science

Religious instinct

Religious instinct is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Religious instinct rather than just read about it. In short: Religious instinct has been hypothesized by some scholars as a part of human nature. Support for such a position being found in the fact that (as Talcott Parsons put it) "there is no known human society without something which modern social scientists would classify as religion".

Key takeaways

Religious instinct belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Religious instinct to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Religious instinct from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Religious instinct has been hypothesized by some scholars as a part of human nature. Support for such a position being found in the fact that (as Talcott Parsons put it) "there is no known human society without something which modern social scientists would classify as religion".

Observations

Archaeologists have established the existence of burial rituals among Neanderthals some 50,000 years ago: their appearance has sometimes been taken as evidence of the human capacity to transform instinct, rather than to be driven by it.

Freud and Jung Sigmund Freud saw human weakness and helplessness as a fundamental force behind the establishment of religion, a view which might seem to draw support from the Inglehart–Welzel thesis that links the insecurities of traditional economies to a search for spiritual certainty, the affluence of modernization to a declining stress on religion. Carl Jung (1875–1961) theorized the existence of a collective unconscious, as a residue of what has been learned in humankind's evolution and ancestral past, which contains the instinctual potential for creativity as well as the spiritual heritage of mankind, and which unconsciously dictates our behavior. While he recognized in man a genetic predisposition to order experience in mythological, religious or symbolic terms, Jung reserved judgement as to what bearing this had for the truth-value of religion. He never ceased however to stress the important challenge all such factors presented to any shallowly rationalistic world-view.

Criticism Émile Durkheim saw the social, not the instinctual side of mankind, as the key to their religious experience. Theologians have questioned the utility of an approach to religion by way of a so-called instinct; psychologists have disputed the existence of any such specific instinct; while others would point to the advance of secularization in the modern world as refuting the assumption of a specific religious instinct inevitably leading to the establishment of religion as a fundamental human institution. Additionally, there are no religious rituals observed in animals, including our close relatives, chimpanzees and other apes, although chimps were observed to have sometimes collective excitements for no reason.

See also Cognitive science of religion Evolutionary origin of religions God gene Neurotheology

References

External links "Human instincts, normal and pathological: the religious instinct", Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association, 26-August-2005, Vol 118 No 1221 The Psychology of Religion, Joseph McCabe "The Religious Instinct", Henry Rutgers Marshall, Mind, Vol. 6, No. 21 (Jan., 1897), pp. 40–58 "Book Review: An Asian Theology of Liberation", Nancy Bowell, Buddhist-Christian Studies, Volume 12., January 1993 The Function of Religion The Psychology of Religion

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Religious instinct

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Religious instinct claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Religious instinct before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Religious instinct ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Religious instinct

In research: Religious instinct appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Religious instinct in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Religious instinct is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Religious studies, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Religious instinct outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Religious instinct in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Religious instinct means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Religious instinct out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Religious instinct in simple terms?

Why does Religious instinct matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Religious instinct?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Religious instinct.