There are some convincing theories there that human intelligence evolved for social intelligence, not tool-making. Example: why do we have more expressive facial muscles than chimps?
Unfortunately this tends to make us a little psychotic. It is the "it is raining, and the universe is trying to tell me something by this" kind of mindset. Conspiracy theories abound, because of story bias, because it is cool to live in a movie and our social intelligence explicitly evolved to detect what Lex Luthor is plotting this day. If I am sympathetic to religion, it is because these natural tendencies need some kind of outlet. If we want to be sane about this world, being crazy about some otherworld can be an acceptable price to pay. Just compartmentalize.
I think this is what the people who considered animism primitive were thinking. Christianity explicitly wants to disenchant, see Augustine on superstition: there are no sacred rocks and trees, there is in fact nothing sacred in this world, except the very rare miracle. Everything sacred is banished to an otherworld. Of course it was a huge, truly huge step towards developing a rational, scientific worldview.
The Germanization of early medieval Christianity did some reenchanting, with relics and all, but then Protestantism ran a powerful disenchanting again. In the mind if the typical 18th century preacher, everything was strictly separated and things wore an explicit label, "divine", "science", "philosophy".
There are some convincing theories there that human intelligence evolved for social intelligence, not tool-making. Example: why do we have more expressive facial muscles than chimps?
Unfortunately this tends to make us a little psychotic. It is the "it is raining, and the universe is trying to tell me something by this" kind of mindset. Conspiracy theories abound, because of story bias, because it is cool to live in a movie and our social intelligence explicitly evolved to detect what Lex Luthor is plotting this day. If I am sympathetic to religion, it is because these natural tendencies need some kind of outlet. If we want to be sane about this world, being crazy about some otherworld can be an acceptable price to pay. Just compartmentalize.
I think this is what the people who considered animism primitive were thinking. Christianity explicitly wants to disenchant, see Augustine on superstition: there are no sacred rocks and trees, there is in fact nothing sacred in this world, except the very rare miracle. Everything sacred is banished to an otherworld. Of course it was a huge, truly huge step towards developing a rational, scientific worldview.
The Germanization of early medieval Christianity did some reenchanting, with relics and all, but then Protestantism ran a powerful disenchanting again. In the mind if the typical 18th century preacher, everything was strictly separated and things wore an explicit label, "divine", "science", "philosophy".