On superhuman powers and religion

A quote from S.N. Balagangadhara's "The Heathen In His Blindness..."

Does Spiro really have no theory? Could his conviction that religion is
a cultural universal have its roots elsewhere? I have suggested that religion
is the background framework. In that case, the ‘consensual’ definition must express the vengeance that a theory will take for being oblivious to its presence. Reconsider Spiro’s claim (1966: 91):

Since ‘religion’ is a term with historically rooted meanings, a definition must satisfy not only the criterion of cross-cultural applicability but also the criterion of intra-cultural intuitivity; at the least it should not be counter-intuitive. For me, therefore, any definition of ‘religion’ which does not include, as a key variable, the belief in superhuman…beings who have power to help or harm men is counter-intuitive.

Now it is a matter of established consensus that the Hindus worship trees, serpents, various animals (cow, monkey, and condor), images and idols. Are we to consider these people religious? It all depends, one may want to retort, whether or not Hindus consider the animals as “superhuman beings that have the power to help or harm men”.

In non-trivial ways, animals can help or harm human beings, but Spiro does not probably have this in mind. The problem might well be about the belief states of the Hindus: do they believe that animals are ‘superhuman’ beings?

This is a question about the hierarchy of life on earth. Humans are at the summit of ‘creation’ and animals are well below them in the ladder of life constituting the ‘infra’ or ‘sub-human’ species. Consequently, and only because of it, can gods be ‘super-human’.

Cultures do exist which recognise the differences between species, but do not recognise any hierarchy of life on earth. Even if human life is a desirable form of life, or even as a privileged form of existence, this does not imply that either goal or direction is attributed to the emergence and ‘evolution’ of life. One such culture is India and, in fact, one of the problems of the Christian missionaries with the Brahmins had to do precisely with this issue, as Rogerius (1651: 110) records it:

Hier toe an zijn sy niet te brenghen datse souden toe-staen dat een Mensch, de Beesten overtreffe, end dat den Mensch een edelder Creatuere zy, dan de Beesten, om dat hy met een voortreffelijcker Ziele zy begaeft. VVant soo ghy dat haer voor hout, sy sullen segghen, dat oock dierghelijcke Zielen de Beesten hebben. Indien ghy dit wilt betuygen door de werckingen van de redelijcke Ziele, die in den Mensch, ende niet in de Beesten, haer vertoont: soo heb je tot antwoort te verwachten…dat de reden, waerom de Beesten niet soo wel reden, ende verstant, voor den dagh en brengen, ende soo wel als de Menschen, en spreken, zijn, om datse gheen Lichaem en hebben ghekregen, dat bequaem is, om de qualiteyten van haer Ziele te voorschijn te brengen…

[You cannot make them admit that Man outstrips the beasts and that he is a nobler creature than the animals because he has a superior soul. If you try to remonstrate with them on this, they would say, animals also have a similar kind of Soul. If you try to demonstrate this by the workings of the rational soul, which is evident in Man and not in the beasts: you may expect an answer…that the reason why the animals do not exhibit the kind of rationality and understanding that human beings can show, why they cannot speak as man does, is because they are not given a body capable of exhibiting the qualities of their soul…]

In other words, to the Christians, Man was/is at the summit of creation. To the Hindus, it was/is not so. Where does this take us with respect to Spiro’s definition? His definition cannot be ‘useful’ to us unless we presuppose at least some amount of (suitably diluted) Christian theology: gods are superhuman, which is why they are worshipped; humans are at the top of the hierarchy of life with animals well below them, and so on.

This ‘minimal’ definition, which appears reasonable, merely expresses a linguistic and historical intuition of a religious culture: how could a religion not acknowledge the existence of ‘superhuman’ powers? This is a secularised theology, as far from ‘science’ as anything could possibly be.

PS: to add to the confusion, if I understand it correctly, moksha is available only to humans, not to animals or to devas.

PPS: The logical possibilities are:


1. Balu is wrong, and Hindus believe animals have superhuman powers.
2. Hindus worship beings that have no superhuman powers.
3. What Hindus do appears similar to, but in reality is very different from Christian worship. In general, conflating rituals or an attitude of reverence with worship is a mistake.

#3 is the most interesting - it raises the question - just what is it that Hindus are doing? (Please be careful with the words "worship", "scriptures", "holy" used there, they are loaded words and may obscure instead of help understand.)