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)
“The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“By sharing the information and observations with the caregiver, you have a chance to see your child through another pair of eyes. Because she has some distance and objectivity, a caregiver often sees things that a parent’s total involvement with her child doesn’t allow.”
—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)