ABSTRACT
The creation and emergence of religion On an ontological level, religions are not brute facts ‘out there’. Religions share in the making of social reality that is premised on human intentionality and language, and thereby also on cognitive and evolutionary mechanisms that have shaped the human mind throughout history. Intentionality and language have transformative powers that can change the status of things to make them count as something more than what mere physical appearance reveals at first sight; a piece of printed paper is treated as money, and a painting counts as a deity. Such status, once it is declared and represented accordingly, entails ‘deontic’ relationships such as duties, obligations, rights and expectations. The status that makes things count as something X can also be challenged; notes/money can become worthless and gods can be dismissed or turned into heritage objects stored in a museum.
Their social and objective status remains intentionality-dependent (Searle 2010; Stausberg 2010, 364-69). In this sense (and that includes its materiality), religions are social realities that are constantly created and recreated. This elementary creation of religion needs to be learned, reproduced and transmitted (Stausberg 2001).
