Natural History of Religion
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David Hume's The Natural History of Religion proposes that early polytheism stemmed from humans anthropomorphizing natural phenomena. As people intensified their worship, this evolved into the concept of a single, all-powerful deity. Hume's work, reflecting the rationalism of his era, challenged traditional religious beliefs by emphasizing empirical observation and questioning the basis of miracles and divine revelation. His philosophical approach influenced later thinkers like Immanuel Kant and Auguste Comte, and his skepticism regarding causality and the limits of human knowledge laid groundwork for modern philosophical inquiry.12345
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study of religionThe late 17th and 18th centuries…gave another account in his Natural History of Religion, which reflected the growing rationalism of the epoch. For Hume, original polytheism was the result of a naïve anthropomorphism (conceiving the divine in human form) in the assignment of causes to natural events. The intensification of propitiatory and other forms of…
Read More…gave another account in his Natural History of Religion, which reflected the growing rationalism of the epoch. For Hume, original polytheism was the result of a naïve anthropomorphism (conceiving the divine in human form) in the assignment of causes to natural events. The intensification of propitiatory and other forms of…
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theismHumanism and transcendence…lucid and challenging essay “The Natural History of Religion” (1757) set the pattern for the more scientific and empirical studies of religion that began to take shape in the 19th century in pioneer work by E.B. Tylor, a British ethnologist and anthropologist, in his Primitive Culture (1871), and by Sir…
Read More…lucid and challenging essay “The Natural History of Religion” (1757) set the pattern for the more scientific and empirical studies of religion that began to take shape in the 19th century in pioneer work by E.B. Tylor, a British ethnologist and anthropologist, in his Primitive Culture (1871), and by Sir…
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