Where Does Religion Come From
To answer the question Where Does Religion Come From, let us start by understanding what the religion is. The word religion comes from a Latin word ‘Religio’ which means ‘fear’ or ‘awe’ in the presence of something ‘spiritual/ godly’.
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Some say that human beings developed religion because they were very weak and ignorant of the forces of nature that surrounded them. They were at the mercy of these forces and therefore devised a scheme of gods and spirits that tended to explain the mysteries of the universe, and to whom they could pray for support.
Others would say religion was developed as a means of suppressing the masses- i.e. the ruling classes would appoint senior clerics on their behalf to tell the masses that if they didn’t obey them and pay their taxes they would go to hell.
Plato, the great philosopher observed that all mankind, Greek or Non Greeks believe in the existence of God, and that this belief was universal. Plato’s philosophy assumes that God exists as a supremely good being whose goodness is analogous to Plato’s concrete concept of the ultimate good. St. Anselm support Plato’s idea of the universality of the belief in God when he claims that:
Everyone has some sense of God and for one to deny God’s existence is an invalid and contradictory assertion: therefore, God exists.
Similarly, Hopfe (1998) makes the observation that “where ever people are found, there too is religion,” He noted that religion is hard to find or pin down, but that from the great metropolitan capitals to the least developed areas of the world, there are temples, pyramids, megaliths and other monuments societies have raised which express their religions.
Before we go any further, it is prudent that we look at the definition of term theory. Theory can mean either of the following: Speculation, hypothesis, assumption, conjecture, postulate, plan, scheme, an idea etc. to explain some phenomena
In 1871, Edward Burnet Tylor put forward the suggestion of animism in his book primitive culture. Tylor was a non-believer, who through the study of the primitive cultures came up with the following ideas: –
In this theory, Tylor argues that animism or Theory of the Souls’ as it sometimes called, was the fundamental concept of religion. Deriving the term animism from the Latin word anima for the soul, he maintained that belief in spiritual beings or souls were the root of all religious faith.
According to Tylor, when dead people appear in the dreams, it prompted the thought that their souls must still be alive. From here, it was supposed that animals and even inanimate objects have souls. For instance, the sun, stars, wind, river, rocks, trees, mountains and many other objects all have life and personality ascribed to them. So they may be talked to and invoked as intelligent beings.
Animism as understood by Tylor then had two meanings. It could be understood as a belief system according to which religious men attributed a soul to human beings and hence to other living creatures and inanimate objects as well. The second meaning is that, it can be taken as a theory held by Tylor and his followers that the idea of human soul was as a result of reasoning about certain psychic experiences, especially dreams, and the idea of spiritual being was derived from this idea of human soul and hence belongs to a later stage of cultural development.
This therefore, means that animism owed its origins to the early attempts to explain several bodily and mental conditions, sleeping, walking, trance or other unconscious state, diseases, life and death, the human shapes which appear in dreams and visions. In dreams, people see other people and find themselves in odd situations. All these experiences find their explanation if one supposes that there exists a soul which can leave the body temporarily or permanently and go elsewhere. From here, arises the idea of the soul separable from the body as the source of life and the cause of sleep and unconsciousness.
The ideas of the survival of the soul give rise to the cult of the dead, especially in the form of the ancestor – worship. Once man had developed the idea of separable souls as the vital force which makes him to be a sentient being, he extended the idea of the soul to other sentient beings and also to inanimate objects.
The conception of the human soul, for Tylor, seemed to have served as a type or model on which primitive man framed not only his ideas of other souls of lower grade, but also his ideas of spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports in the long grass up to the heavenly Creator and Ruler of the world, the great spirit.
The idea of mana was brought by Bishop Codrington in Malaysia in the year 1891. Underlying the Mana Theory is the belief that nature is controlled by a force called ‘Mana’, and that this ‘mana’ is impersonal
The Mana theory had its origin in Melanesia and became common in all Pacific Islands. It consists in a belief that there exists some kind of supernatural force or power in certain persons, animals and in inanimate objects. This power or force is thought of a being transferable from one person or objects to another. The power in question is impersonal, yet not a ghost, soul or spirit.
Peheka Maori of New Zealand gave the first description of the meaning of Mana as:
Virtues, prestige, authority, good fortune, influence, sanctity, luck, are all words which give something near to the meaning .
Mana therefore, means something more than natural virtue of power attached to some person or thing, different from or independence of the natural conditioning. Peheka Maori, for instance talks of a tame pig which, before heavy rain, would always cut extraordinary capers and squeaks and run like mad, and the pig was said to be possessed with Mana.
It had more than natural powers which enabled it to foretell rain. In human, the Mana of certain prophets like T.B Joshua from Nigeria, priests and many more Men of God is proven by the truth of their predictions. In other sense, Mana could be said to be an accompaniment of power, but not the power itself. It is often said the chief’s mana, the worrier’s mana.
H.R Codrington referred to mana as something impersonal, though always connected with some person who directs it. Besides, all spirits and ghosts have it, as well as some men. Only the person and things possessing mana and not the mana itself were worshiped. Equally, in no case does this power operate, except under the direction and control of a person – a living man, ghost, or spirit.
It was believed that if you want to possess the power, you kill the person believed to have the power and eat a part of him (Liver, Lung).
In Melanesia, mana is not the sacred power for a priest, for Melanesians have no priests. It is rather an oceanic term, and Codrington has the following equivalents to it: “spiritual power, marginal power, supernatural power, influence…… He adds that it is not physical, but shows itself in physical force, or any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses. He also points out that this power was transmissible and was widely diffused, as it was present in the atmosphere of life.
In 1890, a Scottish expert in ancient, folklore, James Frazer (1854- 1941) published the influential book The Golden Bough. Although Frazer wrote extensively on a variety of topics, he is best remembered for his 12-volume The Golden Bough, a compendium on magic and Religion. This book was originally published in two volumes in 1890, and later expanded by St. Martin in 1990.
The aim of the treatise was to explain the ancient Roman ritual murder of the priest of Diana at Nemi, the site of the sacred grove with a golden bough.
In the book Golden Bough, Frazer’s central argument is that religion grew out of magic. Following Edward B Tylor’s conceptual division between magic, religion and science, Frazer delineated a schema of the evolution of thought. He contends that magic preceded religion and represented a pseudoscientific world view that operated on the assumption that it was possible to control nature by coercing supernatural entities. It assumed the two basic forms:
Religion therefore, according to Frazer, entailed the recognition that spells and incantations do not produce the desired effects and that natural forces are regulated by greater beings. The rituals and incantations then became sacrifices and prayers respectively, and thus religion began.
In Frazer’s words, Religion is a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man.
The Nature Worship Theory came as an alternative to the theories of the origin of religion. It was developed by an Oxford University professor – Max Muller (1823 – 1900).
Muller’s main interest was mythology and the Indian Religion. Muller then entered the debate over the origins of religion with Tylor and other scholars. This means that he lived at the time when there was a debate in the world about the origin of religion, hence became another scholar to reckon with where the debate of the origin is concerned. From his research, he became convinced that human beings developed their first notion of religion from their observations of the forces of nature.
According to this theory, primitive people became aware of the regularities of the seasons, the tides and the phases of the moon. Their first response to these forces in nature was to personalize them. Eventually they gave a name to the sun, the moon, and so on. Secondly, they began to describe the activities of the natural forces with tales. The tales about the seasons, the moon and the sun became myths.
In this way, they came up with mythology. One example of this process is found in the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne. Apollo was in love with Daphne, but she fled from him and was changed into a laurel tree. By searching out the etymology of these names, Muller found out that Apollo was the name given to the sun and that Daphne was the name given to the dawn. So the original myth simply described how the sun chases away the dawn.
Muller further believed that all of the stories of the gods and heroes in Indo – European cultures were originally solar myths. This led Muller to the conviction that he had found the key to the origin of all religions, which in his own view began with primitive people identifying the forces in nature, personifying them, create myths to describe their activities and eventually develop pantheons and religions around them.
Projectionists assume that religion has developed out of some human need, which has been enlarged or projected onto an ultimate being. All forms of the projectionist’s hypothesis, therefore, contend that God is created in the image of man, rather than man being created in the image of God.
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 – 1872): one among the most important proponents of the projectionist’s theories was the 19th century philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 – 1872). A German by origin, Ludwig was one of the earliest and most influential thinkers of the projectionists’ view. Relying greatly on George Hegel’s ideas, Feuerbach perceives religion as simply a fantasy expression of man’s ideal of achieving human existence, through love, freedom and reason.
Feuerbach believed that humans are aware of their own finite situations, but long for the infinite. They are familiar with their own restricted knowledge, but want to know everything. They experience powerlessness, but want to become omnipotent. They fail in love, peace and justice, but seek to achieve these ideals
Out of their own finitude, imperfections, limited knowledge, powerlessness and injustice, therefore, humans have projected an ideal onto a creature of their own making, and have called this creature God. To them, God is infinite, perfect, all-knowing, all – powerful, all- loving and the king of justice.
But where do these qualities, ideas of infinity, perfection, knowledge, power, love and justice originate? Feuerbach (cited in Cox 1992: 49) says these are clearly mere human ideas resulting from the desire within humanity to achieve them completely. But since human cannot achieve them completely, they invent the all – perfect Being and project these very human qualities onto this being. This is what is meant by the statement that ‘’God is created in the image of man.’’ Ludwig calls this the process the Anthropomorphizing of God or defining God by human characteristics”.
Feuerbach argues that this actually harms humanity and prevents people from achieving their real /full potential. He says this is so because it alienates each person from his inner self and thus from his best qualities. It is wrong, he argues, because it makes people seek perfection outside themselves, instead of seeking to perfect their own inner selves and their societies.
For Feuerbach, therefore, the projection of human qualities onto some transcendent objects prevents humanity from achieving its ideal. What is needed, he says, is a reversal of the subject and the predicate, so that instead of saying “God is love,” we must say love is god’. Rather than affirming that God is all- knowing, we should say, ‘’ knowledge is god.’’ God must not be the subject of the sentence, but the predicate. By so doing, humans will then be able to develop the qualities/ virtues within themselves and consequently, society as a whole.
Freud, who founded the modern science of psychoanalysis, wrote widely in the field of religion. One of his earlier contributions concerned the origin of totemic symbols among primitive societies and their relationship with taboos.
He discovered a universal primitive prohibition against incest and was struck by the correspondence between the fundamental prohibitions of totemism – against killing the totem animal and against having sexual intercourse with members of the same totem group and the two aspects of the Oedipus complex: the desire to eliminate the father and the wish to possess the mother.
Freud then suggested that originally, a primeval horde (earliest inhabitants on earth) of sons killed their father because they were jealous of his relationship with their mother (the Oedipus complex).
Freud postulated the following scenario, whose sequence of events he qualified as a condensation of what must have happened countless times over thousands of years. The setting is the small horde or group in which early human beings lived. The horde was dominated by one powerful and violent jealous male whole had seized all the women for himself and had driven off or killed all rivals, including his sons.
One day the brothers who had been driven out come together, killed and devoured their father, and so made an end to the patriarchal horde. United, they had the courage to do and succeeded in doing what would have been impossible for them individually. Cannibal savages as they were, it goes without saying that they killed their victim as well as devouring him.
The violent primal father had doubtless been the feared and envied model of each one of the company of brothers, and in the act of devouring him they accomplished their identification with him, and each one of them acquired a portion of his strength. With their monstrous deed done, the brothers found themselves filled with remorse, and this produced guilt, for they had loved and admired their father as well.
The burden of guilt was coupled with imminent collapse of their social organization. This resulted first, in making totemic animals acts as substitute for the murdered father, hence a prohibition against killing or eating the totem and secondly, a restriction against incest in reaction to the original sexual advances of the sons towards their mother.
Freud argues here that religion had its roots in this origin of the totem and their relationship with taboos. However, Freud’s idea regarding totemism and taboos is largely discredited today. His continuing impact on the study of religion now comes from a different application of the projectionist theory, which is postulated below:
Freud’s second application of the projection theory explains religion as resulting from the human needs for comfort against perceived threats, authority in moral action and answers to ultimate questions.
A common unpleasant theme in all religion is the problem of human suffering. Freud believed that this produced the need for comfort evidenced in the religious beliefs that all pain will cease in a future life. Even death which is the greatest human fear is stripped of its power by religion’s promise to eternal life. Freud argues that this promise corresponds to a parent’s response to a frightened child who awakes at night and is afraid of the dark. The parent comforts the child by turning on the light and announcing, “There is nothing to be afraid of; everything is all right.’’
In Freud’s view, this is what religion does. It teaches that over each one of us there watches the benevolent providence. This providence is projected out of the human need for comfort in the face of life’s misfortunes. Religion also authoritatively provides moral rules for its adherents to obey. If these precepts are followed, rewards results, but if they are disregarded, calamity occurs.
The need for moral rules, just like the need for comfort, has its roots in childhood experiences. The same parent who took care of the child and kept him same from danger, taught him about right and wrong behavior. When the child obeys, the parent rewards him. When he broke the rule, he was punished. For Freud, this childhood experience was projected on to moral codes and persists as religion.
A third function for religion according to Freud is to provide answers about the nature of reality itself. Although this aspect of religion most closely resembles philosophy and science, religion continues to project childhood needs by looking for answers which can be given form outside and which come with absolute authority. The parent is regarded by a child as an all – knowing source of information about the world. In adult life, God then becomes the projected parent who reveals truth to the believers in a way different from philosophy, with its emphasis on reason, and science through its method of empirical investigation.
Religion for Freud is, therefore, a neurosis, a psychological malady, because it keeps its adherents permanently fixed in a state of childhood illusion, rather than allowing them to grow up into mature adults who face life realistically. Health adults realize that their parents could not remove all dangers from life, that they could not dictate moral laws and that they were not infallible sources of knowledge.
An adult who still regards his parents as he did as a child is rightly regarded as psychologically disturbed. Religion, according to Freud, projects just these infantile illusions on to the being of God and thus prevents people from responding to the real dangers and limitations within life in a psychologically health manner.
One renowned proponent of the Ancestor Worship Theory was the British Sociologist and Philosopher – Herbert Spencer (1820 -1903). Spencer held that primitive people began by worshipping ancestors and that as civilization developed, ancestors naturally were formed onto hierarchies, and hierarchies in turn led to ranks, the highest ranks being that of deities.
In his classical book phenomenology of religion, Dhavamony (1973) adds to the understanding of this theory by suggesting what he refers to the two basic and different forms of beliefs and practices connected with the ancestors, often confused by people. The first one is a form where Ancestor Worship may be defined as a set of beliefs, practices and attitudes, concerned with deified deceased persons in a community, particularly the dead within a kinship group. Another one is a form where the dead are not divinized, but thought to be potent beings whose needs must be served.
But one common element in both forms of ancestor cult is the supposition that the ancestral dead survive after death in some way, and hence are thought of interfering in human life and must therefore be placated. Human beings are, therefore, seen through their activities, to promote the well-being of the ancestral dead in an after-life. There is a distinction, however, seen in the two. This consists in the fact that, in the former, reverence is paid to the ancestors, where as in the latter, the ancestors are worshipped as though they were deities.
Paul Radin, cited in Dhavamony (1973) explains the use of the term “Ancestor Worship” in his own way, as follows:
The equation of one’s ancestors, both remote and immediate, or of a person standing in the place of ancestors or titular household head, with spirits and gods, and the transference to them of all specifically religious acts and attitudes which are usually associated with the worship of spirits and gods
The Ancestor Worship Cult hence, presents variability in practice even within a single cultural tradition.
In his work among Tallensi of Ghana, Meyer Fortes (2001) emphasizes the significance of ancestor worship to patrilineage unification and lineage or segment differentiation.
In particular, the father – oldest surviving son relationship is emphasized, the latter having the primary responsibility for performing the appropriate rituals and services. In general, placement of an African ancestral shrine and the performance of its services can also relate to and influence descendants’ genealogical position and seniority. Other scholars have ventured into seeking a relationship between the ancestral Cult and the belief in a Supreme Being. Parrinder (1981) notes:
There have been writers on African Society who have maintained that [even the] the belief in Supreme Being is nothing more than a glorified chief or ancestor.
The Igbo people of Nigeria believe that their lives are profoundly influenced by their ancestors, and this belief has far-reaching sociological consequences. Sacrifice has to be offered to these ancestors at regular intervals, or when the diviner indicates.
In Southern Ghana, the everyday life of the Ga people is characterized by the influence of the dead. People have a regular habit of not eating, not drinking without throwing a small portion on the ground for their forefathers.
Sierra Leon is not an exception. Here prayer is normally offered through a succession of ancestors. Two distinct grounds of ancestors are worshiped; those ancestors whose names and feasts are known, and those who died in the far distant past.
In China, Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist, and folk concepts have contributed to the practice of ancestor worship in which heads of patrilineages are emphasized. Here there are three prominent sites for ancestor worship: family shrines, lineage halls, and tombs or graveyards of relatives.
Physical remains of the deceased are laid to rest in the tomb/graveyard which serves as site of public ritual; ancestral tablets represent the deceased in the shrine and temple, in which their spirits are housed, and for which more private and personal observances are made. While the ancestors command significant authority and influence in the lives of their living descendants, the latter care for and look after their ancestors- for example, by burning paper money at New Years to contribute to their ancestors’ bounty or prosperity.
Japanese ancestors are also emphasized on the father’s side, and their worship is primarily related to Buddhist beliefs and practices. The deceased receive a posthumous or Buddhist name, which is written on a tablet and kept in the family’s butsudan or Buddhist alter. Buddhist funerary services help purify the corpse from the polluting influences of death. Other services include death day memorial services for up to fifty years, New Year’s and Bon (or Obon) celebrations, and household prayers.
While tradition maintains a differentiation between stem and branch families and a main ancestral alter in the stem house, more modern practice has individual families establishing their own butsudan with the death of the household member. Proper care for the ancestors and observance of appropriate services, offerings and prayers are believed not only to help the ancestors to be restful and in peace, but also to result in blessings and good fortune for the descendants.
In Zambia it has also been undeniable that among some primeval ethnic groups, there was an intimate relationship between social structure and ancestral cults. It is remarkable, for instance, how the Mizimu (ancestral spirits) serve to validate the Tonga life pattern, bind together potentially divergent kin groups, and reinforce the principal status changes of the Tonga adult. Veneration of ancestral spirits among the Tonga took various forms such as through lineage, household and personal shrines, rain shrines as well as Territorial shrines through which ancestors (mizimo) were investigated (Colson 2006:74) and Hachintu (2003) adds saying:
The mizimu are not actively evil in the same way……. They may cause injury to the living, but this is not their primary purpose, nor are they free like the ghost to cause injury to anyone with whom they come in contact. The mizimu are dependent upon the living for their own continued existence, and cause injury to keep their memory alive in the living so that they may provide the offering on which they depend.
Ancestor worship also operated as a force to make the members of societies conform to the ideals and rules of behavior, as is the case in many African Traditional Societies where ancestor worship is predominant. Departure from norms of behavior will be thought to incur the disapproval of the ancestral spirits and consequently the withdrawal of their favor.
Finally, some scholars concerned with the belief system of the Ancestor Cult contend the gods were departed chiefs and warriors, who have been venerated before their death and deified afterwards.
From this, it is deduced that all the gods came from human ancestors, and that the myths concerning them enshrined memories of historical events. Using the phrase ‘ancestor – worship,’ therefore, we reach the conclusion that ancestor – cult is the root of every religion in this respect, and that God is the primeval ancestor of tribes, hence deserves to be worshiped.
Wihelm Schmidt (1868- 1954) put across what appeared to be a totally different approach in explaining the origin of religion in his book “The origin and growth of Religion.” Schmidt began his career study in the linguistics of New Guinea and then all of Oceania nations. From his own work, he came to disagree with the animistic theories of Tylor and others.
He noted that all of the hunter – gatherer cultures he had studied (and which were the oldest form of human society to be observed) held a common belief in a distant High God. Although the predominant form of religion for these “primitive” was animism or polytheism, there was always a belief that originally there had been one god above all others. This god may have been the creator of the world or the parent of the many lesser deities.
Usually, the High God is understood to have qualities of eternity, omniscience, beneficence, morality and omnipotence. Often, the High God is believed to have been the force that gave society its moral codes. After initially, establishing the world, this High God went away and now has little contact with the world. Some of the mythologies go on to say that one day the High God will return and judge the world on the basis of its morality.
Often, the local deities receive the majority of attention and worship, although the distant High God has a small part in mythology. Schmidt inferred from this phenomenon that “primitive” societies were originally monotheistic but that because the worship of one god was difficulty, religion was corrupted into polytheism. Later, more advanced religions recovered the true monotheistic religion.
Schmidt held a view that modern scholars were wrong in their ideas about monotheism.
About Spencer’s Ancestral Worship theory for instance, Schmidt writes:
Spencer held that primitive people began by worshiping ancestors and that as civilization developed, ancestors naturally” were formed onto hierarchies, and hierarchies in turn led to ranks, the highest ranks being that of deities (Schmidt 1931:71)
What Schmidt is able to prove conclusively is that if that if primitive cultures are grouped on the basis of their cultural level and these groups are then placed in an ascending order, it is found that the lowest groups have the purest concept of God. His argument is that as one progresses from mere hunters to food gatherers and stores, to food growers in the form of pastoral nomads maintaining flocks, to food growers in the sense of settled land use, and on up the scale to semi – urban communities, one finds at first a simple faith in a Supreme Being who has neither wife or family.
Under and created by the Supreme Being are the primal pair, from which the tribe is descended. According to Schmidt, we find this form of belief among the Pygmies of Central Africa, the South – east Australians, and the inhabitants of North central California, the primitive Algonkins – and to a certain extent, the Koryaka and Aimu. This then, goes right against such arguments as that the worship of ancestors was very early in man’s religious development. Schmidt further states:
The falsity of Spencer’s theory is shown by the mere fact that the ancestor – worship is very feebly developed in the oldest cultures, while a monotheistic religion is already clearly and unmistakably to be found there…….. it is also unfortunate for Spencer’s theory that the highest development of ancestor- worship does not come till the most recent times……… {Schmidt}
As for animism, Schmidt contends that it is supposed to have developed from the idea that man had a soul, and that therefore all living things (including plants) had souls, or at least an inner reality. So, man supposedly moved along an involuntary path of believing that the whole spirit world was personal, leading to both animism and poly-demonism (and the fear of many demons who must be placated).
This, is supposedly, lead to the displacement of these many demons by one great power to whom all others must be submissive. Schmidt advances his argument that the evidence now available from recovered records does not support this hypothesis that so clearly opposes the Biblical record of one great Being, the true Creator God Who created man in His own image” He observes that despite many ‘scholarly’ views to the contrary, historical and other records reject animism as the ‘original’ religion and they indicate that Jewish people and other besides Christians, have known of the one true God.
Naturally, Schmidt was accused of allowing his Christian prejudices to influence the formation of this theory.
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