week 8

Question 1

T/F Early anthropologists proposed that death led to the development of the
first forms of religion

Answer 1

true

Question 2

who is the found of modern sociology

Answer 2

Durkheim

influenced by positivism

Question 3

who is malinowski

Answer 3

they rejected the evolutionary paradigm and adopted functionalism

Question 4

death on a structural stability level is

Answer 4

religion + law together

Question 5

who outlined that death is one of the universal sources of anxiety

Answer 5

Malinowski

Question 6

For Malinowski, to understand death has having a spiritual dimension was also to portray its causes and aftermath as _____

Answer 6

comprehensible

Question 7

are are the two kinds of beliefs that humans have?

Answer 7

intuitive beliefs and reflective beliefs

Question 8

what are intuitive and reflective beliefs

Answer 8

Intuitive beliefs are judgments made with little effort based on automatic processes, while reflective beliefs involve critical examination and consideration of other possibilities

Question 9

what is intuitive dualism

Answer 9

a natural default mode of thought that takes minds to be separable from bodies and capable of independent existence

Question 10

intuitive materialism is

Answer 10

Minds are not separable from
bodies and minds are not capable of independent existence

Question 11

what is Learned intuitive dualism

Answer 11

An intuitive belief that minds to be separable from bodies and
capable of independent existence
in some but not all cultural contexts.

Question 12

Cross Cultural Applicability

Answer 12

Is intuitive dualism true of
everyone (universal intuitive
dualism)?

Question 13

Intuitive vs Reflective Dualism

Answer 13

People who lack intuitive dualism
but have reflective dualist beliefs
should have contrary inclinations in
drawing inferences regarding the
existence of minds after death,
sometimes governed by intuitive
systems, and other times governed
by reflective beliefs

Question 14

Intuitive Dualism and
Afterlife Beliefs: A
Cross-Cultural Study
Barret, H. et al. 2021 Cognitive Science 45 (2021) e12992

Answer 14

This study suggests that universal materialist (no separation between
mind and body) is the universal intuitive cognitive trait.
This in term suggests that we are not ‘hard-wired’ to believe in a
separation of mind and body, but that it is an acquired cultural trait

Question 15

what is the Egyptian Book of the Dead

Answer 15

One of the most important works
of religious literature in all of
human history.
The information is about how to
ensure eternal life after death.
Provides the dead with critical
religious knowledge to guide the
passage to the netherworld.
It is a compendium of spells,
allowing the dead to join the
solar-Osirian cycle in eternal life

A group of mortuary spells written on over 200
papyrus sheets of texts and vignettes on the
walls of ancient Egyptian tombs and coffins
Used mainly from the beginning of the New
Kingdom (1550 BCE)

General belief saw the texts to be an equivalent
of current religious books, for instance the Bible
and Qur’an, before it was understood to be a
funerary rite.

The original ancient Egyptian title for
the Book of the Dead is peret-em-heru
or “Coming forth by day”

The mummified corpse is bound to its
tomb and belongs to the netherworld,
but a spiritual component of the
human being, the ba, is able to allay
the constant fear of the ancient
Egyptians to be trapped in the tomb
after interment.
The ba was depicted mostly as a bird
with a human head, which signifies the
intimate union with the deceased.

Question 16

what are utilitarian spells

Answer 16

How to ward off potentially harmful
creatures including snakes, scorpions,
crocodiles, demons, and other
dangerous spirits

Question 17

what are theological and spiritual spells

Answer 17

How to transfigure the dead into a
blessed state and enable mystical union
with the gods of creation, or even how
to obtain resurrection to join with the
sun god himself and partake in the solar-Osirian cycle.

Question 18

how did ancient greece view death

Answer 18

The Greeks believed that at the moment of death, the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind.

Writing about “Hades,” after the god who ruled over the dead—suggest most considered it a bleak and somber place.

Plato (about 428–347 BC) described separate
destinations for the good and the bad, as well as cycles
of penance and reincarnation.
Only a handful of mythical figures suffered for eternity,
and their wrongdoings were beyond those of mere
mortal

Question 19

how did ancient rome view death

Answer 19

Writings suggest some
perception of an afterlife destination either to the Fields of Elysium, where the souls of the blessed reside, and gloomy Tartarus, the home of the damned.

The unburied wait restlessly on the shores of the River Styx, and it was believed that their souls haunted the living.

In the Republic, most Romans were likely cremated, and their remains kept in funerary

In the Empire, burial became the modal
form, and cremation was viewed as pagan

Question 20

how did medieval period view death

Answer 20

1000 - 1500 AD

Europe Christian cultures associated death with bodily decay, and explicitly displayed the process of decay in symbols on tombstones and in other works of art.

Death was generally depicted in texts and artworks as a slow process, and following death, the supernatural component of a person (a spirit or soul) was believed to travel to the afterlife gradually

Tombstone symbols of death are known as memento mori, meaning “remember you need to die”

Question 21

Marxism and Historical Materialism

Answer 21

Religion serves the purposes of those in power.

Question 22

The first Canadian crematorium was built in ___ in Montreal’s
Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery, available only to ___

Answer 22

1901

non-Catholic individuals who owned
a plot in the Protestant.

Cremation was approved for Catholics in 1963