Freud writes in “Civilization and It’s Discontents” that the religious experience has its origins in the child’s reactions to parents as providers and disciplinarians. James in “The Varieties of Religious Experience” suggests that the experience may have much to do with instinct. I believe the latter proposal is closer to the truth of the matter.
In “The Feeling of What Happens” neuroscientist Antonio Damasio uses the phrase “the fall into mind”. Over a decade before Damasio’s work was published, I was filling a notebook with ideas about how certain myths persist because they symbolize actual physical events. For me “the Fall” represents the emergence of self-consciousness in the developing brain (specifically in cortexial developments). Without this subjective perspective aesthetics and ethics would not exist.
No organism is so self-sufficient that its body can be its fuel. Organisms that replicate sexually cannot do so without a partner. Fuel intake determines the integrity of the body. Procreation determines the integrity of the species. Regardless of whether you see these developments as fortuitous or designed, they produce predictable results.
So, for humans at least, these survival mandates come with awareness that what is necessary for body maintenance and progeny exists outside the body. This fact was probably symbolized in primitive ideas about one having to cajole the external forces into relinguishing their supply of survival necessities. Modern religions, at their core, are not far in advance of recognition of the dependence of self on what is other than self.
The symbolism manifest in authentic (unintepretable) religious knowledge can be understood as psychological, physiological, social, astronomical and “astral” - simultaneously. This list is by no means exhaustive, and is called to serve only for illustrating the “sphere of effect” that we must contend with here. This “unification” is the specific flavour, the “salt” of the artform, by which it can always be distinguished from mere fantasies, mystic reveries, intepretations, commentaries and so on. Just as in musical harmony, the effect is based on this immediately recognizable coalescence or integration of multiple, seemingly disparate tone-elements into a perfectly fitting whole; a whole that is furthermore fundementally unfalsifiable, because every independent attempt at harmony (in so far as it is genuine) will lead to the one selfsame result.
-WL
If you are asking, it follows from the spiritual conception of reality which is behind all of our forms…Religion also recognizes a certain alienation of power to other beings… At first, the power of nature was considered only as power that could be influenced and motivated…Later, that power became differentiated between good and evil, moral and moral. …But God has grown but little. …People still believe they can sway god with a bribe or sacrifice…The power they once gave to god they want from god…
Hello Ierrellus:
Elsewhere Freud spoke of that “Oceanic Feeling”, which he unfortunately could not feel, but I am not so sure that he placed this squarely on biography. But even if, we still need not separate Freud from James because “the child’s reactions to parents as providers and disciplinarians” might also be instinctual. Certainly there is a constituitive process that allows for the child to internalize outside moral/social systems.
The Genesis story might not be an intended metaphor or a biological memory. It might well be an honest attempt to explain the separation betwenn man and beast, which is found in other parts of the Bible, like Ecclesiastes-- this uneasiness, unfinished business with our prey.
Walter Burkert tried to trace the biological origins of myths and I am pretty convinced that Loyal Rue has it correct when he says that “Religion is not about God”. God is a means to a biological end which is “fitness”, in it’s many forms. Religion has it’s origins in man’s need to feel in control, and possible because we are imaginative about the future, which spills into being imaginative about other things which are extra-sensual.
Our dominion of Nature comes from our ability to plan, to trace causal chains, real or imagined, better than the rest. Yet our virtue can be also our weakness. The moral sphere of religion which Freud seems to have concentrated upon, is only a different levert that man felt he could use to control his own destiny. Prior to this, the barganing chip he used was the blood of other humans, then animals, but eventually it was his own self-negation that was offered, much in the same way that you would plead with a king, which is the chief metaphor for God after this moral preocupation became central. Prior to that, God was not by necessity a moral force.
Really good response with much to consider. Meanwhile let me contribute my futher explanations, which may allign with much you have stated. Question: can we in the West see this issue in other than Freudian or Jamesian terms?
It is doubtful that a lizard, feeding or having sex, can think “I am doing this.” Although the lizard may experience pain and pleasure (Freud’s basics), its actions and reactions appear to us who have a strong sense of self to be mechanical or robotic. Its responses appear void of the space between urge and action in which options can be considered.
Humans, on the other hand, can admit, “I am doing this. I chose to do this.” And we can feel pleasure. pain, remorse, etc. from the results of what we have done. We are not machines; yet, we have not shed the mechanical functions that allow us to survive. Added to these are our abilities of choice and reflection, both of which depend on a strong sense of self.
Adam in Eden had no strong sense of self. It was only after he disobeyed that he was able to realize that he was naked, that his attempts to extract needs from the world outside his body would require onerous labor and that he would die.
At the point at which we are able to realize a self with options we can claim free will. It is not necessary to refer to evolution over geological time to substantiate this emergent acquisition. The mind of every developing human infant evolves from automatic to considered responses.
The Freudian might very well be better described as the “Nietzschean interpretation”. Freud, while highly influential, never uttered words so defining of a Zeitgeist as “God is dead”. And as for James, I would say that Kant exerted a greater influence in the Western tradition as he introduced the idea of a mediated empiricism.
Say what?
I’m not a fan of Kant. His writing appears far too obscure to mediate anything. He relies on transcendence to explain physical phenomena that are merely extensions. Current philosophers are divided on this. As for the God is dead concept, it appears to have come about from the religious and science controversy over teleology. The easy way out of such an I said you said stalemate was to assume God died or did his business and left.
I’m arguing for physical extensions that include mind, body and spirit. The philosophical tendency to place certainty ouside human experience, to diconnect knower and known in favor of some extra-body ideal (Plato, Paul, Kant) cannot reconcile religion and science.
I don’t think Freud understood that the nature of Parents has changed as humanity has changed…Parents of children who may some day avenge them, and who are already their equals in a sense have a totally different sort of relaationship with their parents than we do in our day…It was enough to tell primives that Human Beings, as people always think of themselves, do not do this, or do not do that to correct their children…Since unity was a given because all considered themselves surrounded by enemies, discipline became secondary to the arts of survival…Native Americans were given the bow on their bed boards, and even if a boy decided to be a girl no one would correct them, because friends have no authority over friends… It is impossible for God as we know him to have him to have been created from the model of ancient parents…First of all, they saw no essentiall unity to their nature…Neither did the Hindo, and disorder was created with the universe which spawned a multitude of gods…What God came out of was gods… Essential to religion is the spiritual conception of reality… Without forms which are the product of imagination we would never be able to see what is not there…Why can a primitive look at a tree as see a living being with a spirit??? What they know of themselves, the sense of being, of power, self conception -they think true for all animals and all life…If you hunt deer you know them for a secretive and shy animal… Since they are more than our equals would it not be natural to conceive of them as equals, of having among their own the power to communicate, for an example??? Gods were born out of the spirits of nature, and only with a bribe, a sacrifice, a tit for a tat could animals as a whole be brought under the arrows of mankind… Now; this is common knowledge, and was even in Freud’s day… When he talks of religion he is talking about a religion born out of civiliation, two in fact, but for the most part, out of Egypt… He notes this in Moses and Montheism; but civiliation represents a whole nother level of develpment for mankind…It is a different sort of thing to accept a man as the spiritual equal of a God, and it is a step beyond that to accept God as pure will, or spirit…Once, men were the equal of fish in their spiritual conception of self…But they were also on par with all of nature at that time, able to deal with nature on terms they would accept themselves…They had power…They could reach heaven with a tree, or a ladder, or a tower… As God has become more powerful we have become less so, so that now, we cannot reach heaven with the tallest rocket…I don’t think Freud really grasped what was going on… We think of God as bringing justice because justice is a rare as God…The price of civilization, of large bodies of people living together and enduring the exploitation of a ruling class, is that we have no right to immediate justice, and so children to revenge us, or themselves for that matter, are unneccessary…Before law got a hold of the issue people could beat their children, and did…If they did not show the children what was in store for them if the state got a hold of them,they were doing all a dis-service…We are no longer surrounded by friends protecting us from the enemies that surround all… We never have to think our children are our equals because they will some day be our defense, and our support…The lesson for children was no longer, that we are in this together to the end… The lesson became: Thank God you are alive, and you can pray for justice, but don’t count on it…God has changed as we have changed…
Ierrellus, you might find a thread I opened a while ago of interest:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=169822
It discusses the concepts of where Religion comes from and what it’s role is in man.
I will warn you that it’s a lengthy read, but if you do read the entire thread (I know, I know…), I think you might find some things of interest for your points.
Religion has role in man??? Shouldn’t that be the other way around??? I’d kind of like to see man as a big production with lots of style and grace and witty lines; but it is more likely that man is the producer if he desires the part, and religion is one of the roles he plays…Yet, it might be more fun your way… In man, we could have religion playing the part of Jesus, and show the directer heaping contumely upon the risen Christ…
Religion doesn’t exist without man, therefore man cannot have a role in Religion, but instead, Religion has a place within humanity.
Inside of that, each Religion decidedly explains what man’s role is in the universe and/or within the constructs of that Religion itself, but this is not the same conversation as what I have said.
Thanks, TS, I’ll check that out. Meanwhile there are many good ideas here that deserve comment. I’m a learner, not an authority.
On oceanic feelings (Omar). Freud addresses this in “Civilzation and Its Discontents.” This is a feeling of oneness with the universe, a feeling much more articulated in Eastern religions than in Western religions. In many religions of the East holism is a given and “that art thou” is easily understood. In Western religions the experience of individuation, of separation from the whole, provides the theological formula of sin and salvation, of the fall into self-conscious awareness as needing an intermediary savior for reuniting with God.
The oceanic feeling may amount to immediate awareness of being in and of the natural world, a sense of belonging that permits a looking away from the onerous tasks of survival and the certainty of death.
I agree on the point that Freud did not dig deep enough, which may be more a matter of what science was available as he wrote. What I’m trying to do here is show how a natural religion could be possible and could be mediation between extreme viewpoints. In the late 19th century Wm. Blake wrote “There is no natural religion.” In the last midcentury Sir Julian Huxley was writing about how there could be a natural religion. Well, is there or isn’t there?
Religion is the most natural form for mankind, and the spiritual conception of reality is the nascent form of our day…It is archaic now; but think of it…Religion has what philosoophy has starting out and rests on the same mistakes…But the essential grain of all logical thinking is there, fully formed…No only was religion natural, it has the germ of science in it because it offers a theory, and seeks a unity, so that all religions are a system of thought… Metaphysics apart from philosophy is theology…I think, As Schopenhaur may have said, it has subject out of precident with object…It as though the world were created by means of some perfect form…It is the thought that our religion holds, that we were created, and still are, put on the whole of everything… Religion supposes a God the way the object supposes a creator, but some, mainly Eastern religions do not trouble with creation, and not having the impossible to prove proved nothing… This spiritual representation of reality, and even ourselves in religion is of the same ability we have to conceive of reality through forms/ideas/and concept…It takes no more ability to conceive of a brick than it does to conceive of God, and it may take less because one has an object to work with… With our forms we have a mental representation of the object that seems as a spirit…Forms have no weight or substance…For that reason we can in our minds create a rock that is too big to see around, and easy to lift…If we know it as an object we can see through it…It is the spirit of the thing whether simple or complex…With religion we define God…With philosophy we define reality without the element of God considered…Though we conceive of reality spiritually, it is of objective reality… Moral reality conceived of with moral forms is still of human needs considered spiritually, as though objects… So I would say spirituality, and religion are natural to mankind, and essential to what we are compared to mere animals… We would not be what we are without the power to conceive of ourselves as gods…We have made ourselves men trying to be gods…
This was a strange comment for me to read, as I only pasted that link for exactly what you consider yourself to be; a learner.
Authorities don’t read links; they “know” everything to well to bother. 
That’s right!!! Way to well…That’s why God made books, and probably why church people burn em…
Just covering the bases, TS, not accusing. The problems here, mine and others’, may be a confusing of the natural need for the religious experience with the prospect of envisioning a “natural” religion that could stand alongside the major religions, which I see as distortions from any original teachings. Of course, the distortions have evolved over the millennia; they appear to be as organic as is the natural need.