Learning Anthropology questions?

[WonderWorld]

I am an anthropology student looking into spiritual paths, but from an Anthropological perspective I’m having trouble finding anything spiritual in spirituality.
At first I justified these feelings by the realization that the start of human consciousness comes from when humans and neanderthals started burying their dead, meaning that spirituality has always been a part of human evolution from the start of our consciousness. And so spirituality must be either real and important to our survival, or not real but still important to our survival.
So I figured either way humanity needs it, as it is also proven that people who are spiritual live happier and longer lives.

I want to try to believe that it is real, but it’s so hard to try to believe that from this perspective. Spirituality was probably essential in so many ways for our survival, but I can’t see how one religion or belief could be right, especially since I learned that different paths of religions or beliefs emerged differently based on environment. For example, we learned how in places where there was a lot of war and uncertainty are the places that decided to believe in one god, because they needed more stability. And places with less war and more stable environments tended to believe in multiple gods and reincarnation…

I hope this makes sense to someone, So could you try to convince me that one belief, or just spirituality in general is something real and not just for the benefit of our species survival and based on our environmental and cultural factors??

 

[Ion]

I remember in grade 5 studiing antic history, and we were told how people invented religion because they couldn’t make sense of the natural law…like for lightning there must have been somebody doing it behind etc…;do they keep teling the same stupid stories?

 

[airjohn]

Hi, not sure if this will help but have you tried reading any good books, like Thomas Aquinas Summa Theo or more current authors on this subject.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

Unfortunately, many College Anthrapology and History Professors are Secularists and they tend to foist their beliefs on their students. It is not a wise idea to debate them because you are dependant upon them to get a grade. However, you can let it be known that you are a Catholic.
I suggest that you go to the Newman Center on your campus and have a talk with the Chaplain there. He will be best to guide you in your situation. And, never forget that one of the great Catholic theologans of the 20th Century was also an archeologist/anthropologist: Teilhard de Chardin-who also was a Jesuit priest.

 

[Ion]

Science suppose natural law without God intervention, so you have a hard time there.
There is nothing to believe, there are only theories that try to explain/organize information;
People tried to make their own way to Heavens, thats true.

 

[Ion]

Personally i consider the theory of evolution dumb…
But to be polite I say is the best scientific(no God intervention) theory that explains the information at hand…

 

[Ion]

The is an awesome history of religions written by Mircea Eliade, professor at the University of Chicago…you will get many insights there

 

[WonderWorld]

Hmmm, I guess I could try looking at some of the books suggested.

 

[MPat]

I am an anthropology student looking into spiritual paths, but from an Anthropological perspective I’m having trouble finding anything spiritual in spirituality.
At first I justified these feelings by the realization that the start of human consciousness comes from when humans and neanderthals started burying their dead, meaning that spirituality has always been a part of human evolution from the start of our consciousness. And so spirituality must be either real and important to our survival, or not real but still important to our survival.
So I figured either way humanity needs it, as it is also proven that people who are spiritual live happier and longer lives.

I want to try to believe that it is real, but it’s so hard to try to believe that from this perspective. Spirituality was probably essential in so many ways for our survival, but I can’t see how one religion or belief could be right, especially since I learned that different paths of religions or beliefs emerged differently based on environment. For example, we learned how in places where there was a lot of war and uncertainty are the places that decided to believe in one god, because they needed more stability. And places with less war and more stable environments tended to believe in multiple gods and reincarnation…

I hope this makes sense to someone, So could you try to convince me that one belief, or just spirituality in general is something real and not just for the benefit of our species survival and based on our environmental and cultural factors??

Ask yourself: how could all religions be completely wrong about everything and still be “important to our survival”? Do you know anything else that is completely wrong (not even an approximation of something real) and that necessary?

 

[WonderWorld]

Ask yourself: how could all religions be completely wrong about everything and still be “important to our survival”? Do you know anything else that is completely wrong (not even an approximation of something real) and that necessary?

Because they could just have evolved as a survival mechanism?

 

[Birdmanman]

Because they could just have evolved as a survival mechanism?

Thanks for posting on these forums! Please forgive me if I sound unkind in my response, I’m in school as well:
Ideas don’t “evolve” themselves, people hold those ideas or beliefs and change, alter, or add to them (or someone else does that for them). Do you really think a religion with dietary restrictions, compulsory animal sacrifice, lethal punishment for violations of chastity, and the tendency for religion-based fighting is all that ideal for a groups survival?
How about the massive human sacrifices of the Aztecs, or the large-scale infant sacrifices of the Philistines? Killing off your own offspring is great for survival…
I mean, you could chalk it all down to “group cohesion”, but there are some much gentler ways to establish a cultural identity. Be careful when you have an unfalsifiable framework like Anthropology may suggest; you could lump everything into the categories “personal survival” and “group survival”, with the most destructive cultural practices hidden as a means of “group identity survival”.

I guess the question would come down to: do you believe anything supernatural or spiritual can actually occur? Were all those ancient stories of different religious peoples made up? So made up that they were willing to die or kill for them?
For answers, I would look into modern day examples: Apparitions like at Fatima, Lourdes, Knock, Guadalupe, or Zeitoun. Saints like Faustina (who accurately predicted what would happen to her teaching), Padre Pio, Maximilian Kolbe…you get the picture.

You can also look into arguments from Reason for the existence of the soul.

 

[WonderWorld]

Thanks for posting on these forums! Please forgive me if I sound unkind in my response, I’m in school as well:
Ideas don’t “evolve” themselves, people hold those ideas or beliefs and change, alter, or add to them (or someone else does that for them). Do you really think a religion with dietary restrictions, compulsory animal sacrifice, lethal punishment for violations of chastity, and the tendency for religion-based fighting is all that ideal for a groups survival?
How about the massive human sacrifices of the Aztecs, or the large-scale infant sacrifices of the Philistines? Killing off your own offspring is great for survival…
I mean, you could chalk it all down to “group cohesion”, but there are some much gentler ways to establish a cultural identity. Be careful when you have an unfalsifiable framework like Anthropology may suggest; you could lump everything into the categories “personal survival” and “group survival”, with the most destructive cultural practices hidden as a means of “group identity survival”.

I guess the question would come down to: do you believe anything supernatural or spiritual can actually occur? Were all those ancient stories of different religious peoples made up? So made up that they were willing to die or kill for them?
For answers, I would look into modern day examples: Apparitions like at Fatima, Lourdes, Knock, Guadalupe, or Zeitoun. Saints like Faustina (who accurately predicted what would happen to her teaching), Padre Pio, Maximilian Kolbe…you get the picture.

You can also look into arguments from Reason for the existence of the soul.

It’s ok to sounds harsh, I want to be fully convinced, but I feel soooo very torn. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know if I believe super natural things happen, I have personally had some super natural type experiences, but those experiences could also be my brain I guess. Everything is so complicated, I wish I could just know for sure…

I don’t know much about Saints in depth, I read a book about Padre Pio a long time ago, but I forget most of what it said, plus I’m so skeptical…even though I don’t want to be…
I’ve been to Lourdes, when I was in high school, it was a beautiful place, I collected water, but nothing super natural happened…

 

[Birdmanman]

It’s ok to sounds harsh, I want to be fully convinced, but I feel soooo very torn. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know if I believe super natural things happen, I have personally had some super natural type experiences, but those experiences could also be my brain I guess. Everything is so complicated, I wish I could just know for sure…

I don’t know much about Saints in depth, I read a book about Padre Pio a long time ago, but I forget most of what it said, plus I’m so skeptical…even though I don’t want to be…
I’ve been to Lourdes, when I was in high school, it was a beautiful place, I collected water, but nothing super natural happened…

I hear ya WonderWorld, the college culture that we’re both in can lead to skepticism and moral relativity.

Life is complicated, and it’s tough to know things for sure from reason alone. We can know for certain from reason that truth is truth and that trust exists, that we exist, that God exists (ontological argument (at least Plantinga’s), moral argument + occam’s razor, kalam cosmological argument, ‘other’ cosmological argument), and a bit more.
The question that gets me, and that it comes down to as far as believing in the supernatural, is essentially “who do you trust?”
We trust our life with doctors and airplane pilots based on their experience, we trust researchers in the physical sciences (but maybe not their conclusions) because their work is replicable and falsifiable, but what about spiritual events, who is the expert? What research can be done?
Since it is normally impossible to study scientifically things like apparitions, we must trust the witnesses; or else call them honest, deceived, liars, or psychologically troubled. If we can find no method for them to be deceived, then we are left with calling them either psychologically troubled, liars, or honest.
I am unwilling to believe that witnesses of apparitions like Bernadette at Lourdes, the anti-clerical journalist and professor at Fatima, or the group at Knock were psychologically troubled or lying, many of these have already died and have not recanted the event they witnessed, and there is no good physical means in these cases for them to be deceived.
I can only conclude, then, that they are telling the truth, and by extension a supernatural or spiritual event really occurred.

Have you seen the movie “The Truman Show”? Kind of like “The Matrix”, the main character has been lied to his whole life and everything around him is fake; he falls in love with a girl and she tells him about how it is all fake, and after a few more hints he ends up truly believing her and finding a way out of his ‘fake world’.
What if someone loved you so much that they were willing to risk their lives, and eventually die, to tell you that something was true? How outrageous would it have to be for you to not believe them? This is what the Apostles have done for us, many of whom were martyred.
Do you trust them? You will never on earth, by your human reason alone, make an argument that by necessity forces your reason to conclude that Christianity is absolutely true (this is taught by The Church). In order to know [Catholic] Christianity is absolutely true, you must trust (that is, have Faith) those who taught it to you and those who gave their lives to teach it to the world. This isn’t blind faith, for Fideism is condemned. We have much evidence that points to Christianity, reason still has its part to play, but once reason has been satisfied and has evaluated the evidence, you need Faith to make the last step and accept Christianity as absolutely true.

And He continued by questioning them, “But who do you say that I am?”

 

[grannymh]

I am an anthropology student looking into spiritual paths, but from an Anthropological perspective I’m having trouble finding anything spiritual in spirituality.
At first I justified these feelings by the realization that the start of human consciousness comes from when humans and neanderthals started burying their dead, meaning that spirituality has always been a part of human evolution from the start of our consciousness. And so spirituality must be either real and important to our survival, or not real but still important to our survival.
So I figured either way humanity needs it, as it is also proven that people who are spiritual live happier and longer lives.

I want to try to believe that it is real, but it’s so hard to try to believe that from this perspective. Spirituality was probably essential in so many ways for our survival, but I can’t see how one religion or belief could be right, especially since I learned that different paths of religions or beliefs emerged differently based on environment. For example, we learned how in places where there was a lot of war and uncertainty are the places that decided to believe in one god, because they needed more stability. And places with less war and more stable environments tended to believe in multiple gods and reincarnation…

I hope this makes sense to someone, So could you try to convince me that one belief, or just spirituality in general is something real and not just for the benefit of our species survival and based on our environmental and cultural factors??

If you are into paleontology, you know that classifications for species are based on similar anatomical characteristics between fossils. Currently, in some situations, DNA is being retrieved which adds more definitive information regarding relationships between hominins. What needs to be remembered is that this type of evidence is limited to decomposing anatomies.

Regarding spirituality, I am not sure if you are referring to a highly developed sentience or to a spiritual, immortal, non-material soul which defines a human person. If by human consciousness, you mean a true rational being, then burying one’s dead may be a ritual but not in the same spiritual category of a true human’s respect for the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. “Temple of the Holy Spirit” is an old phrase describing human nature as an unique unification of both the material world and the spiritual world.

Anthropology is one of the most fascinating disciplines of natural science. However, technically one cannot determine the existence of a spiritual, eternal soul from studying fossils, DNA, and artifacts. Souls cannot be put under the proverbial microscope. But that does not automatically eliminate their existence.

Once one determines what is meant by human spirituality, then one can look for the line of demarcation between a true human and our subhuman ancestors. The superior faculties of the man’s spiritual soul, such as intellect and will, definitely marked the successful survival of humankind as the only extant hominin.

In my humble opinion, the true characteristics of a human being’s spiritual path can be found in the records of the first three chapters of Genesis. This is because humans are called to share in God’s life through knowledge (intellect) and love (result of free will).

 

[WonderWorld]

If you are into paleontology, you know that classifications for species are based on similar anatomical characteristics between fossils. Currently, in some situations, DNA is being retrieved which adds more definitive information regarding relationships between hominins. What needs to be remembered is that this type of evidence is limited to decomposing anatomies.

Regarding spirituality, I am not sure if you are referring to a highly developed sentience or to a spiritual, immortal, non-material soul which defines a human person. If by human consciousness, you mean a true rational being, then burying one’s dead may be a ritual but not in the same spiritual category of a true human’s respect for the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. “Temple of the Holy Spirit” is an old phrase describing human nature as an unique unification of both the material world and the spiritual world.

Anthropology is one of the most fascinating disciplines of natural science. However, technically one cannot determine the existence of a spiritual, eternal soul from studying fossils, DNA, and artifacts. Souls cannot be put under the proverbial microscope. But that does not automatically eliminate their existence.

Once one determines what is meant by human spirituality, then one can look for the line of demarcation between a true human and our subhuman ancestors. The superior faculties of the man’s spiritual soul, such as intellect and will, definitely marked the successful survival of humankind as the only extant hominin.

In my humble opinion, the true characteristics of a human being’s spiritual path can be found in the records of the first three chapters of Genesis. This is because humans are called to share in God’s life through knowledge (intellect) and love (result of free will).

You can’t determine spirituality from fossils, but I know they gauge the emergence of consciousness from the first evidence of art, tool making, and burying of the dead. Even the Neanderthals buried their dead, in fetal position, or at least some of them. So at the least it was essential to our evolution and survival…I dunno

 

[WonderWorld]

I hear ya WonderWorld, the college culture that we’re both in can lead to skepticism and moral relativity.

Life is complicated, and it’s tough to know things for sure from reason alone. We can know for certain from reason that truth is truth and that trust exists, that we exist, that God exists (ontological argument (at least Plantinga’s), moral argument + occam’s razor, kalam cosmological argument, ‘other’ cosmological argument), and a bit more.
The question that gets me, and that it comes down to as far as believing in the supernatural, is essentially “who do you trust?”
We trust our life with doctors and airplane pilots based on their experience, we trust researchers in the physical sciences (but maybe not their conclusions) because their work is replicable and falsifiable, but what about spiritual events, who is the expert? What research can be done?
Since it is normally impossible to study scientifically things like apparitions, we must trust the witnesses; or else call them honest, deceived, liars, or psychologically troubled. If we can find no method for them to be deceived, then we are left with calling them either psychologically troubled, liars, or honest.
I am unwilling to believe that witnesses of apparitions like Bernadette at Lourdes, the anti-clerical journalist and professor at Fatima, or the group at Knock were psychologically troubled or lying, many of these have already died and have not recanted the event they witnessed, and there is no good physical means in these cases for them to be deceived.
I can only conclude, then, that they are telling the truth, and by extension a supernatural or spiritual event really occurred.

Have you seen the movie “The Truman Show”? Kind of like “The Matrix”, the main character has been lied to his whole life and everything around him is fake; he falls in love with a girl and she tells him about how it is all fake, and after a few more hints he ends up truly believing her and finding a way out of his ‘fake world’.
What if someone loved you so much that they were willing to risk their lives, and eventually die, to tell you that something was true? How outrageous would it have to be for you to not believe them? This is what the Apostles have done for us, many of whom were martyred.
Do you trust them? You will never on earth, by your human reason alone, make an argument that by necessity forces your reason to conclude that Christianity is absolutely true (this is taught by The Church). In order to know [Catholic] Christianity is absolutely true, you must trust (that is, have Faith) those who taught it to you and those who gave their lives to teach it to the world. This isn’t blind faith, for Fideism is condemned. We have much evidence that points to Christianity, reason still has its part to play, but once reason has been satisfied and has evaluated the evidence, you need Faith to make the last step and accept Christianity as absolutely true.

I really don’t know who to trust, honestly, when I think about it, a lot of people die and give up their life for meaningless reasons…for war for example, kamikazis, Nazi’s did it for Hitlers beliefs, people in cults have done it, even sacrificed their own children for it. A lot of people believe so strongly in Islam that they are willing to give their lives up for it and die for it, A LOT of them, so does that make Islam true, because they would just as willingly give up their life for what they believe. These are extreme examples, but just because you believe something so strongly that you would give up your life for it doesn’t mean it’s right or true… right?

 

[Mystophilus]

For example, we learned how in places where there was a lot of war and uncertainty are the places that decided to believe in one god, because they needed more stability. And places with less war and more stable environments tended to believe in multiple gods and reincarnation.

Um, what? No. Historically, polytheism has been far more common than monotheism but warfare, plagues, famines, etc have been far more common than peace and stability. Ancient Rome, Greece, Babylon, India, and China were all polytheistic and far from stable. I cannot see any good correlation between the environment in a particular place and the religion(s) which began there.

I hope this makes sense to someone, So could you try to convince me that one belief, or just spirituality in general is something real and not just for the benefit of our species survival and based on our environmental and cultural factors??

I would suggest reading Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, a book on evolutionary cognitive theory and religion written by a believer.

 

[onemangang]

If all these religions emerged out of some sort of epistemological social constructivism, then they would be true to each group in a sense to explain reality.

God knows the ways and the means revelation would be conveyed. What if there were elements of Truth within each religion. Say perhaps these Revelations WOULD be conveyed through the Jews only** IF** they would enter into another Social Construct outside of their own. Jews seemed not to have a view of Hell or Everlasting Damnation until the Captivity under the Babylonians. The Babylonians ascribed to a form of Dualism regarding good and evil. Within the Social Construct of a dualistic Babylonian community, a darkness, or enemy COULD be revealed to the Jewish people. He knew that the Babylonians** WOULD** influence the Jewish people (Daniel) and that Daniel **WOULD ** freely reveal the greater truth of the Mystery of God and Convey His message to mankind. IF Daniel was never under Babylonian captivity, WOULD this great unveiling of eternal torment ever be revealed through the Prophet Daniel?

Just an example, but I’m no Scholar

God knows the Ways, the Means, and all that is in between.

Just a thought

This is certainly not Dogma, by any means, but there are approaches to be considered when you are limited to a Social Constructivist Anthropology.

Emerging Faiths do not contradict a One True Faith. The Question of Who is God, can be viewed as an unfolding of divine wisdom, through social constucts, but His Fullness has manifest in the man Christ Jesus, and has been revealed to us through the Church

 

[Birdmanman]

I really don’t know who to trust, honestly, when I think about it, a lot of people die and give up their life for meaningless reasons…for war for example, kamikazis, Nazi’s did it for Hitlers beliefs, people in cults have done it, even sacrificed their own children for it. A lot of people believe so strongly in Islam that they are willing to give their lives up for it and die for it, A LOT of them, so does that make Islam true, because they would just as willingly give up their life for what they believe. These are extreme examples, but just because you believe something so strongly that you would give up your life for it doesn’t mean it’s right or true… right?

Hello again WonderWorld,
I didn’t mean to imply that every time someone gives up their life for something, that we ought to trust them and consider that something true. I was referring more specifically to matters of actual personal experience, that those who give up their lives would rather die than deny. Here is an example:
St. Felicity is a martyr in Ancient Rome; did she see Christ’s passion physically firsthand, or meet Him personally in a physical sense while on earth? No.
In this case, when St. Felicity dies for her Faith, I don’t think a reasonable person should conclude, by reason, “well, she died for something she was told about and believed strongly in; what she was told must be right!”

To contrast, let’s take St. Peter; St. Peter personally knew Christ, witnessed Him perform His miracles, and ran the risk of being a heretic in his Judaism by teaching that a man was also God (or at least, the Son of God, who identified Himself with God), as well as being persecuted in Rome. He was ultimately killed for teaching his beliefs, or at the very least ran the risk of being killed for them, which beliefs included those supernatural occurrences that he witnessed. When he dies teaching something that more or less says, “I witnessed something spiritual/supernatural that affects all of us, it is really important you guys, you guys gotta listen”, why would you disbelieve that he, or any of the other martyr-apostles, witnessed something supernatural?

Or look at St. Bernadette Soubirous, who witnessed an apparition of Mary. She lived her life through as a devout Catholic, never recanting the validity of her apparition. Or Lucia Santos, who witnessed an apparition of Mary at one point frequently at Fatima. She later became a nun and died, again never recanting the validity of the apparition she witnessed. Keep in mind that Catholics believe that, “An offense committed against the truth requires reparation.”, so we would have a nun, devoting her life to her faith, but failing in a very important aspect of her faith.

I am not saying that just because St. Peter (or the other martyr-apostles) went to the grave teaching a spiritual/supernatural thing occurred means that the spiritual/supernatural thing is to be believed as right or good; but I think that a rational person will give credence to his actual experience. For example, if a group of Hindus were to risk their lives and be publicly executed for saying that Ganeesha, one of their supernatural entities, appeared to them in a field and told them that eating cows is actually something sacred and that they must live in poverty, if they went to their grave sticking to their story, that didn’t materially benefit them or their family at all, I would think this the most perfect kind of witness-evidence that can be given. I would honestly believe that they had had a supernatural experience, their word is worth something. That doesn’t mean I would think their supernatural experience is a good thing, I would think it would be the work of some demonic or evil force, but I would not doubt those Hindus’ sincerity and honesty in reporting it.
This is, of course, presuming that they are in their right mind; but with a group large or diverse enough, the claim that all of them would simultaneously be psychologically disturbed seems rather flippant.

At least, if you become hung up on the issue of trust, realize that if you take materialist physicalism as true (which would be an unreasonable choice, see philosophical arguments for God’s existence and arguments in philosophy of the mind), you are saying in a sense: “I choose not to trust any of those numerous people who have reported spiritual/supernatural experiences, no matter their religion, they are all incorrect in their claims because they have either been misled by tricks or naturally occurring phenomena, or are mentally disturbed, or are knowingly misleading others by lying or omitting the truth”. No matter what, you are choosing who you trust.

 

[grannymh]

I, but I can’t see how one religion or belief could be right, especially since I learned that different paths of religions or beliefs emerged differently based on environment.

The environment theory is a half-truth. It is related to the emergence or epiphenomenon theories which attempt to explain the goodness of people at the same time the spiritual principle of human nature is denied. This may be why there is difficulty with spiritual paths.