Something really wild to me is the extent to which archaeology seems to believe that artifacts were used for some kind of religious / worshipful purpose.
Like, in the modern world, relatively very very few objects are used for worship. If a future civilization finds a figurine, it's probably a Barbie doll or a Funko Pop or something.
Future civilizations might find our most treasured artifacts and presume that we worship glass rectangles or something.
Seems kinda weird if this is the default assumption for unexplained historical artifacts, as it naively appears (to a non-archaeologist). Like, why do we think that these figurines are fertility goddesses rather than toys or instructional tools or even pornography?
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in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •Sam FM
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niplav
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • • •My best guess is that they know a lot about how similar contemporary societies (e.g. hunter-gatherers) behave, and that religion is very infused into many activities we consider secular. Those societies are doing worshipful-X instead of just-X.
I'd guess the fandom-forming instinct also exists in many other societies, but there it's channeled into religion. So Funko-pops might be descirbed as semi-religious objects?
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renshin
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •I contend that we do worship glass rectangles.
Nobody thought Christianity was a 'religion' when it was dominant. They thought of it as 'the way things really are' and no one described it in terms of religion.
Our current 'secularism' is also a 'religion' in this same way. We don't see it as religious activity to go to a supermarket or post on Facebook. But ... it is?
Daniel Filan
in reply to renshin • •> Nobody thought Christianity was a 'religion' when it was dominant. They thought of it as 'the way things really are' and no one described it in terms of religion.
FWIW I don't think this is true. If you want to talk about the New Testament authors, the last bit of James 1 seems to talk about Christianity as a religion, James and Paul talk a lot about "the faith", Hebrews 11 talks about faith as belief in things unseen and seems to indicate it's a good thing. The proceedings of the Council of Trent talk about "the Christian Religion" (e.g. history.hanover.edu/texts/tren…).
[I mean TBC they also thought it was "the way things really are"]
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renshin
in reply to Daniel Filan • •Hmm lemme clarify.
RE: 'Religion' as 'worldview you can select into or out of' -- at the time of Christianity's dominance (which wasn't until much after New Testament being written anyway), no one thought of Christianity as a worldview. They thought of Christianity as the way things really are.
"Religion" was more like those pagan traditions that you could opt into or out of but were clearly wrongheaded, outdated, nonsensical, and everyone knows are made up. That's what I mean.
Now we use 'religion' in the same way, without recognizing that our dominant worldview is also a religion in fact.
Daniel Filan
in reply to renshin • •FWIW this wasn't clear from the way I wrote things up but the Council of Trent was held in the 16th century as a reaction to Protestantism. People at the time really did use words like "faith" and "religion" to describe Christianity, altho I'm not sure they would have said you could opt out of it or that it was made up.
At any rate, zooming out, I feel like we can drop the word "religion" and there's still an important thing here. My understanding is that most religious practitioners think that there's something importantly different about the rituals I'd be tempted to call "religious" (e.g. going to mass / church service, sacred artwork, etc) and stuff I'd be tempted to call "secular" (e.g. drinking a can of soda, going on my phone), even when they think mass / sacred art is super important and real. So there's still a live question of "was this pot related to by people back then more like the way believers relate to sacred artwork, or more like the way believers relate to cans of soda".
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Jen Blight
in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun • •This blog series seems to make a distinction between ancient polytheistic traditions (eg. the way people felt about the Olympians) and "religions" (eg. the way people feel about the Abrahamic God). So, ancient people do rituals and make offerings to gods more because they think it's the "way things are" and out of a sort of precautionary principle (maybe the harvest ritual does nothing but you don't want to risk a year's crop on the experiment) but they don't believe that Zeus is personally invested in their struggles or virtues or mental states nor is Zeus asking them to have "faith" in him.
That said, I also don't think we "worship" glass rectangles. Medieval women used to carry a spindle and distaff with them everywhere so the they could do their spinning during any available moment. This was so much a part of life that the distaff became a symbol of femininity but we don't say that these people "worshipped" the distaff; it was a tool.
... show moreThis blog series seems to make a distinction between ancient polytheistic traditions (eg. the way people felt about the Olympians) and "religions" (eg. the way people feel about the Abrahamic God). So, ancient people do rituals and make offerings to gods more because they think it's the "way things are" and out of a sort of precautionary principle (maybe the harvest ritual does nothing but you don't want to risk a year's crop on the experiment) but they don't believe that Zeus is personally invested in their struggles or virtues or mental states nor is Zeus asking them to have "faith" in him.
That said, I also don't think we "worship" glass rectangles. Medieval women used to carry a spindle and distaff with them everywhere so the they could do their spinning during any available moment. This was so much a part of life that the distaff became a symbol of femininity but we don't say that these people "worshipped" the distaff; it was a tool.
I think maybe we do worship Funko Pops though. In the sense that people who buy Funko Pops have the same relationship with the depicted character as an ancient person might have had with Achilles or Cu Cullain.
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