I think animism actually regards animals as the highest expression of mother nature and holds them as God-like, hence the connections with environmental concerns

Were our forefathers wiser than we think they were? — TheMadFool

They invented philosophy, so probably.

Should animism be legitimized as a bona fide, preferred (?), religion?

No. At most, pandeism + ethical & scientific naturalisms.

I think animism actually regards animals as the highest expression of mother nature and holds them as God-like, hence the connections with environmental concerns — Gregory

Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no categorical distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world and that soul or spirit or sentience exists not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers or other entities of the natural environment: water sprites, vegetation deities, tree sprites, etc. — Wikipedia

Anthropomorphism of some kind. Life in general and humans in particular attempting to bring the rest of the natural world into its fold - an extended family of sorts.

They invented philosophy, so probably.

Should animism be legitimized as a bona fide, preferred (?), religion?
No. At most, pandeism + ethical & scientific naturalisms. — 180 Proof

Your reluctance to have animism as a religion might be because religion has issues and not because animism is flawed. Anyway, you don't seem to mind pandeism of which animism can be taken as a corollary.

Also, I want to run this by you. Ethics is ultimately about personhood - a thing that basically has rights & responsibilities which must be respected - and all modern movements that link to increasing awareness of the importance of the ecology (Environmentalism) seem to be about reworking the old, now unsustainable deal between man and nature (exploiter-exploited) into that of a more rational contract between equal partners, one party us, the other party nature. You can't be an equal partner with humans unless you're given the status of a person.

Relationship with animals is easier than with a stone so animists build totems and look into the eyes of animals to see their reflection

Relationship with animals is easier than with a stone so animists build totems and look into the eyes of animals to see their reflection — Gregory

Right but I've seen people worship boulders that don't resemble animals and no attempt is made to make it look like one.

Aren't their people more often named after animals than objects? There is nothing that hasn't been worshipped, but I've read about Mongols believing their horses were gods. The Huns were accused of having sex with their horses and maybe this was an animist rite too. When all matter is Divine it seems to me human nature is then drawn to animals for an answer to life's questions, as if they had the wisdom we need. A rock might do this but it's less communicative

When all matter is Divine it seems to me human nature is then drawn to animals for an answer to life's questions, as if they had the wisdom we need. A rock might do this but it's less communicative — Gregory

I feel you're conflating Animism and animal. Same etymology (from Latin: anima, 'breath, spirit, life') yes but completely different concepts. Rock, rivers, mountains, seas, etc. have souls just like animals are believed to possess souls but rocks, rivers, mountains, seas, etc. aren't animals.

In the history of religion, pan-theism seems the corollary to animism, not pan-deism. As for "human-nature partnership", I don't think "personhood" is a relevant concern; humanity is simply sawing-off the high branch it's sitting on – not endangering nature so much as endangering ourselves by accelerating the destruction of most of the natural conditions needed to sustain our species.

If the Anthropocene isn't an auto-extinction event, it is a human population-crashing event, or gigacidal process, that by the mid-22nd century might thin the post-Anthropocene herd down to mere tens to hundreds of millions of infected/infested scavengers in the overheated, desertified, toxic, sprawling ruins of our late great technocapitalist global civilization largely "gone dark". H sapiens have survived and recovered from a number of population crashes in the last hundreds of millennia, but none as rapid and at the scale and amid such a polluted, irradiated, resource depleted environment as the one that's coming. Somebody ought to write a cli-fi story titled "No Future For Old Sapiens". :monkey:

Oh, my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was – We finally really did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! — Planet of the Apes, 1968 (film)

I don't think "personhood" is a relevant concern — 180 Proof

I'm disappointed that we don't see eye to eye on this.

In the history of religion, pan-theism seems the corollary to animism, not pan-deism. — 180 Proof

Pandeism = pantheism (animism) + deism according to web resources.

Anthropocene [isn't] an auto-extinction event — 180 Proof

That's what I was trying to get at. Animism is as old as the hills, it's a genuine candidate as the oldest form of religion. To make my point, I'd like to use the indigenous people of North America as an index case. Look how they lived even though consisting of multiple tribes each probably numbering in the thousands. Their way of life was largely guided by respecting nature which was a natural consequence of animism, the prevalent religion. They lived in harmony with the earth for millenia and this to reiterate, in no small part due to animism. They couldn't do as it pleased them - plundering, pillaging the earth was not an option. Rocks, trees, rivers, mountains, natural features had souls and were to be revered or at the very least treated as equals, part of the tribe.

Fast forward to the arrival of Europeans and animism was replaced in full or partly by, inter alia, science & technology. What followed is no secret - destruction of swathes of pristine forests, converting vast expanses of grassland for cultivation and livestock, mining at a scale that boggles the mind, so on.

I'm fairly certain that some if not all of North America's ecological disasters that've happened, are happening, or will happen can be traced back to the incapacitation or death of animism.

A similar story may emerge in other parts of the world that practiced animism including the fall guy in this story, Europe itself.


Thus, one solution could be to go back to the old days of animism and this is precisely what Environmental Personhood (see OP) is. Of course, animism might need to be tweaked a little to adapt it to modern realities but the basic idea seems understood. It worked before for millenia. It should work now too, right?

t I'll just second Mad Fool's sense that animism is broader than relationships to animals - places, storms, spirits, mountains, streams are all related to, as examples, in a wide variety of ways by animists. And it is likely much easier in a practical sense to have a relationship with a stone than with a bear. But since animists have all sorts of relations with all sorts of creatures and beings, then the word relationship is an extremely broad term. There is a sense in which all these beings have consciousness, intentions, emotions, thoughts, and so on. Which, interestingly, they were certainly correct about regarding animals, long before science managed to, with incredible internal resistance, acknowleldge this.

If...

1) humans

2) animals

3) objects

..are all divine, there probably is a hierarchy among 1, 2, 3 such that you can feel more love from 1 over 2 and 2 over 3

They all have spirit and conscoiusness. I am not sure why, now, the criterion is love. Relationships are complicated in most belief systems including animism. This of the way places can be sacred to indigenous peoples, to the point where they feel dead if the relationship is lost, for example. The point is that they consider everything alive and relatable to. And the hierachies are not simple. I think most indigenous groups while respectufl to classes of animals, would tend not to value any individual animals as much as places that they identify with. And even classes of animals can be less important. Humans are very important, sure, but then kinship, tribe, and other culture category factors can certainly put many humans lower than places and what we would call things and animals.

I don't think its a good idea, in general, to think animists consider animals gods, let alone Gods or God-like. They are generally nothing like the monotheist God, in any case, which is what we generally capitalize. They are, in fact, often referred to as humans or people or spirits (as are humans) by animists. This was an earlier part of the discussion I was entering.

I think animism actually regards animals as the highest expression of mother nature and holds them as God-like, hence the connections with environmental concerns — Gregory

Animism comes from latin soul/life, as in other words like animated. It doesn't come from animal. Animal also comes from that root. IOW all these things are alive and are animated by something like a spirit. Rocks, rivers, beavers, humans, sometimes the Sun.......

I never said animism comes from the word "animals". I took Latin for years in my teens. Aside from that, look at Jainism. They believe the world is divine but worry about killing insects and not grass. There is a natural belief in humans that they and animals are above grass and rocks. So everything might be divine as Spinoza thought but we relate with conscious creators. Totems expressed how we are connected to animals and most reincarnation accounts say we can come back as an animal but not as a piece of iron. If animism is said to be that the world is divine and that alone, most religion would agree with it. But being social creatures we have to look at animism in how it acts. Sacrifices of animals is usually seen as more sacred then giving up a rock. The social element is important and if the river and your pet are divine a healthy religion is going to give more care and thought to the pet as it expresses the divine to us more clearly. It would be very hard to look at all the literature to see the percentage of religions in history that treat animals different from objects and ones which don't but nature worshippers are keen to see nature in its reality and humans and animals can offer far more wisdom to us than rocks. Again, look to how humans act, not to their general metaphysical scheme

I never said animism comes from the word "animals". — Gregory

Ah, sorry. I just don't see where the idea, supported by what animists do/did gives such centrality to animals, then. Could you justify this quote

I think animism actually regards animals as the highest expression of mother nature and holds them as God-like, hence the connections with environmental concerns

especially in light of the various points I've made. And especially that part I bolded above.

Totems expressed how we are connected to animals and most reincarnation accounts say we can come back as an animal but not as a piece of iron. — Gregory

I don't think we have a great deal of knowledge or reincarntion in indigenous animisms, though we do for religions like Jainism and Hinduism, say. Further there may be categories spirits can shift between, but we need not conflate that with importance. And if you are talking about being God-like, suns and stars and mountains and special places (not the only ones with life force, but those that are considered more powerful, say) can certainly compete with animals if not often surpassing them Especially at an individual animal level.

The social element is important and if the river and your pet are divine a healthy religion is going to give more care and thought to the pet as it expresses the divine to us more clearly. — Gregory

Pets? And again, where is this coming from? One major point in animism is precisely that things most Westerners do not and/or did not think so much as having relations with and certainly not with the degree of importants animists give it, are thought of as having relations with. They are social or perhaps better put relational with things we consider inanimate. And I am not sure why pets is coming in? Most totem animals are not pets at all and are not related to socially in any Western sense. In fact they are related to in overlapping ways that what Westerners (most at least) would be likely to call inanimate. And in those animisms, for example, that consider the sun and moon animate, I doubt most totem animals are as important. Perhaps your clan animal, though, here setting a hierarchy is tricky since they would be important in different ways.

Wiki, huh? :roll:

Wiki, huh? :roll: — 180 Proof

Could you help me out? I need a reliable/trustworthy web resource - (an) alternative(s) to Wikipedia whose credibility seems to be declining precipitously going by how very few people on the forum cite it these days.

I've recommended SEP to you a few times. I often check on topics there before I go to wiki to read the same; whichever seems clearer and uses less jargon I tend to link in my replies. SEP articles are comprehensive (& often technical) and wiki articles tend to be summaries (and incomplete). Also, I've found SEP's bibliographies much more detailed and useful than wiki's. Mostly I use SEP to help specify my Google searches when I'm really digging deep. YMMV.

I've recommended SEP to you a few times. I often check on topics there before I go to wiki to read the same; whichever seems clearer and uses less jargon I tend to link in my replies. SEP articles are comprehensive (& often technical) and wiki articles tend to be summaries (and incomplete). Also, I've found SEP's bibliographies much more detailed and useful than wiki's. Mostly I use SEP to help specify my Google searches when I'm really digging deep. YMMV. — 180 Proof

:up: I'm in your debt, as always!

My point was if someone were to consider nature to be Divine it would be far easier to see divinity in animals then in the sun. The anthropologists I knew in college were far more interested in primate consciousness and how humans treated animals when the are regarded as divine then in the plants they ate. Worshipping a rock is old fashion idolatry. Trying to see divinity in animals is not.

Environmental personhood is a legal concept which designates certain environmental entities the status of a legal person. This assigns to these entities, the rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities and legal liability of a legal personality. Environmental personhood emerged from the evolution of legal focus in pursuit of the protection of nature. — Wikipedia

Lest anyone think this is "off the hook" they should consider that we provide such status to estates, corporations, trusts and other non-blood-pumping legal fictions, so why not more crucial aspects of nature?

Christopher Stone's law review article "Should Trees Have Standing" and Reed's article "Should Rivers Have Running" are good, provocative reads.

I wrote an article in Indian Law (never published) advocating similar notions for events. Events themselves should have standing. I would not propose litigation over an issue of whether a pack of wolves should eat a cow or calf alive (of course they should), but any event where man is the actor could be considered, and proposed and opposed by competent legal counsel, with burdens of proof, scopes and standards to be worked out in common law.

Anything that contextualizes man is a good thing. Quite simply, we ain't all that. Cry Havoc! and let slip the philosophers of litigation!

My point was if someone were to consider nature to be Divine it would be far easier to see divinity in animals then in the sun. — Gregory

I have no idea how you measure that one, and sun cults were really quite popular, and especially if we are talking about something being God-like, something like the sun and well beyond humans ability to control seems more God-like than creatures humans can kill. I can't see why they would or did considered animals the highest expression of mother nature.
These certainly seem granted a position in nature on a par with humans, and more often than rocks, but not more so that places, rivers, storms.

Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no categorical distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world and that soul or spirit or sentience exists not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers or other entities of the natural environment: water sprites, vegetation deities, tree sprites, etc. Animism may further attribute a life force to abstract concepts such as words, true names, or metaphors in mythology

Other 'things' and life forms have soul or spirit like we do. They are on a par. As are other phenomena and chunks of the world.

Totemism create kinship ties to animals and even plants. But I don't see it putting them, in general, as deities. Often they are considered to have a common ancestor with a family or kinship group. Much more like peers in a multi-species and substance society than God-like.

I feel like I have been chasing you on that original sentence for long enough. I can't find any justification for it. And you don't seem to justify it, except to repeat it in different ways. IOW reassert it.

OK, that's what you believe.

I'll move on to others.

Humans are animals as well. If animism says a storm is equal to a baby they are insane and that is not religion. But animism can be salvaged by those who believe spirit is imbued in everything but had it's highest expression in the animal kingdom. If it has no hierarchy then it's just blind idolatry and is not cognitive. That's not a religion. But as in every religion on earth, members believe various things across a spectrum. You will find no a great amount of consistency on animism in the literature. But you have to separate the cognitive from the insane and savage parts

An animist would regard himself humbly and learn from other species while seeing divineness in everything. But a human is not an inferior species a priori. It's about a balance of belief.