Part I: A World Prepared for the Gospel; Chapter 4: Scholars With Strange Theories, pp. 117-133 Summary

In the 1800s, there is a prominent scholar named Edward Tylor, whose work is very influential in Europe. Tylor is excited to hear Charles Darwin's theories about evolution of species, and tries to apply some of these ideas to anthropology. Tylor wants to discover the ancient, evolutionary origins of religion, and he imagines that primitive humans came up with the idea of a soul to explain some of the aspects of consciousness that are confusing, like death, dreaming, and shadows and reflections. In Tylor's theory, primitive men then attributed spirits to all living things and objects, including big things like weather and the sky. As monarchy emerged as a social order, this was reflected in...