Bishop James Long: “Ghost Adventures Is Not Fake.” 19. Hegel, The Positivity of the Christian Religion. Some ghosts harm, while others protect. Folklore and astrology were discussed commonly and earnestly. From these legends, both Buddhist and Taoists, we can see that the Hungry Ghost Festival was meant to have two meanings: to teach people to behave kindly to others, and to encourage filial piety. Acting for a purpose is the basis for what evolutionary scientists call the Theory of Mind (ToM) — another idea that's often cited in discussions about the origins of religion. THE GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION by Andrew Lang 1894 Among the many hypotheses as to the origin of religion, that which we may call the evolutionary, or anthropological, is most congenial to modern habits of thought. This view is partly inspired by the work of Karl Marx, who said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” (Marx, 1964). This story is about Ghost Adventures, and events and people presented there. April 22, 2014; I found this article from earlier this year regarding one of the crop of ghost hunting shows that plague the airwaves. While maybe not every Elizabethan believed ghosts to be real, we do know that the existence of ghosts was a well-known idea that was believed by many and upheld by society and religious doctrine. According to Durkheim, people see religion as contributing to the health and continuation of society in general. Durkheim's theory of religion exemplifies how functionalists examine sociological phenomena. But this concept of human body as machine is not just a philosophical or theological construct; it long formed the basis for our view of ourselves. Department of English Westminster College Salt Lake City, Utah 84105 www.wcslc.edu pgoldman@uci.edu “Remember me.” Hamlet’s Ghost calls out to us across the space of four hundred years, and by all evidence we are in no danger of forgetting him. The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize non-sense, has brought about a corporeal ghost, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied ghost. Scholars argue that a psychological function of religion serves to help people both explain the mysteries of death and conquer their fears over it, making ghosts a common religious motif. Religion has all of these benefits, but, according to conflict theory, it can also reinforce and promote social inequality and social conflict. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition! The Buddhist festival of Yulanpen is based on the story of Mulian who wished to rescue his dead mother from the realm of the hungry ghosts. –G.W.F. Takne from an … In general, Shakespeare’s England was much more superstitious than it is today. According to this view, the concept of a soul that inhabits the human body was the earliest supernatural belief entertained by man, and this notion was later extended to animals, plants, and inanimate objects. Thus, religion functions to bind society's members by prompting them to affirm their common values and beliefs on a regular basis. The Ghost Dance originated among the Great Basin Paiute as a religious movement arising out of the extreme social, political, economic, demographic, cultural, and personal stress brought about by the rapid incursion of Europeans and, later, Americans into North America. Far from science and religion being opposed to each other, the metaphysical view attached to our best scientific theories at the time was explicitly tied to a religious picture of reality. In Principles of Sociology Spencer proposed a theory about the origin of religion that came to be known as the ghost theory.