Observations
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.
Archaeologists have established the existence of burial rituals among Neanderthals some 50,000 years ago.
Carl Jung (1875–1961) theorized the collective unconscious, a residue of what has been learned in humankind's evolution and ancestral past. In his view instincts, the potential for creativity and the spiritual heritage of mankind reside in this portion of the psyche. The religious instinct is apparently part of our racial collective unconscious, which unconsciously dictates our behaviour.
Read more about this topic: Religious Instinct
Famous quotes containing the word observations:
“I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“Jerry: She’s one of those third-year girls that gripe my liver.
Milo: Third-year girls?
Jerry: Yeah, you know, American college kids. They come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture. They give me a swift pain.
Milo: Why?
Jerry: They’re officious and dull. They’re always making profound observations they’ve overheard.”
—Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)