Paris Blues:
But on the other hand, I think my instructor did mention that people did “worship” animals a long time ago. But why the heck would you worship a created thing and not the Creator?
History is interesting what people chose to worship. I don’t know of any way of telling what the cave men worshipped. If I saw a picture of a bull on the wall with a person in front of it, my guess would be that it was one of two things: either his every day life and what he dealt with on a regular basis, or so out of the ordinary that it was worth drawing about. The more common it became, the more common I would think the scene would be.
Look at our art today. A lot of landscapes. A lot of techno-metal. A lot of buildings. Animals. Scenes from life. And make-believe. Can you imagine how it would be interpreted if the only art that survived our time to later be interpreted was The Scream?
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I’d say that that alien clearly is scared of the people. And it looks like the world is on fire. Maybe that was his space ship crashing… I mean, it could go anywhere!
Later in history, after oral and written traditions were passed down from one generation to another, we start getting a more accurate picture of faith lives. The Bible itself is clear about the pagan ways of certain countries. In Egypt, cats were sacred. In many places, the king/emporer/ruler was seen as a diety. These different religions is what the professors point out to “prove” that Christianity is no different–all societies have some sort of supernatural belief, and Christianity is simply ours. Christianity’s history is actually VERY different, though.
What is interesting, too, is that these people who debase religion will also say that it is a mark of civilization to have religious beliefs. It seems we are programmed to tune in to the spiritual life. There are even medical studies which say we have a “God center” in the brain. If they are right, the question then becomes which religion is right. Only Christianity can stand up to history.
Of the Christian religions, very few can stand up to science. Catholicism is obviously one of them. (PS, you ARE dealing with science in your art history class. How did they find the art? How did they date it? How are they preserving it? All through science…)
While we do have documented cases of animal worship (the Hindus regard the cow as sacred to this day), I would be very leery of a professor who was reading into some cave drawing from 3 million BC what her current situation and society is dealing with. While it would be interesting for everyone to “suppose” what the drawing signifies, I would not expect the teacher to attribute any more to it than that humans existed, animals existed, and humans used art to record events. We don’t know if they were ritualistic or not. Anything more is her attempt to step outside her discipline and into religion.
because there’s a picture of a Paleolitic pebble with a human-like face on it as if someone made it themselves. The says it’s from 3,000,000 B.C. But I don’t know anything so I should keep my yap shut!
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