Anthropomorphism has a varied application to religion and religious matters.
Certain religions and religious leaders throughout history have actually condemned it, for example Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher during 570–480 BC, said that God could not be limited by portrayals of anthropomorphism.
"The greatest god" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind."
Love to Know 1911 (2006)
Both Islam and Judaism reject physical portrayals of God; Judaism further rejected this antagonism to the idea after Christian’s claimed that Jesus Christ is the physical manifestation of God.
Many people believe that anthropomorphism can help people feel closer to God and do not see any harm in it. If God truly understands and loves us he will accept what helps us believe and cope with the theory of a mighty being watching over us.
Anthropomorphism is not just a religious debate but also a literary debate, for example in 1911, in China's Hunan province; Lewis Carroll's novel ‘Alice's Adventures in Wonderland’ was banned. They believed that "animals should not use human language" and it "puts animals and human beings on the same level." GDFL (2009)
Later in the twentieth century George Orwell's novel Animal Farm used anthropomorphism to satirize Stalinism, as voiced by a pig in the famous passage below.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
This is a good example of how using anthropomorphism of animals can help make much broader and complex political statements accessible and interesting to the general public. This is because people can relate to the animals and absorb the message easily whereas if the message were presented in another style they would not listen as intently.
No comments:
Post a Comment