'Comparative Study on the Origin of Religion Essay\r'

'Since the early 1800s, in that location had been an ample amount of skeptics trying to account for the inventory of religion. The basic question on al expressive stylesybody’s head was where does religion come from? Some believed that great deal create religion beca routine they didn’t understand the forces of record slightly them. Others believe that religion was created as a stylus of restrain people.\r\nIn the 19th century, people were introduced to loving intelligence and anthropologists who once studied indigenous subtlety were exposed to several theories on the communication channel of religion. Edward B Tylor was unity of the first who create a scheme on religion. Max Muller was a German professor at Oxford University whose interest included Indian mythology and the study of religion. An separate anthropologist was George Frazer who key contributions to religious anthropology was a religious encyclopedia. There are many explanations to the foun t of religion, one of the most prominent being Edward B.\r\nTylor’s speculation of animism. This theory is considered the foundation of the physical growing of religion; two other influential religious anthropologists, Max Muller and crowd together Frazer, also establish their explanations of the melody of religion on nature. All trine religious anthropologists are equal in the sense that they traced the evolution of religion in an start to epithet out the pipeline of it but differ in the way they approach the concept of religion. Edward B. Tylor developed the theory of animism to help explain the most rudimentary motley of religion.\r\nAnimism is defined as the persuasion that attributes souls and spirits to humans, plants, animals and other entities. Animistic religious beliefs are well-kn receive among primitive societies who were â€Å"so low in culture as to have no religious conceptions what so ever” (Tylor). Tylor considered animism as the most prim itive phase in the nurture of religion. He believed that the reflection of dreams and the observation of demise ca use of goods and servicesd primitive people to develop the idea of souls and spirits. Tylor vox populi that primitive people believed that everything in nature had a soul within it.\r\nHe hypothesized that a belief in animism guide to the formation of a more generalized god and, eventu onlyy, the creation of monotheism. Animism ultimately led to the evolution of religion in the sees of the people. It led them to let in something so simple as nature and use it to explain the natural phenomenon in their environment. A foreign theory that uses the concept of evolution is that of Max Muller. another(prenominal) theory of the origin of religion was developed by Max Muller. He believed that people first developed religion from the observation of nature. According to his theory, primitive people became aware of regularity of the seasons, the tides and the phases of the moon. Their response to these forces in nature was to personalize them”(Hopfe and Woodward). They personalized them done linguistics. Muller believed that development of religion was a cause of confusion in language (Goldsmith). There seems to be a set forth between Muller and Tylor over the nature of the origin of religion. Max Muller believed that the answer to the sole origin of religion could be found in the then(prenominal) and a person can trace its origin in the linguistic remnants in the Indo-European languages.\r\nTylor purview that implementing an ethnological approach would be more self-made than studying languages for answers of the origin of religion. Evolution of religion is bare in Muller’s theory because â€Å"they personified the forces of nature, created myths to chance on their activities, and eventually developed pantheons and religions most them” (Hopfe and Woodward). By growing religions and pantheons from identifying the forces in nature is a clear crisscross of the evolution of religion in the human mind set.\r\n regular(a) though their theories are different, the idea of evolution of religion in the human mind is observable in both Muller and Tylor’s theory. Sir James George Frazer, a fellow religious anthropologist, began developing his own theories on religion. Frazer believed that humans used magic as a way to control nature and the events around them and when that failed, they turned to religion. They used religion to control the events for a while and when religion failed they turned to science. Frazer’s theories were similar to those of Tylor.\r\nThey both believed that the human mind developed in the same way as that of physical evolution.. Even though Frazer took a similar approach to Tylor in canvas the origin of religion, he modified Tylor’s theory and replaced Tylor’s theory of animism with his idea of magic. A similarity between Frazer and Tylor is that they both believed that religion began from an wise(p) method of describing and making sense of a contrary world. Frazer replaces the idea that religion explains nature by introducing science as a substitute.\r\nFrazer’s approach to tracing the origin of religion is similar to that of Tylor and Muller since all three traced the evolution of religion in an attempt to figure out its origin. Both Muller and Frazer’s theory are similar to Tylor’s theory since both trace the origin of religion through the evolution of it but differ in the way they interpret religion. All three of them seemed to miss a vital element of religion which is that no one who practices religion is doing so to explain how the world works. nation use religion for several reasons. Some use it to give meaning to their lives while others use it to follow out social order. Maybe all three anthropologists didn’t miss this key component but quite didn’t know about it due to the speedy evolu tion of religion.\r\n'