LM01 Response Paper_ Marvin Harris and _Why..._

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School

California State University, Chico *

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Course

140

Subject

Anthropology

Date

Oct 30, 2023

Type

pdf

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Uploaded by MateGuineaPigMaster1349

1 LM01 Response Paper: Marvin Harris and "Why..." CSU Chico - ANTH140 In the combined essay “Why We Became Religious and the Evolution of the Spirit World” written by Marvin Harris touches on two captivating topics. Harris discusses religion and its correspondence to nonhuman species as well as spiritual beings in modern religion are found in prestate societies. Just like in the 21st Century we own materialistic items that we hold great value to; similarily our ancestors also held great value to materialistic items. To go more into depth; in Harris’s combined essay he expresses the idea of cultural materialism in which cultural materialists believe that physical and economic aspects play a major role in shaping a society. But for our ancestors, these materialist aspects differ from what ours may be now. According to Harris, “the basis of all religious thought is animism, the universal belief that we humans share the world with various extracorporeal, mostly invisible things” (Harris, 1989, Pg7). Aminism includes features like people, animals, plants, spirits, the environment, etc. Harris goes on to explain that several cultures use features of animism as a part of their religion: “ For example, band-and-village people widely believed in gods who lived on top of mountains or in the sky itself and who served as the models for later notions of supreme beings as well as other powerful sky gods. In Aboriginal Aus-tralia, the sky god created the earth and its natural features, showed humans how to hunt and make fire, gave people their social laws, and showed them how to make adults out of children by performing rites of initiation” (Harris, 1989, Pg8). For believers in Aboriginal Aus-tralia, they used their belief that the sky god created earth and its natural features which led to the education of hunting, social laws, and initiation to create understanding as to how to live their lives in harmony not only with themselves, but with the surrounding creatures and elements around them. Thus, Harris conveys that even though there are different religions they all relate to some higher power through cultural materials such as animism to help them establish their beliefs as well as develop their cultural society.