Index Number:

10330292

Course Code:

SOCI 347

Course:

Sociology of Religions

Title:

Discuss the Contributions of One of the Following towards the Understanding of Religions
a) E. B TYLER b) J. B FRASER c) B. MALINOWSKI

Edward Burnett Tylor

The anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor was born on 2nd October, 1832 at Camberwell, London. He died at the age of 84, on 2nd January, 1917, at Wellington, Somerset. He was English. He defined religion as belief in supernatural beings and stated that this belief originated as explanations to the world. This means that people tried to give reasons for what was happening. They ascribed them to something greater and mightier, instead of using science to explain. Thus believe in supernatural beings. This belief in supernatural beings grew out of attempts to explain life and death. Life they knew didnt occur naturally, and so they also believed death didnt occur naturally. Primitive people used dreams in which spirits seemed to appear as an indication that the human mind could exist independent of a body. That is, even without a body, the human mind would still work. This is because, it works even though the body is sleeping. They used this by extension to explain life and death, and belief in the after life. Myths and deities to explain natural phenomena originated out of an analogy and an extension of these explanations. His theory assumed that the psyche of all peoples of all times are more or less the same and that explanations in cultures and religions tend to grow more sophisticated via monotheist religions, like Christianity and eventually to science. Tylor saw religion as rational and conscious, though primitive and mistaken attempt to explain the natural world. Tylor argued that animism is the true natural religion that is the essence of religion; it answers the questions of which religion came first and which religion is essentially the most basic and foundation of all religions. For him, animism was the best answer to these

questions, so it must be the true foundation of all religions. Animism is described as the belief in spirits inhabiting and animating beings, or souls existing in things. The method that Tylor used was seeking similar beliefs and practices in all societies, especially the more primitive ones, more or less regardless of time and place. He relied heavily on reports made by missionaries, discoverers, and colonial civil servants.

Religion as a survival
E.B. Tylor argued that in the past, religion was used by people to account for or explain things that occurred in the world. He saw that it was necessary for religions to have the ability to explain why and for what reason things occurred in the world. For example, God (or the divine) gave us sun to keep us warm and give us light. To Tylor, the fact that modern religious practitioners continued to believe in spirits showed that these people were no more advanced than primitive societies. He believes that science should not be exempted in the understanding of the world. For him, this implied that modern religious practitioners do not understand the ways of the universe and how life truly works because they have excluded science from their understanding of the world. He saw this as very basic and simple and therefore unsatisfactory. Tylors ideology is best described in his most famous work, the two-volume Primitive Culture. The first volume, The Origins of Culture, explains various aspects of ethnography including social evolution, linguistics, and myth. The second volume, titled Religion in Primitive Culture, explains his interpretation of animism. Fundamental to understanding Tylors ideology, is acknowledging that he is considered an undertaker of religion. Tylor displays negative feelings towards religion, and especially Christianity.

Tylor had a number of disciples and one of them is James George Fraser. In conclusion, Tylor perceived the modern religious belief in God as a survival of primitive ignorance. He claimed the contemporary belief in God to be a survival, because science could explain the phenomena previously justified by religion. He defined religion as belief in supernatural beings and stated that this belief originated as explanations to the world.

References
"Animism", Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed 2 October 2007.

"Edward Burnett Tylor: biography", Pitt Rivers Museum

Lowrie, Robert H. (1917). "Edward B. Tylor", American Anthropologist, New Series Vol. 19, No. 2. (Apr. Jun., 1917), pp. 262-268.

R. R. Marett, Tylor (London: Chapman and Hall, 1936)