwined with the development of civilization. He argued that religion served as a way to control human instinctual desires, thus allowing for the formation of more complex and stable societies.

Freud's theories on religion have been both influential and controversial. They reflect his broader psychoanalytic principles, such as the emphasis on unconscious processes and the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping adult behavior and beliefs. However, his theories have also faced criticism for their speculative nature and lack of empirical evidence.

To Freud, God, in reality, is nothing but the reappearance of childhood unconscious experience and the projection of a father figure into the cosmos because “the root of every form of religion,” to Freud, was “longing for the father.”

Civilization and Its Discontents

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud elaborated this point further. He argued that even though religious need originates in childhood helplessness, it does not stop there. It is “permanently sustained by fear of superior power of Fate…The origin of religious attitude can be traced back in clear outlines as far as the feeling of infantile helplessness. There may be something further behind that, but for the present, it is wrapped in obscurity.”

The decisive element of Freudian theory is the substitution of psychology for metaphysics, and as Stan Draenos, a York University social scientist, observes, “The transformation of metaphysics into metapsychology substitutes an immanent ‘within’ for a transcendent ‘beyond’ as the ground of self-understanding.” With this brief statement, Draenos puts the point of our discussion into a nutshell. The origins of transcendent divinity lie in the inner feelings and experiences of man and not in heavenly realms.

Freud, paralleling Durkheim, integrated the concept of "totemism" (an ancient belief system where humans are considered to have a connection with a spirit-being represented by a totem) into his theory to provide historical context. Scottish social anthropologist James G. Frazer and Durkheim noted that in "primitive" societies, the totem served two critical functions: a) it offered the tribespeople protection, assistance, guidance, and forewarnings of danger, and b) it symbolized an animal or plant species representative of a particular group, especially a clan. Clan members held the totem animal in high esteem, revering and safeguarding it by establishing a taboo around it. This reverence included adhering to two strict laws: the prohibition of killing the totem animal and the forbiddance of sexual relations among clan members. Breaching these laws was considered a grave offense, often punishable by death.

Freud, Totemism and Oedipus Complex

Freud interpreted totemism, an early form of religious experience, as being rooted in subconscious motivations, linking it to the dynamics of the Oedipus complex. He described the Oedipus complex as a child's latent sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex. This complex emerges as the child, previously helpless, begins to integrate into society and recognize both the limitations of the father's abilities and powers, and their own emerging sexual desires. In this phase, the child's perception of the father often shifts to hostility, coupled with a subconscious desire to replace the father in the mother's affections. The initial identification with the father in the pre-Oedipal stage acts as a mechanism to suppress these emerging feelings.

The Totem, then, was simply a substitute for the father: what “is sacred was originally nothing but the perpetuated will of the primeval father.” Thus, to discover the origins of religion Freud pointed to Totemism as the foundation of man’s primordial, simplistic and ancient religious thought.

Freud applied his concept to religion by hypothesizing that primitive societies once lived in a horde-like structure where the dominant father figure monopolized all the females, imposing sexual restrictions on the other males. This repression of desires led to a collective uprising where the sons banded together to achieve what was unattainable individually: they killed the father. Freud saw this hypothetical patricide as a pivotal moment in the development of morality. He theorized that in killing and subsequently consuming the father, the sons not only rebelled but also symbolically assimilated his power and authority. This act of consuming the father was seen as the first step in their identification with him, with each son internalizing a fraction of his strength. Freud suggested that the totem meal, potentially the earliest form of human festival, served as a recurring reminder and celebration of several foundational aspects of human culture: the formation of social structures, the establishment of moral codes, and the birth of religious practices.

Freud advocated that religion was a powerful and durable reality because “the store of religious ideas includes not only wish-fulfillments but important historical recollections. This concurrent of past and present must give religion a truly incomparable wealth of power.” Yet he still viewed religion as an illusion, and believed that people of the modern scientific era should abandon it. Freud contended that as a psychologist studies the development of man, he is forced to conclude that religion is comparable to childhood neurosis and that mankind will eventually surmount this neurotic phase just as many children grow out of theirs.

Karen Armstrong and Freud

Commenting on Freud’s theory, Karen Armstrong observes that to Freud: “Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind. Science, the new logos, could take God’s place. It could provide a new basis for morality and help us to face our fears. Freud was emphatic about his faith in science, which seemed almost religious in its intensity...” Sigmund Freud then made this “comfort theory” of anthropomorphism the clearest source of the divine, reducing religion to mere feelings of infantile helplessness and childish, unconscious, or subconscious experiences, worthy of elimination when humanity had come of age and ‘grown up.’ Hence religion was viewed as something infantile, to be discarded on reaching mental maturity. This perspective of religion and God revolutionized subsequent thought, anthropomorphizing God and bringing Him down from the realms of heaven to the world of man.

Transformative View of Religion

In the mid-nineteenth century, a transformative view of religion emerged, marking a critical juncture in the longstanding debate between the faithful and a diverse group of critics including philosophers, scientists, empiricists, social scientists, and skeptics. This turning point involved applying Darwin's theory of evolution, as interpreted by anthropologists and social scientists, to explore the evolutionary stages of religion. This approach assumed that the concept of the divine originated within human society, prompting scholars to extensively research the initial emergence of the ideas of God and religion. While a few, like the Austrian linguist and anthropologist Father Wilhelm Schmidt, used their findings to argue for a fundamentally monotheistic origin of primitive religion, they were largely outnumbered. The majority of anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and even some theologians argued that religion originated from the simple forms found in primitive cultures, such as animism, fetishism, and totemism. These scholars proposed that these rudimentary beliefs evolved into more complex forms of religion, including polytheism, monolatry, and monotheism, eventually leading to the ethical monotheism found in modern religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which represent a significant portion of current global belief systems.

Despite their differences, they largely agreed on one point, that God does not have an objective reality of his own. He depends upon human needs, aspirations, and fears for His existence. The word “God” they asserted was merely a reification, personification, or projection of forces found in the external, internal, and social world of man. In other words, discourse about God was a discourse about man, or in Feuerbach’s words, and as discussed, “Theology is anthropology.”

This essential understanding of the divine continued into the twentieth century. American anthropologist Franz Boas saw most religions as a “dogmatized development” of anthropomorphism. Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that “religion consists in a humanization of natural laws” and an “anthropomorphization of nature.”

In sum, anthropomorphism (projection of human traits into the cosmos and heavens) was thought to be, and still is, in the words of R. J. Zwi Werblowsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a “central problem” both in theology, the history of religions, and religious philosophy. Nigerian scholar E. Bolaji Idowu observed that anthropomorphism has “always been a concomitant of religion, all religions, every faith. In the purest religion... there can be no way of avoiding anthropomorphism.” According to anthropologist Stewart Guthrie, “Religion is anthropomorphism.”

Evolutionary Theories vs. Traditional God

The evolutionary theories of religion in the nineteenth century significantly challenged traditional views of God and religion. These theories advocated for a shift from a top-down understanding of divinity, where God is seen as the originator of religion, to a bottom-up perspective. This new approach suggested that it is humans who craft their gods and religious institutions to fulfill personal and communal needs. In this view, the concept of God and the formation of religions are seen as products of wishful thinking and childhood experiences, which should be abandoned as humans grow in knowledge, science, and technology.

With the advancement of modern medicine, diseases are now controlled through scientific methods rather than through the interventions of priests, spiritual healers, scriptural recitations, prayers, or rituals. Modern science provides explanations and control over natural phenomena through research and innovation. Consequently, this scientific progress is viewed as having diminished the roles of both God and religion in society.

The emergence of scientific atheism, modern secularism, and a focus on human autonomy, freedom, and dignity are seen as defining characteristics of the contemporary world. In this new paradigm, humans are considered masters of their own fate, essentially becoming their own gods, and are less inclined to acknowledge external authorities beyond their personal and worldly experiences.

Critiques and Legacy: While influential, these theories were critiqued for their ethnocentric biases and oversimplifications. Modern anthropology and religious studies have moved away from such linear evolutionary models, recognizing the diverse and complex nature of religious phenomena.

These theories, though outdated in many respects, laid important groundwork for the academic study of religion and contributed significantly to the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology of religion. Modern atheism, antagonism, agnosticism, and secularism are the byproducts of these evolutionary theories.

See more details in my book "Concept of God in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic Traditions", chapter 1, p. 11ff