Did Christianity de-normalize 'Naturalism'?

[rousseau]

Naturalism defined as the awareness that humans are a natural part of earth and the universe.

I think it did, and I think it's had a profound and pervasive effect on Western societies, even the non-religious.

 

[Valjean]

What do you mean by "de-normalize?"

 

[PyramidHead]

Plato probably had something to do with it too, if you want to go back even further. His view was not necessarily anti-naturalism, but it was a rejection of the tangible for the ideal.

 

[rousseau]

What do you mean by "de-normalize?"

Christianity broadened anthropocentrism. It made the idea that humans were distinct from other animals, and that our lives were important and purposeful, extremely common to the point that, even without religiosity, the lingering effects of believing humans are the supreme species still lingers.

The term 'de-normalize' implies that before Christianity people lived in much closer harmony with their natural environment, growing food, building their own shelter, hunting.. etc. That might not be completely true, but whatever the cause I think naturalism has definitely been de-normalized.

 

[abaddon]

This would take a lot of knowledge of world cultural history to actually analyze! But it’s very interesting to me, and I’ve got some scattered impressions I’ll toss out there, all quite tentatively. But it looks like Plato and other esotericists of literate cultures proposed the mind/body dualism. Maybe Zarathustra and others were an influence (and possibly India on the Persians?).

Nietzsche called Christianity “platonism for the masses”. It at least had some influence.

A lot of platonism-informed esotericism thinks we come from an indescribable source down through spheres, spirit condensing into ‘gross matter’ and we forget our source but end up as bits of the original divine Source trapped inside of bodies. ‘Enlightenment’ is to close your eyes to the illusion around you and access your soul's memory of your true origin beyond the stars. E.g. gnosticism, hermeticism, kabbalism, and some others.

Now maybe that’s traceable to shamanism. But still, rousseau’s “de-normalize” makes sense to me because I don’t think animism fits well with the later twist of mind where nature’s considered defiled and a virtual banishment from the divine. There’s a discontinuity there where agriculture and urbanization seemed to make nature more distant and hostile-seeming to later, non-animistic folk (maybe especially monotheists). Animists saw humans as interchangeable with other animals who were their own sorts of ‘persons’. That’s not the same as thinking you’re not your body rather it’s very much seeing your self inextricably interwoven with nature’s processes.

Urbanization making all the rest of nature seem distant and hostile is actually an increasing problem for society. And all the otherworldly cultural background, with all the hierarchical notions of what's "higher" and "lower" doesn’t help. The contention that Christianity led us to view nature as something to conquer is, imv, pretty much on-target. It doesn’t make Christianity the source of it, just the conduit to us. So, yes, there’s “a profound and pervasive effect” remaining regardless of secularizing. You don’t feel a natural part of earth and also view all nonhuman nature as human property unless your culture entrained you with a lord and servant metaphor.

 

[untermensche]

Naturalism defined as the awareness that humans are a natural part of earth and the universe.

I think it did, and I think it's had a profound and pervasive effect on Western societies, even the non-religious.

Why do we start with Christianity? It is an outgrowth of Judaism after all.

The story of Genesis in the Old Testament clearly places man apart from the other animals. It says that man has dominion over them.

The interesting thing was that the god of the Old Testament presented all the animals to his man as a potential mate before deciding to make a female companion.

 

[bilby]

The interesting thing was that the god of the Old Testament presented all the animals to his man as a potential mate before deciding to make a female companion.

Well that's easily explained: 'Eden' means 'East', and New Zealand is the easternmost sizable piece of land there is.

 

[Underseer]

The interesting thing was that the god of the Old Testament presented all the animals to his man as a potential mate before deciding to make a female companion.

Well that's easily explained: 'Eden' means 'East', and New Zealand is the easternmost sizable piece of land there is.

Depending on where some cartographer arbitrarily draws the international date line, yes.

 

[Valjean]

While Christianity did maintain a broad gulf between humans and other animals, didn't it also attempt to homogenise humanity as well, speaking against nationalism and intolerance?

Well that's easily explained: 'Eden' means 'East', and New Zealand is the easternmost sizable piece of land there is.

So travel East from NZ and you won't run into a large land mass?

 

[bilby]

While Christianity did maintain a broad gulf between humans and other animals, didn't it also attempt to homogenise humanity as well, speaking against nationalism and intolerance?

Well that's easily explained: 'Eden' means 'East', and New Zealand is the easternmost sizable piece of land there is.

So travel East from NZ and you won't run into a large land mass?

Nope. If you travel east from New Zealand, you will find yourself in the far West of the South Pacific Ocean. By the time you hit land, you are well inside the western hemisphere.

 

[bilby]

Well that's easily explained: 'Eden' means 'East', and New Zealand is the easternmost sizable piece of land there is.

Depending on where some cartographer arbitrarily draws the international date line, yes.

The international date line has nothing to do with it. The datum is the Greenwich meridian (and hence the corresponding great circle segment, the 180^o line of longitude; the date line wanders around a fair bit, and does not follow the 180^o line for most of its length. In fact, the dateline changed position a few years ago, when Samoa decided they wanted to be on the same weekday as New Zealand, rather than conforming to the USA.

 

[rousseau]

Naturalism defined as the awareness that humans are a natural part of earth and the universe.

I think it did, and I think it's had a profound and pervasive effect on Western societies, even the non-religious.

Why do we start with Christianity? It is an outgrowth of Judaism after all.

The story of Genesis in the Old Testament clearly places man apart from the other animals. It says that man has dominion over them.

The interesting thing was that the god of the Old Testament presented all the animals to his man as a potential mate before deciding to make a female companion.

One's gotta wonder how far you could trace this type of thinking backward, and what it's true origin is.

I see your point, but I do think Christianity has had a particularly large influence in this respect.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Naturalism defined as the awareness that humans are a natural part of earth and the universe.

I think it did, and I think it's had a profound and pervasive effect on Western societies, even the non-religious.

Uhmmmmmm, no. Naturalism was what is called secondary causes. God establishes the phenomena of nature and its laws and does not have to make everything happen by miracle. William of Okham and others established this as scholasticism's basic proposition on naturalism, a word that came about much later. Rene Descarte's attempt to put philosophy on a sound footing to move to proof of God failed because he and others could no say how soul interacted with matter. But he and others assumed nature as such ran on secondary causes set up by God. By the time of the French revolution, science (natural philosophy) was the study of essentially secondary causes. That meant an orthodox Catholic chemist and an atheist chemist studied chemistry in the same way. Questions of how God interacted with the Universe was left to speculations of theologians. Descartes for example stated emphatically that soul had nothing to do with life, life was results of naturalism in the same way a clock's clockworks cause the clock's hands to move. This mechanistic view of the working of the Universe was very influential and holds today. God does not enter into science's theories. Even if one accepts there is a God who is the primary cause of everything including secondary causes. It is hard to understate Descarte's effect on science. Descartes declared a cat was not really conscious because it did not have a soul but could never demonstrate a soul existed or how it could interact with a cat's body or our bodies. He never could reconcile that view with his clock analogy above. Nor has anybody else. See occasionalism in Wikipedia for attempts to solve that dilemma. Occasionalism theorized that what our diembodied soul desired to do, God actualzed in the material world, not very convincing. After all, if John's soul desires to do an evil act and God actualizes that in the material world, that would make God an accomplice in all evil acts.

 

[ronburgundy]

. Occasionalism theorized that what our diembodied soul desired to do, God actualzed in the material world, not very convincing. After all, if John's soul desires to do an evil act and God actualizes that in the material world, that would make God an accomplice in all evil acts.

Not very convincing to a rational mind, which is precisely why religious faiths, particularly Abrahamic Monotheisms, have been so influential in promoting and spreading such an absurd and nonsensical notion. Faith is the undermining of reason, which includes arbitrary ignoring of logical contradictions. Any notion of God beyond to most distal, non-person, first cause promotes the anti-naturalism notion of events and entities that are not part of nature or determined by natural laws. The core Abrahamic notions of humanity as the result of God's breath being put into material bodies after the Universe was already set in motion is as anti-naturalism as you can get. It takes the thing that people think and care most about (ourselves and other people) and makes them unnatural, and not only separate from but superior to and more important than the natural world, which is just variants of dirt God threw together on a lark, and not part of God' himself that he very deliberately created separately from all else and which will continue after all else is gone.

So, I don't understand how you think your history accounting supports your reply of "no" to the OPs question.

 

[rousseau]

From another light, looking at religion from an anthropological perspective it's hard not to notice that misunderstanding reality is something of a default for people for a variety of reasons, religious or not.

Maybe, at it's core, religion is the result of people who are amazed at their own distinctiveness from the rest of the natural environment. Which means that even when you parse by religious belief people still retain a sense of self-importance, and fail to realize they're just another animal living temporarily and then dying.

And so it's not so much that religion denormalized naturalism, but instead the fact that we are both a) quite distinct from other life and b) attached to feelings of our own importance. This combination is very likely what gave rise to religion and our tendency for anthropocentrism.

 

[rousseau]

From another light, looking at religion from an anthropological perspective it's hard not to notice that misunderstanding reality is something of a default for people for a variety of reasons, religious or not.

Maybe, at it's core, religion is the result of people who are amazed at their own distinctiveness from the rest of the natural environment. Which means that even when you parse by religious belief people still retain a sense of self-importance, and fail to realize they're just another animal living temporarily and then dying.

And so it's not so much that religion denormalized naturalism, but instead the fact that we are both a) quite distinct from other life and b) attached to feelings of our own importance. This combination is very likely what gave rise to religion and our tendency for anthropocentrism.

Also our ability to conceptualize:

"We're special and can fathom a cause for that therefore there must be a cause"

Then societies sprout up promoting people as special sunflowers

Gotta wonder how the nature of the religion that sprouts up will affect a societies development, though.

 

[Juma]

From another light, looking at religion from an anthropological perspective it's hard not to notice that misunderstanding reality is something of a default for people for a variety of reasons, religious or not.

Maybe, at it's core, religion is the result of people who are amazed at their own distinctiveness from the rest of the natural environment. Which means that even when you parse by religious belief people still retain a sense of self-importance, and fail to realize they're just another animal living temporarily and then dying.

And so it's not so much that religion denormalized naturalism, but instead the fact that we are both a) quite distinct from other life and b) attached to feelings of our own importance. This combination is very likely what gave rise to religion and our tendency for anthropocentrism.

Also our ability to conceptualize:

"We're special and can fathom a cause for that therefore there must be a cause"

Then societies sprout up promoting people as special sunflowers

Gotta wonder how the nature of the religion that sprouts up will affect a societies development, though.

It is bloody obvious: spiritual != natural

 

[abaddon]

It is bloody obvious: spiritual != natural

Unless it is. If spirits are aspects of nature then spiritual = natural.

Maybe, at it's core, religion is the result of people who are amazed at their own distinctiveness from the rest of the natural environment. Which means that even when you parse by religious belief people still retain a sense of self-importance, and fail to realize they're just another animal living temporarily and then dying.

And so it's not so much that religion denormalized naturalism, but instead the fact that we are both a) quite distinct from other life and b) attached to feelings of our own importance. This combination is very likely what gave rise to religion and our tendency for anthropocentrism.

Unless they're not so anthropocentric. Some religious folk think of other animals and even plants, sometimes places, as not-human persons -- entities with their own interests. Whether they're cognizant in a human-like way of their interests doesn't matter; that very expectation is itself anthropocentric. They show their interests in their self-preservation behaviors.

Hunter-gatherers ask a slain animal or cut tree for forgiveness and will offer an exchange, because they don't think they're more important than the inhuman person they've killed. They call the other animal "brother" or "sister" precisely because that's how they see other lives: as relations, as kin. Which is rather more well in accord with evolutionary thought than most of our modern assumptions about us special sunflowers. Given how isolated we get the more numerous we get, it's hard to conceive of peoples who felt life was kindred and didn't view nature as a war of all against all.

My guess it's urbanization that dissociates people from nature; it might not be religion that originated the problem but it's interesting that people keep looking to religion for why civilized people are such destructive animals. And, imv, the right place to look for the most destructive propensities is very specifically *civilized* people with their hierarchies of power. The monotheisms grew out of the mideast where agriculture spawned urban civilization. Aside from the king wanting to be the earthly representative of god, or because of it, people more and more felt burdened with work and oppressed by oligarchs and aristocrats and sought some compensation in another world since they'd lost freedom and pleasure in this world. So the world became a shadow world, a veil of tears to endure a while. Spiritual growth became something you did to become worthy of re-union with a more just King, elsewhere.

Philosophy came out of cities, and "I am a thinking 'me' encased within a mechanism whose levers I push and pull with my will" came out of philosophy and remains the prevailing view. We're abstracted from life too, for living in boxes spread out in wider expanses with less and less sense of community with anything (including ourselves), and for seeking the same "behind the curtains" geometries that reveal the mind of God that otherworldly mystics sought. Literacy actually has played its role too in the divorce of "humankind" from the rest of nature; signs come to seem more real than direct felt experience. We learn of the world on screens, we relate with others on screens.

It's easy to see the origins of spirit in pre-civilization animism though. It's not at all a weird confabulation. You experience it too; it'd be a lie to say this is "blind faith" and not a matter for experience. I go traveling in other worlds every night, and so does everyone who dreams. Whether it's "really" a spirit that has "really" gone traveling or not isn't the issue; my point is that the experience is there.

 

[Dutch_labrat]

Naturalism defined as the awareness that humans are a natural part of earth and the universe.

I think it did, and I think it's had a profound and pervasive effect on Western societies, even the non-religious.

To be honest I think many religions do that. Most creation stories depict human creation as separate from animals.

The main difference I can see is with souls. The abrahamic religions are very clear that only humans are ensouled or at least that their souls are very different. Shamanistic and Buddhist religions on the other hand see all souls as the same, just in different stages or bodies. This is possibly the cause of your observed profound and pervasive effect on Western societies and I could agree with that.

It is very pervasive, the way we try to hide our animal properties like mortality and death, bodies and hair, smells, sex, bodily emissions of all kinds, disease and suffering...anything that shows us other than perfect godly beings of pure light.

 

[Juma]

Unless it is. If spirits are aspects of nature then spiritual = natural.

Maybe, at it's core, religion is the result of people who are amazed at their own distinctiveness from the rest of the natural environment. Which means that even when you parse by religious belief people still retain a sense of self-importance, and fail to realize they're just another animal living temporarily and then dying.

And so it's not so much that religion denormalized naturalism, but instead the fact that we are both a) quite distinct from other life and b) attached to feelings of our own importance. This combination is very likely what gave rise to religion and our tendency for anthropocentrism.

Unless they're not so anthropocentric. Some religious folk think of other animals and even plants, sometimes places, as not-human persons -- entities with their own interests. Whether they're cognizant in a human-like way of their interests doesn't matter; that very expectation is itself anthropocentric. They show their interests in their self-preservation behaviors.

Hunter-gatherers ask a slain animal or cut tree for forgiveness and will offer an exchange, because they don't think they're more important than the inhuman person they've killed. They call the other animal "brother" or "sister" precisely because that's how they see other lives: as relations, as kin. Which is rather more well in accord with evolutionary thought than most of our modern assumptions about us special sunflowers. Given how isolated we get the more numerous we get, it's hard to conceive of peoples who felt life was kindred and didn't view nature as a war of all against all.

My guess it's urbanization that dissociates people from nature; it might not be religion that originated the problem but it's interesting that people keep looking to religion for why civilized people are such destructive animals. And, imv, the right place to look for the most destructive propensities is very specifically *civilized* people with their hierarchies of power. The monotheisms grew out of the mideast where agriculture spawned urban civilization. Aside from the king wanting to be the earthly representative of god, or because of it, people more and more felt burdened with work and oppressed by oligarchs and aristocrats and sought some compensation in another world since they'd lost freedom and pleasure in this world. So the world became a shadow world, a veil of tears to endure a while. Spiritual growth became something you did to become worthy of re-union with a more just King, elsewhere.

Philosophy came out of cities, and "I am a thinking 'me' encased within a mechanism whose levers I push and pull with my will" came out of philosophy and remains the prevailing view. We're abstracted from life too, for living in boxes spread out in wider expanses with less and less sense of community with anything (including ourselves), and for seeking the same "behind the curtains" geometries that reveal the mind of God that otherworldly mystics sought. Literacy actually has played its role too in the divorce of "humankind" from the rest of nature; signs come to seem more real than direct felt experience. We learn of the world on screens, we relate with others on screens.

It's easy to see the origins of spirit in pre-civilization animism though. It's not at all a weird confabulation. You experience it too; it'd be a lie to say this is "blind faith" and not a matter for experience. I go traveling in other worlds every night, and so does everyone who dreams. Whether it's "really" a spirit that has "really" gone traveling or not isn't the issue; my point is that the experience is there.

Awereness != spirit.