God forbid there be another religion thread in the kiln of NSG, but none the less; here is one.
I happened to chance upon a detail of a friend's facebook under religious views. Animist -- Something i had not heard before. While i looked it up, and read about what wikipedia said about it, I came to the conclusion that it sounded like something pretty interesting to believe in. I can't say that it's correct; what i can say however is that i don't think i'd be too upset if it was.
here follows the Wikipedia entry for Anisim:
"The term Animism is derived from the Latin anima, meaning "soul".[1][2] In its most general sense, animism is simply the belief in souls. In this general sense, animism is present in nearly all religions.
In a more restrictive sense, animism is the belief that souls inhabit all or most objects; it attributes personalized souls to animals, vegetables, and minerals wherein the material object is—to some degree—governed by the qualities which compose its particular soul. Religions that are animistic in this more restrictive sense generally do not accept a sharp distinction between spirit and matter, and they generally assume that this unification of matter and spirit plays a role in daily life.[3]
This article discusses the term animism mainly in its more restrictive sense.
Originally souls were pictured as very similar to persons and only in later non-animistic religions in the course of a long development did they lose their material characteristics and become, to a high degree, 'spiritualized'.[4] British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor argued in Prim itive Culture (1871) that this belief was the most primitive and essential form of religion.[3] Though animism itself is not a religion in the usual Western sense, it does contain the foundations on which religions are built.[5]"
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It is an interesting thought stimulator.
