REL 2300 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Edward Burnett Tylor, Antithesis, Comparative Religion
Document Summary
To include them, we have to reproduce them in book form. A study of the religions of uncivilized races would help us to reach a lower basically study the lesser people to see what these barely people"s religion is. Stems from effort to understand difference between living and dead bodies, appearances of bodies in dreams. Complains of primitive beliefs revived in modern europe. Beliefs in witchcraft bringing down europe intellectually and morally to the level of negro. System of beliefs and practices to mark the sacred. United into a single moral community called a church . Church: society with members united by shared imagination of sacred world. Comparative religion as quest for esoteric wisdom. Religious traditions are undeniably similar, share essence, but can remain unequal. Aryans as distinct race, founders of classical civilizations. Semites = dogmatic, incapable of abstract theology, obsessed with ritual and rules (god as lawgiver) Christ"s message of love vs. jewish obsession with laws, rituals, stern god.
