ANİMİZM

Antropolog E. B. Tylor (1832-1917) tarafından icat edilen “animizm” terimi bir din değil din teorisi türünü ifade eder. Tylor, dinin asgari tanımını “ruhsal varlıklara inanç” olarak ileri sürerek dinsel inancın cansız nesnelere yaşam, ruh veya güç atfetme şeklindeki ilkel yanılgıdan kaynaklandığını savunur. Animizm, her ne kadar genellikle akademik din araştırmalarında doğa olaylarının ruh ve gücü olduğunu düşünen yerli halkın inanç sistemlerini tanımlamak için eski bir terim olarak kullanımdan çıkarılmış olsa da yine de, popüler kullanımda ve akademik teoride dindeki maddeselliğin anlamı ve değeri hakkında sorunları ortaya çıkarmak için ısrarda bulunmaktadır.

ANIMISM

Coined by the anthropologist E. B. Tylor (1832–1917), the term “animism” refers not to a type of religion but to a theory of religion. Asserting a minimal definition of religion as “belief in spiritual beings,” Tylor argued that religious belief originated in the primordial mistake of attributing life, soul, or spirit to inanimate objects. Although it has generally been dismissed in the academic study of religion as an obsolete term for describing the belief systems of indigenous people who hold that natural phenomena have souls or spirits, animism has nevertheless persisted in popular usage and academic theory to raise problems about the meaning and value of materiality in religion.

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