02-23-2008, 12:00 AM
I'm uncertain about equating religion with man reaching out for gods or God.
Specifically, I do not know that animistic spirits are properly classified as gods.
Should anything we think we know about tribal and/or prehistoric religions be true, animistic spirits predate gods by hundreds of thousands of years.
The idea of the oversoul of a deer (in example) is an interesting idea to come out of post industrial western society.
In point, the Candidates do not pray to an abstraction of a deer. Prayers are directed to the deer itself.
That these prayers can be heard by an "uber deer" is a foreign idea.
Which is not to address its value as an idea, but simply to say that I do not know of any advantage to addressing prayers to abstract beings such as post agricultural religions do.
Perhaps there is an advantage in the personal psychology of the supplicant. I would not want to try to live directly from nature, even episodically, with only an abstract being as my ally.
Specifically, I do not know that animistic spirits are properly classified as gods.
Should anything we think we know about tribal and/or prehistoric religions be true, animistic spirits predate gods by hundreds of thousands of years.
The idea of the oversoul of a deer (in example) is an interesting idea to come out of post industrial western society.
In point, the Candidates do not pray to an abstraction of a deer. Prayers are directed to the deer itself.
That these prayers can be heard by an "uber deer" is a foreign idea.
Which is not to address its value as an idea, but simply to say that I do not know of any advantage to addressing prayers to abstract beings such as post agricultural religions do.
Perhaps there is an advantage in the personal psychology of the supplicant. I would not want to try to live directly from nature, even episodically, with only an abstract being as my ally.