Animism and Magic: The Theories on Religion by E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer

This is a journal entry I need to do for class. I believe that my thoughts are decently organized on the subject, and I really like the way that this turned out. :)

Callie J. Moline
August 25, 2010

Animism and Magic: E. B. Tylor and J. G. Frazer

I was very interested in what both theorists had to say in regards to the nature of religion, especially with regards to how they came to these conclusions. I found most of their logic to be sound, though there were many arguments that I was very disinclined to agree with.
Tylor’s theory of animism operates on the basis of humankind as being solely logical, with no room for emotion or human error. Through logic, we simply arrive at the idea of souls and spirits, and then use that idea to further arrive at the idea of religion. The disagreement I have with this idea is that logic doesn’t solely drive the need to understand something like death and dreams. I imagine that Tylor’s “savage philosopher” began to think about the nature of the soul and spirits through an original fear borne of ignorance of the nature of death and dreams rather than by completely rational and logical consideration. It is well known in our time that the unknown spawns fear, be it through evolutionary safety mechanisms or a learned fear of that which we do not understand. Because of this, I believe that Tylor’s exclusion of emotion in the evolution of animism is a crucial oversight in a practical understanding of religious theory.
In addition, Tylor discusses evolution of religion and society, which is equally troublesome. For instance, Tylor would view the Aborigines as being inferior as a society because of their “primitive” ways. Yet, in my opinion, if a business man from New York were to venture out into the Australian outback, his “societal evolution” would likely not save him from dying of dehydration before he could find help. It is for this reason that I believe that an evolutionary progression of culture, ranking societies from “civilized” to “primitive” is a pointless and contradictory effort. If we look at the nature of evolution as defined by Charles Darwin, we see that creatures evolve out of necessity. If this idea is applied to humans, then would it not stand to argue that the Aborigines have not “evolved” as a society because there has not been necessity, and therefore they are equal to those who have evolved to live in advanced cities? They meet the needs of their environment, and their environment meets their needs. In as far as evolutionary theory goes, they are just as “perfect” in their ecosystems as city-dwellers are in theirs.
Frazer builds off of Tylor’s theory, adding magic to the mix as any ritualistic behavior that is believed to directly influence nature. He expands upon the idea of an evolutionary progression of religion from polytheism to monotheism and then predicts that monotheism will fall to science as the superior understanding of the world. During the discussion, I said that I believed that science and religion would not battle to the death, with science as the victor, because science does not fulfill the emotional needs of the individuals practicing it as religion does. I still believe this, because science offers only very hard, straight-forward answers to almost any question that humans can pose, but humans are not purely logical. We are also very emotional, and thus need more than just statistics and empirical data to explain disasters such as lightning strikes, earthquakes, plane crashes, etc;.
Thinking about this further, however, has led me to understand that my belief in this future of religion and science is limited by my current understanding of the world. I was raised in a world where religion is of the utmost importance- atheism is often frowned upon. Though I myself am agnostic, religion is a huge part of the world around me, and thus I find it hard to imagine a world where religion is completely railroaded by science. I believe now that the closest to total domination science will achieve will be to become almost religious in nature itself, or remain the same with religion being a major social “survival” from current times. Either way, religion, in my opinion, will not be completely discarded, whether it remains as an adaptation to deal with science on a larger scale, or as a series of social traditions that simply exist to fill the emotional void that science does not.