Came up in a discussion with my wife, after she had attended a book discussion at which several people flatly stated their belief in ghosts. Our conversation ranged to why so many people are so willing to believe mystical/supernatural claims.
At one point I questioned whether it might be a residual of our evolutionary history. I guess I had always imagined early humans - 10 to 100 thousand years ago - as believing in the supernatural. Feeling a need to appease powers greater than them, and making up stories to explain the phenomena they did not understand.
My wife posited that, even if a ruling minority priesthood believed (or promulgated) such things, she suspected the average person’s mind was pretty much taken up with an endless cycle of: wake up; find food; eat; toil to provide shelter/warmth/next meal; sleep.
What do you think? I think I’ve read quite a bit that the human mind has evolved such that stories and mysticism appeal. Of course, there is the difficulty of how to tell what the masses actually believed, when only the educated elites wrote - or before writing.
I’d say that would make the common folk more likely to believe than disbelieve, as any system of supernatural beliefs doesn’t tend to hold up under rational scrutiny, but if you don’t have time to scrutinize, you can continue to just casually believe (while at the same time, sometimes acting contrary to the belief system out of practicality or forgetfulness.)
With early burials including precious things that point to belief in an afterlife, and with ritual sacrifice and such practiced by different tribal communities, it would seem the “mystic” was always part of Homo Sapien existence.
Now, how much time they spent on mystical activities vs. survival, I wouldn’t know.
Based on the lives of modern and recent hunter gatherers, early humans (assuming we’re talking about homo sapiens, perhaps about ~20-40 thousand years ago, already occupying most major land masses) likely had a lot of liesure time, which would have meant lots of time to ponder the mysteries of existence. As well as lots of time to think up cons and schemes to convince others to do what you want them to do. And based on the evidence as I understand it, there’s lots of evidence of art, including statues and figures that may have represented supernatural beings.
Yeah - that gets to what we mean when someone says they “believe,” and how hard it is to ascertain whether someone who professes belief is expressing how they wish to be perceived - or even fooling themself.
I could hold a fancy burial for an avowed atheist (or apathetist), and later generations who dug them up would have little to go on other than the apparent trappings of the burial. Perhaps I went through the ritual of a burial, because I did not want to cross those in power.
Yet today, rational folk are able to spend their time other than making up stories. And modern artists create fantastical images without believing that they portray actual magical beings.
I guess I need to do more research. But even today, in a strongly religious country - say in Catholic Central America, or Muslim Middle East. How hard is it to tell what the average person believes, as opposed to the practices they follow for social acceptance?
You’re assuming that there’s a distinction between the two. I’d say that both are the result of our curiosity and drive to understand (and change to our liking) the world.
Right. The human mind seeks patterns and explanations, and is naturally curious about where did this all come from and where is it going. Both the mystical and the naturalistic are avenues for this search. And at the same time, most people must and do spend most of their time dealing with the everyday mundane tasks and chores.
They didn’t leave records, so we don’t know. An aside before I discuss. Rationalist and mystic are not antonyms, you can be both. It’s not inherently irrational to believe in transcendent concepts. It’s anti-physicalist, but physicalism is simply a cultural way of looking at the world that has proved quite useful. It’s not necessarily irrational to disbelieve it. Plato struck me as a pretty rational guy, but was not a physicalist.
Back to your question. The earliest humans probably were not mystics. We have little reason to believe that those in the Lower Paleolithic had anything approximating religious beliefs. We don’t know why, but any evidence they did is scarce. The Middle Paleolithic era is more interesting. We conjecture that by the Upper Paleolithic, 30000 BC or so, religious types of rituals were taking place. The earliest Venus figurines date from that period and it seems at least reasonable that they were used in some sort of mystical form although it’s possible they were simply art or even early pornography. So it seems reasonable to presume that somewhere between 100 thousand and 30 thousand BC some form of mysticism developed. I’m more inclined to put it on the later end of that spectrum, but there are those that disagree and think that burials with items implies some sort of ritual belief and they may be right, who knows? Religion in a modern form though is probably what brought about civilization. What we’re seeing more and more evidence of is that religious centers predated civil societies. What it is increasingly looking like what was happening was that certain places began taking on religious significance and various groups would gather at these places which necessitated rules regarding behaviour and as more people gathered at these places permanent populations began to spring up. These sedentary populations began needing more stable food sources and this kick-started the agricultural revolution. Stir in a pot for ten thousand years and Bam, International Space Station.
A good distinction between spirituality (which I submit is a rather benign form of delusion) and religion (when someone imposes a regimented delusional system upon someone else). The former being an organic tool for understanding the universe, and the latter being a tool for manipulating it.
Look at optical illusions. If you didn’t know that there was such a thing as an optical illusion and saw one, it might really screw with your head. The most immediate reaction is to think that whatever you perceive is part of the external world, not an artefact of your own internal processes. To realize that your own mind has patterns it tries to fit onto the world and that this can lead to inaccurate perceptions requires a good amount of metacognition and intelligence. It can also be emotionally difficult to accept.
Now imagine you lack pretty much all knowledge of psychology or philosophy in the last few thousands of years. You’re likely to perceive any number of salient phenomena and patterns and the only explanation that will fit will involve the supernatural because the supernatural, being made up and not bound by any rules except those you fabricate, can be made to fit anything. Even if you make up a rule in a way that drives your supernatural narrative into a corner, you can always resort to “it’s a mystery”, “it’s suprarational”, “we haven’t interpreted the gods’ will correctly” or “the bad supernatural entities are trying to fool us to make us doubt our faith”.
Anything which is both important to individuals and little understood by them gets explained with supernatural entities. Simply having an explanation can be reassuring, especially if that explanation also mentions that if you follow these rules, bad things are less likely to happen to you and you’ll get rewards. As the supernatural explanations get ever more abstract, you go from animism to polytheism to monotheism.
For example, if someone hears voices out of nowhere today, we’d ascribe that to schizophrenia. Now take away pretty much all knowledge of psychology and neurology (they didn’t know what the brain was for, Aristotle thought it was a blood cooling system). What’s the explanation that fits if you believe in the supernatural? That spirits, demons or gods are communicating with you. Jesus and Mohammed were probably schizophrenics who heard a positive voice that was really their own but which their brain failed to recognize as their own.
It took until about 2500BCE with Thales of Miletus for humans to start consciously using physicalist explanations for important and little known phenomena.
Finally, your wife’s argument that much of their time was taken up with survival doesn’t mean they weren’t more mystical than rationalist. Subsistence farmers and medieval peasants also spent much of their time just surviving and they weren’t known to be rationalists. Being in a state of worry and deprivation is likely to increase mystical leanings, not decrease them.
Thanks. I apologize that I likely lack a sophisticated enough vocabulary to reflect certain distinctions. I also must acknowledge that my wife and I firmly reject all manner of supernatural.
The book being discussed (The Finder of Lost Things) had a ghost. My wife and I have no problem enjoying fiction with imaginary features. As I understand it, several of the people discussing the book accepted the existence of ghosts as unquestioned fact. (My wife said one other participant did observe, “You know, it IS fiction!” ;)) That sort of position really astounds my wife and me. We wonder how common such irrational beliefs actually are, and why people hold them…
Of course, we have difficulty understanding how any ostensibly sane, intelligent person could accept certain aspects of religion beyond the clear social benefits - such as our vice president believing Jesus speaks to him. When confronted with such situations, we occasionally discuss why WE are so different from our fellow humans, and how prevalent such beliefs actually are among our fellow humans.
I guess we have some sympathy for a sense of awe/wonder at the unexplained. We have A LOT of difficulty when that sense is represented as specific understanding on unproven phenomena.
Humans engage their reality. Some reality is incomprehensible to primitive Humans - earthquakes, weird weather patterns, etc.
We have clear evidence that some Humans ascribed the Mysterious to spirituality, gods, etc. I am sure that many Humans just went about their days and didn’t try to explain the Incomprehensible, or at least didn’t try to explain it via mystical gods.
Yeah - well I guess I still have 2 basic questions. I have difficulty understanding exactly what percentage of modern folk hold what kind of beliefs (and whether there is any way to distinguish between someone professing belief as opposed to ACTUALLY internalizing such beliefs.) Personally, I find many/most such beliefs confusing, given current knowledge - but they obviously persist.
In my ignorance, I guess I assumed that in the remote past, when scientific knowledge and many other factors were less/different, I guess I imagined that in such a state folk would be more likely to attribute things to supernatural causes.
Sorry if my confusion is interfering with decent discussion (or if my musing just isn’t that interesting!)
Not at all. I just want to understand where you are coming from before I try to state some definitive opinion - not that I have one!!
I think what you are saying is: So - let’s say back 20,000 years ago, there were 1,000,000 humans. And yeah, okay, there is religion and it was used to explain the Mysterious that those Humans encountered. AH! But if you broke it down, it might turn out that maybe 1,000 Humans actually belief in Religions and shit, but they are the ones who push for power and building communities. The other 999,000 Humans either didn’t believe or simply didn’t ask those Big Questions.
Are you trying to think through something like that?
Based on my reading in ethnography, pretty much 100% of primitive societies have spiritual beliefs. They almost always imbue the natural world with spirits, and believe that humans have some kind of spiritual survival after death. (Whether this is pleasant or unpleasant varies.)
And the earliest cave art we see suggests it was made for magical purposes, perhaps to ensure the success of the hunt or to appease animal spirits. This early art includes figures that seem to represent shamans or hybrid human-animal figures.
Later on, most human societies known had art that appears to depict deities or spirits, constructed temples or other places of worship, and buried their dead in a manner that suggests belief in some kind of an afterlife.
This isn’t really an open question. As far as we can tell, modern humans at least have had some kind of spiritual beliefs as far back as they have existed. There is some evidence of such beliefs even in Neanderthals, so they probably go back at least as far as the Neanderthal/modern split.
As I’ve mentioned before, I suspect a belief in life after death traces back to dreams–dead people visit you every night. And dreaming seems to go pretty deep down the placental mammal family tree at least. Religious/spiritual beliefs probably date back to as soon as people were able to communicate abstract concepts to one another. (Before then, it could be only one-person religions that died with each individual.)
No, not really. The earliest cave art is from Indonesia and is paintings of hands and deer-pigs. The earliest cave art in Europe is from the Upper Paleolithic and is almost exclusively animal figures. There are a couple of abstracts and a human vulva with legs that some theorize could be ritualistic or shamanistic in nature, but it’s really impossible to say. The Upper Paleolithic is really the first evidence we have of any type of ritualistic beliefs. The Lower Paleolithic has zero evidence of any belief in the supernatural and the Middle Paleolithic has no evidence other than the fact that implements were occasionally buried with the deceased.
Ascribing religious or ritualistic beliefs to them is simply conjecture and smells to me of attempting to create some sort of Progressivist timeline on the world that may or may not exist. They may have had shamanistic beliefs. They may have believed in gods or a single God. They may have thought that things were what they were and needed no explanation. They may have been performing experiments to understand the world or they might have never pondered their place in the universe. It’s all conjecture.