The Evolution of the Idea of God: an Inquiry Into the Origin of Religions
Description:... Two main schools of religious thinking exist in our midst at the presentday: the school of humanists and the school of animists. This work is tosome extent an attempt to reconcile them. It contains, I believe, the firstextended effort that has yet been made to trace the genesis of the belief ina God from its earliest origin in the mind of primitive man up to its fullestdevelopment in advanced and etherealised Christian theology. My methodis therefore constructive, not destructive. Instead of setting out to argueaway or demolish a deep-seated and ancestral element in our complexnature, this book merely posits for itself the psychological question, " Bywhat successive steps did men come to frame for themselves the conceptionof a deity? " - or, if the reader so prefers it, "How did we arrive at our knowledge of God? " It seeks provisionally toanswer these profound and important questions by reference to the earliestbeliefs of savages, past or present, and to the testimony of historicaldocuments and ancient monuments. It does not concern itself at all withthe validity or invalidity of the ideas in themselves; it does but endeavourto show how inevitable they were, and how man's relation with the externaluniverse was certain a priori to beget them as of necessity.
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