Civilizations and world religions

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Civilizations and world religions

• 3. Lecture.
• The religious freedom

2
The elements of evolutionary theory of religion

• 1. The interpretation of the origins of religion
  by the help of basic catherogies of evolution,
  (such as inheritance, mutation, selection,
  adaptation, etc.)
• 2a. The interpretation of religion as a social,
  gadgeteered construction, as an adaptation, (a
  function that helps the survival).
• 2b. The presentation of such functions, which
  helps the individuals and the group to solve
  certain problems in the actual situation, or in
  the actual level of evolution. (So, due to which
  function it is an adaptation, and not a
  by-product or a bug).
• 3. The understanding of why is the unfolding of
  evolutionary story that lead to the present,
  (just so story). In evolution the answer to a
  question is always a story.

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What is religion? In the prespective of
evolutionary theory

• 1. Religion is a cultural universal it could
  be found in every known present and past (after
  its material mementos known) societies.
• Concerning sociologists (Durkheim, Murdock,
  Lévi-Strauss, Donald Brown, etc.) a cultural
  universal is an element, pattern, trait, or
  institution that is common to all human cultures
  worldwide.

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The sacred and the profane.Initial remarks

• Every particular religion has religious texts and
  documents, rituals, festivals, holy items,
  sacred places. Has a sacred account about the
  totality of the world and being.
• This means, that every particular religion has
  its institutionalized, canonized form of
  religious experience. At the core of religious
  experience lie the distinctions between sacred
  and profane, this-world and other-world. The
  positive religions give an institutionally
  articulated form to these basic distinctions.
• The conception of transcendence or the sacred is
  always embedded into a special cultural context.
  This could be a source of conflicts between
  different cultures. What one culture considers
  sacred, is not sacred for another cultural
  community, or even the antagonistic opposition of
  holy the unholy. Some religions regard other as
  counter-religions, and fanatics sometimes
  desecrate the counter-religions holy symbols.
• Conflict American soldiers burnt Korans in
  Afghanistan a few days ago, which caused a huge
  wave of protestation there.

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Mircea Eliade.Life and work

• Mircea Eliade born Bucharest, 1907 deceased
  Chicago, 1986. Romanian theorist and historian of
  religion, father of modern religious studies.
• Most essential works The Sacred and the Profane
  The Nature of Religion (1956), History of
  Religious Ideas I-III (1968), The Myth of Eternal
  Return Cosmos and History (1969).
• Other important works Yoga Immortality and
  Freedom, Shamanism Archaic Techniques of
  Ecstasy, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural
  Fashions, Images and Symbols Studies in
  Religious Symbolism.
• Was a supporter and an ideologist of the romanian
  Iron Guard, in the 1930es. For this reason he had
  to spend three weeks in prison, in 1938.
• Because of his earlier radical rightist views he
  had to go to exile on September 16,1945 he moved
  with his daughter to France. Due to his
  friendship with Georges Dumézil he got a position
  of a lecturer in Paris, (École pratique des
  hautes études).
• In October 1956, he moved to the United States,
  settling in Chicago, and became the professor of
  Chicago University. There has been organised a
  school of researchers around Eliade.

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Main ideas.Basic structures of religious
experience

• According to Eliade the idea of a homogeneous
  space and time of the modern man is a result of a
  long cultural development.
• The space and time of the modern man is
  homogeneous, every point of it is equal to the
  other.
• On the contrary the archaic, premodern,
  religious man had an inhomogeneous space and
  time. This means that the space and time of
  archaic man had special points.
• For the archaic /premodern/religious man it meant
  a difference of sacred space and time as opposed
  to profane space and time.
• Sacred space the holy place, the sacred ground
  where the religious man had a special connection
  with transcendence. Sacred time the holy time,
  the religious fest, when a special event of the
  religions mythical history returned.

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The sacred and the profane

• In Eliades opinion the most fundamental
  structure of religious experience is the
  experience of the sacred. The sacred is the
  manifestation of the transcendence. The
  difference of sacred and profane could be found
  in every known religion.
• According to Eliade this structure of experience
  could be found even at modern, secular,
  non-religious man. The cult of politicians,
  political leaders in totalitarian regimes, and
  pop-stars in modern popular culture is a
  reminiscence of this experience, (the sacred
  person). In Eliades interpretation this is a
  sign that religious experience is in a way
  inherent to the human being, it is a necessary
  structure of human existence.
• The differentiation of sacred and profane comes
  originally from Émile Durkheim, (The elementary
  forms of religious life, 1912) who used this
  distinction in his descriptions of totem and
  taboo of natural, primitive religions.
• But it was Eliade who worked out an overall
  conception on the basis of this distinction, to
  characterize religion in its essence, in general.

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Hierophany, epiphany, theophany.

• Eliade used mostly the term hierophany to
  characterize the phenomenon of the sacred. The
  term hierophany signifies the manifestation of
  the sacred. Hierophany is a greek expression
  hieros sacred, phainein to reveal.
• A strongly correlative term for hierophany is
  epiphany. Epiphany means in ancient greek
  language epiphaneia, manifestation, striking
  appearance. The epiphany is insight or
  illumination through the divine or the
  supernatural.
• Theophany is a more restrictive term for
  hierophany. Theophany means the appearance of a
  god. So it is a more concrete understanding of
  hierophany, as it refers to a concrete form of
  transcendence, namely to a godly or divine
  transcendence.

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The sacred place

• For the ancient man there were sacred places in
  space, which were considered by them as central
  points in the world.
• Usually there were several central sacred places,
  and a hierarchy of these points. So there was a
  centre of centres or a highest centre for a
  certain religious community.
• E.g. three very favoured places of pilgrimage in
  Medieval Christianity were 3. the Purgatory of
  Saint Patrick (Ireland), 2. Santiago de
  Compostella (Spain, the tomb of Apostle Saint
  James), 1. Rome, (Italy). But there was a centre
  of centres Jerusalem, (Israel). Jerusalem was
  also the highest centre for Judaic (Jewish) and
  Muslim religions.
• But over and above these major and highest
  centre, there were, so to say minor centers
  the church and temple for every single religious
  community. In medieval communities the church
  counted as the centre of the particular community.

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Axis mundi

• This symbolism of the centre, or of the centres,
  according to Eliade, goes back to a fundamental
  structure of religious experience, which he
  called axis mundi (axis of world).
• For the proper religious community axis mundi was
  the centre of the entire world, and also a
  channel between the region of mortals and the
  region of deities, of divine transcendence.
• The religious leaders of the group in question
  (shamans, witch-doctors, clerics, priests etc.),
  those who know the proper rituals, could easily
  communicate with the divine forces at these
  world-centres.
• All known religions knew centers of this kind.
  The more archaic religions had these highest
  centre in a very concrete form the mountain
  Olympus for the Greeks, or the Yggdrasil, the
  World Tree for the old Nordic, German, Viking
  tribes.
• The more developed a religion was, the more
  abstract the idea of this centre became. In
  monotheistic world-religions (on a certain degree
  of development) these centers gained a merely
  symbolic meaning.

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Sacred time. The festival

• The more important points (points of
  articulation, of orientation) of time for
  religious person were religious holidays or
  festivals.
• Eliade criticized Carl Gustav Jung, who claimed
  that the religious person commemorated the
  important events of the mythical history of the
  particular religion in question.
• According to Eliade religious festivals were
  something much more stronger than mere
  commemorations. In his opinion festivals were a
  sort of Eternal Return.
• The ancient, premodern person did not only
  commemorate the fundamental events of his or her
  religions mythical pre-history. For him or her
  those events returned and repeated during the
  sacred time of festivals, in quite a literal way.
• As the sacred places, the sacred times too meant
  a channel through the world into the transcendent
  domain.

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Eternal Return and the Terror of History

• In Eliades interpretation the archaic/premodern
  man lived in a rather cyclic world. For him/her
  the world was an Eternal Return or repetition of
  days, seasons, years and mythical events. The
  born and death of Sun God, the born and death of
  barley (Eleusinian Mysteries!), the born and
  death of entire generations.
• The New Year ceremonies amongst Mesopotamians,
  Egyptians, and other Near Eastern peoples
  re-enacted their cosmogonic myths. Each and every
  New Year ceremony was the beginning of the World
  in real.
• According to Eliade, the linear view of history
  and time is a modern construction, which is based
  on the Eschatology of major monotheistic
  religions, (Judaism, Islam, Christianity).
• Eliade refers with the term The Terror of
  History to the modern, secularized conception of
  historical time, which was entirely empty of the
  sacred. In Eliades interpretation the ancient
  man had a living connection with transcendence,
  due to its contact with the mythical age through
  the Eternal Return. Therefore the ancient people
  were in a way safe of the Terror of History.

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Myths of origin. The origin of time

• According to Eliade in ancient man lived a strong
  nostalgia for origins, (Eliade, Myths, Dreams
  and Mysteries, 1967 44 ). The ancient man made a
  difference between his time and the mythical
  time, between his age and the mythical age. In
  the ancient mans view of world the mythical time
  was the origin of time itself.
• The mythical time was the time of the Beginnings,
  the time of myths of origins. In traditional
  societies, Eliade says, myths represented the
  absolute truth about primordial time, (Eliade,
  1967 23).
• The myth of origins, as he states, is always an
  account of a creation, (Eliade, 1967 6). The
  mythical time was the time when Sacred first
  appeared and established the structure of the
  world. The myth of origin is an account about the
  origin of Sacred itself.

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Coincidentia oppositorumThe coincidence of
oppositions

• According to Eliade the Sacred often united
  antagonistic oppositions in itself. Eliade called
  the unity of opposition in one concrete form of
  the Sacred as coincidentia oppositorum or the
  coincidence of oppositions.
• Yahweh is both kind and wrathful the God of the
  Christian mystics and theologians is terrible and
  gentle at once, (Eliade, 1967 450).
• Coincidentia oppositorum represented, according
  to him, a strong union or unity of oppositions.
  It is a mythic pattern that could be found again
  also in almost every religions so in Far East,
  Oriental and ancient religions also.
• E.g. for the ancient Greeks Zeus is terrible and
  noble at the same time. In Buddhism the Karma
  (which is the engine which drives the wheel of
  uncontrolled rebirth) could be gentle and
  terrible at the same time. (But in Buddhism the
  opposites appear only on the relative level of
  sensuous phenomena, and they disappear in the
  absolute space of enlightened consciousness).

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The Sky Father.The pattern of High God

• According to Eliade in most archaic religions one
  could find a central divine figure, around which
  the community of other gods is organized.
• Eliade criticizes both the "evolutionistic"
  theory of Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) and
  others, and Wilhelm Schmidts (1868-1954) theory
  of a primal monotheism (Urmonotheismus).
• According to Tylers evolutionist theory of
  religion, there was a natural progress from
  animism to polytheism, and from polytheism to
  monotheism. But in Eliades opinion this strict
  schema does not hold in the reality, and the
  figure of Sky Father could be found in almost
  every tribal, primitive religion. The most
  popular prayer in the world is addressed to 'Our
  Father who art in heaven.' It is possible that
  man's earliest prayers were addressed to the same
  heavenly father. said Eliade, (Eliade,
  Patterns in Comparative Religion, 1958 38).
• But he also criticized Schmidts conception about
  a strict primordial monotheism. This theory, as
  Eliade thought, was rigid and unworkable.
  Though archaic, tribal cults had a central
  figure, they were nonetheless polytheistic, and
  their High God was very different from the One
  God of more developed monotheistic religions.
  (E.g. the High God could manifest himself as an
  animal, without losing his status as a celestial
  Supreme Being).

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Cosmos and chaos. Fundamental structure of the
actual world

• The distinction of cosmos and chaos referred
  again to further fundamental feature of the
  ancient mans view of world at Eliade, (The
  Sacred and the Profane).
• These words came from the ancient Greek language.
  Cosmos signified world and order at the
  same time. For the ancient man world meant an
  articulated world, with laws and order. Chaos
  was for him/her the counter-concept of cosmos
  the lack of any order and law. Chaos was a
  rupture in the texture of cosmos, of the world.
• Cosmos signified at Eliade the home-world of
  ancient man the world of laws, customs, habits,
  rituals which were familiar and accustomed for
  the premodern person. Cosmos was the world of
  mortals and immortals the pantheon of the
  concrete cultural community belonged to the
  home-world of this community also.
• The chaos meant the opposite of the world, it
  meant counter-world, the lack of the world.
  Outside the particular world of the community,
  its laws do not hold anymore. Beyond the borders
  of the home-world of the particular group there
  is the other-world.

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Criticism of Eliades ideas

• The main points of criticism concerning Eliades
  scholarship aimed at Eliades overgeneralizations.
  
• Eliades critics claimed that he tended to use
  his classifications and conceptions even in those
  cases in which he was actually had no
  satisfactory evidence. He tended to elide the
  principal differences between different
  religions.
• According to these scholars (e.g. Dougles Allen,
  Geoffrey Kirk, Wendy Doniger) even Eliades
  speculations about the fundamental features of
  religions implied to rigid categories, and every
  religion has such particular moments which cannot
  be described with Eliades own system of
  categories.
• The complexity of particular religions cannot be
  so easily grasped with such as system of
  categories that Eliade worked out.