Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion 1st Edition

by Stewart Elliott Guthrie (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195098914

ISBN-10: 0195098919

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Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory.
Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike.
As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry.
Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life.

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Editorial Reviews

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"Witty, elegant, magnificently written....A stunning achievement that will have an enormous impact on religious studies."--Robert Orsi, Indiana University

"Guthrie shows how the fields of science, cognitive science, philosophy, and the literary and visual arts are pervaded by anthropomorphism, even though they often criticize it....Provocative and carefully argued."--Library Journal

"A scholarly contribution to our understanding of the springs of the imagination."--James W. Fernandez, University of Chicago

"Guthrie's argument is interesting, clearly set out, and well taken....The book is lucid, engaging, and very well written."--Wayne Proudfoot, Columbia University

"Guthrie manages to draw from the murky reasonableness of everyday living what is most human in our perceptions of what animates life."--American Anthropologist

About the Author

Stewart E. Guthrie is Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University and is the author of A Japanese New Religion.

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (April 6, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195098919
ISBN-13: 978-0195098914
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 12 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #892,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #200 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Agnosticism
- #529 in Books > Textbooks > Science & Mathematics > Biology & Life Sciences > Ecology
- #1774 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Philosophy

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SHARON F. NICHOLS

He says that this is a survival mechanism which has stood us in good evolutionary stead

December 20, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I'm curious. I am currently re-reading "Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion," by Stewart E. Guthrie, Oxford University Press, Co. 1993. Guthrie is a very engaging writer, an anthropologist who focused on 'systematic anthropomorphism' in humans as the root cause of religion. That is, our brains are hard-wired to seek patterns everywhere, and especially to attribute human qualities & characteristics to what we 'see as' human faces. He says that this is a survival mechanism which has stood us in good evolutionary stead. So far as I am concerned, he has successfully made his case that this is where human religiosity has its root--in the way our brains function, quite automatically, as a survival mechanism. Its a good bet to think that dark blob in the forest is a bear than to brush it off as a big rock. If you're right, you probably live, but if you're wrong, well, not good at all!

I am interested because it short-circuits any debates on whether specific religious dogma or lore is 'accurate' or 'true' and forces the discussion back to a much more foundational point. If it is our brains hard-wiring (i.e., generating pattern recognition or the sense of experiencing a transcendental 'Oneness with the Universe'/or god...) which leads us to Belief, then the beliefs themselves are fairly irrelevant, as any or all are on an even neurologically-generated basis. Need an explanation for thunder and lighting, for floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, human suffering, death, dying, or other natural event? Blame it on an angry deity. Feel an overwhelming sense of awe and thankfulness? Someone must have 'caused' the good things to happen! Thus, gods and religion are born! Somewhere along the way anonymous humans (and maybe even pre-humans) formulated theories which were cast as certainties and became dogmas.

Is this the thing which causes a group of Believers to kill 141 school-children and their teachers in Pakistan or to be willing to fly airplanes into buildings, killing thousands? If it is, then the entire 'religion thing' ought to be rethought. It may have served when we were illiterate and unknowing of the natural world, but it has clearly ceased its evolutionary adaptive purposes. It should, in fact, be obsolete.

I am a Cultural Geographer with Anthropology as my minor area, so I am well-grounded in Guthrie's field. If you have not read this book, you may have missed a critical underpinning for our understanding of the human invention of religion. Get it. Read it! You'll be glad you did!

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Eleanor Rowe

Faces in the Clouds

August 4, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

By reading this lucid, fascinating book, alien beings could learn much about the religious inclinations of Earthlings. Religion is seen as "systematic anthropomorphism." Offering a wealth of persuasive examples, Stewart Guthrie lays bare our survival-based tendency to endow with human attributes the world we perceive. But as Guthrie puts it, "the clothes have no emperor." This thought-provoking theory of religion is potentially controversial, but I find it totally convincing. The book is well researched, and the illustrations are helpful and fun. The concluding chapter is brilliant. --Woody Rowe

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T.A.L.

Another piece of the puzzle of religion

July 29, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Guthrie, in this excellent book, offers a persuasive, if incomplete, explanation of why religious explanations are held to be true by so many if indeed they are not. His well-supported thesis is that the human mind's bulk of processing power evolved to process other human beings in our social environment and that this cognitive strategy of the social human animal has bled over into domains of reality that it isn't meant for, i.e. the domain of the natural sciences. A clear example for this would be the persistence of creationism in light of robust naturalistic theories of biological and cosmic evolution. People are predisposed to seek an anthropomorphic answer to things and when a normal human being obviously can't be the 'doer,' then a superhuman being is posited to have been the `creator.' It is easier to process information within a social context, even if that processing leads to a false conclusion.

Guthrie even sees the (admittedly very primitive) rudiments of religion in our closest cousins the chimpanzee. He cites evidence from Jane Goodall where chimps have been observed to become angry with rainstorms. He sees this as evidence for the rudiments of religion because the chimps must be injecting social intentionality into the mindless storm - something we `higher primates' have done with Zeus and `his' Lightening bolts to our contemporary biblicists who say hurricanes are the social intentionality of Yahweh. It is a primitive and false and yet pervasive way for human beings to conceptualize our environment.

Marshalling evidence of anthropomorphization from modern advertising, art, and literature, Guthrie ties it all together in his theory of religion. He sees that at its root, gods and religions are just the anthropomorphic perception lenses that we humans use to try and make sense of the world around us that doesn't share our minds, intentions, and emotions.

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