Objectives:
Trace the origin of
Religion, the concept
of Supernatural Being
and how World
Religion established.
RELIGION
JIMBO P. DUMLAO
Key Points of
the
Discussion:
Religion
Origin of Religion
Functions of Religion
Concepts of Supernatural
Beings
RELIGION
• Human relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute,
spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence.
• the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their
fate after death.
• In many religions, texts are deemed to have scriptural status, and
people are esteemed to be invested with spiritual or moral authority.
RELIGION
• Religions organize themselves—
their institutions, practitioners, and
structures—in a variety of
fashions.
For example, Christianity began
as a cult, transformed into a sect,
and today exists as an ecclesia.
ORIGIN OF RELIGION
• According to James Frazers,
that human belief progressed
through three stages: primitive
magic, which was displaced by
religion, which in turn was
replaced by science.
• Wikipedia coined the History of
Religion as refers to the written
record of human religious
feelings, thoughts, and ideas.
ORIGIN OF RELIGION
• The
earliest
archeological
evidence of religious ideas
dates back several hundred
thousand years to the Middle
and Lower Paleolithic periods.
• Archaeologists take apparent
intentional burials of early
Homo
sapiens
and
Neanderthals.
ORIGIN OF RELIGION
• Anthropologists have suggested that religion was
created out of a failure of magic to give a satisfying
answer to the 'big questions' inherent across human
civilization.
• Religion was used to describe a domain of western
culture and belief in the supernatural.
ORIGIN OF RELIGION
• Religion has been disputed among
anthropologists because some would define
the 'supernatural' as something that does not
exist, and some define it as something that is
simply 'beyond sensed'.
• According to evolutionary biologist, religion
is a natural evolution of human culture over
time.
Supernatural is associated
with the following key terms:
Magic - defined as a set of beliefs and practices designed to
control the visible or invisible world for specific purposes.
offers ways to explain the world
religion and science evolved out of the inability of magic
to explain the natural world.
It is used as an attempt to create change in the natural
world through supernatural means.
Types of Magic
1. Imitative - Imitative magic
attempts to control the universe
through the mimicking of a
desired event
2. Contagious - involves the use of
physical objects that have been in
contact with the person who the
magic is to affect, like a toenail.
Functions of Religion
Functions of Religion
Concepts of Supernatural Beings
Animatism - is the belief in a supernatural power that
is not necessarily a supernatural being or animal.
it is the belief that the supernatural is all around you
and could be anything.
explain a powerful unseen force that can potentially
be found all around us in people, animals, plants and
features of nature such as volcanoes and the ocean
believes in a single unified power that can manifest
itself into objects or be acquired by and controlled by
certain individuals.
ANIMATISM
is the cause of consciousness and
personality to natural phenomena such
as thunderstorms and earthquakes and
to objects such as plants and stones.
Inanimate objects, forces and plants
have personalities and wills, but not
souls.
EUHERISM
is a rationalizing method of interpretation
that was named after the Greek mythographer
(compiler of myths) Euhemerus.
is the idea that a real person can become a
deity or a supernatural immortal being
through the constant telling and re-telling of
their stories that leads to the distortion of the
actual story.
is the worship and belief in an ancestor or
historical being who is thought to have
supernatural power.
EUHERISM
 Euhemerus believed that every Greek god was someone that actually lived
long ago and was immortalized in myth through their actions in life.
 Euhemerus believed that the Gods of Greece were in fact humanly
conceived incarnations of important historical figures who had achieved
high reputation by advancing several areas of Greek society.
ANIMISM
 is the belief that natural objects,
natural phenomena, and the universe
all possess individual souls.
 Latin word, anima, meaning a
breath or soul
 Edward Burnett Tylor theorized that
all globally recognized religions had
some aspects of animism.
ANIMISM
 It was first constructed out of a need to
explain natural phenomena such as
sleeping, dreaming, and death.
 In classical animism, spirits are a separate
entity from the body, and cause life in
humans by passing through bodies and
other inanimate objects.
 According to Ralph Marett, the earliest
forms of animism were created based on
emotion and intuition, rather than sacred
practices, and written word.
ANIMISM
Contrary to Tylor, Marett believed that animists did
not separate between the body and the soul, claiming
them to be a single entity living and dying as one.
Ex. In terms of practices, many animistic cultures
worshiped plant life, including trees and plants,
because of their beauty, strength, and life. It is
thought that all beings, including plants, have a soul
DUALISM
is a belief in two
supernatural god like figures.
 Bitheism/Ditheism are two
forms that both involve the
two gods.
 Bitheism implies that the
gods live in peace and
ditheism implies that there is
opposition.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM



is the concept of attributing human characteristics or behaviors
to a non-human being.
This can mean animals, plants, and almost anything else taking on
the personality of a human.
A functional analysis of anthropomorphism proposes that when the
supernatural takes human form, it may be easier for people to relate
to the concepts promoted by religion.
ZOOMORPHIC
• is the attribution of animal qualities or
characteristics to a God.
• It is the act of attributing animal qualities to
things that are not animals.
• In Egyptian Mythology, death was not seen
as the last stage of life it was seen as the stage
of life where a person was at rest while they
waited for the rebirth of their soul.
TOTEMISM
system of belief in which
humans are said to have
kinship or a mystical
relationship with a spiritbeing, such as an animal or
plant.