Question

Explain the intellectualist theories of religion in 500 words

Answer 1

Ideas about the origin and development of religion were initially based on the reports of missionaries and adventures about the nature of religion among the primitives. For example, Depresses (1760) advanced a theory that religion had its origin in fetishism (belief in magical fetishes or objects): The Portuguese sailors had 30 reported that the coastal Negro tribes of West Africa worshipped inanimate things and animals. Comte (1908) took up this theory and wrote that in due courses Fetishism was replaced by Polytheism. This theory was superseded by the ghost theory and the soul theory.

These latter theories are known as intellectualist theories of religion, because both assume that the primitives are rational being, although their efforts to explain natural phenomena are somewhat crude. Before proceeding to discuss the intellectualist theories, we should, however, take note of another very strong theory about the origin of religion.
Nature-Myth school was a German School, dealing with Indo-European Religions. According to it, ancient Gods were universally personifications of natural phenomena. Max Muller, a German linguist, propounded this theory. In his opinion grand natural objects gave people a feeling of the infinite as well as acted as symbols of the infinite. The people thought of celestial bodies, such as, moon, start, dawn and their attributes in terms of metaphor and symbol.

With the passage of time, the symbolic representations came to have an independent identity and became separated from that which they represented. The attributes or the symbols became personified as deities

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Answer 2

Intellectuals accept the fact that religion do exist and every individual in the universe is under one supreme being. They believe that the Supreme being is responsible for all the activities that occur under the sun, they believe that the universe responds accortdibng to ones behavior, it punishes the wrong doers and it rewards those who practice good morals in the society.