Do Animals Believe In Supernatural Beings?

If direct ability to communicate is your criteria then that eliminates much of our evidence based thinking about the most ancient human cultures.If speceism is your criteria then you fall foul of the problems of graduated evolution I have highlighted in our last few posts.Either way you don't really have a well grounded reason to conclude that evidence based research into animal beliefs is invalid.

Okay. Whatever. See Message 84.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I read the elephant link (the ape link is broken).
There doesn't appear to be any obviously irrational behaviour described relating to elephants.
(Standing around a dead elephant could be interpretted as a lack of understanding that the death is permanent.)I've started searching the interwebs, and so far I have only found a reference to possible irrational choices made by animals.I will dig further...

And it could also indicate an almost unlimited number of things all unrelated to the supernatural.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

What 'it' are you referring to?
(This is not one of those 'Jon' questions where I end up asking you to define every word in your sentence.)

An awful lot of the speculation.For example, elephants standing around a dead companion, even fondling the bones of a long dead elephant could be related to sorrow, or joy, or negotiations of changing social order or scents or ... we really have no clue.Even with the species we know best, speculation related to a belief in the supernatural is often a real stretch. For example even finding items buried with people does not really support a belief in the supernatural. It can be explained by many other factors.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I also dismiss much of human psychology as well. But like I said, at least with human psychology there is somewhat of a reasonable basis for linking thought patterns to behavior. As far as animals go, though, where do we have access to their thought patterns?Jon

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Check out Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I agree that the stated elephant behaviours are open to multiple interpretation.My suggestion (speculation) is that if they were behaving in a religious manner, then it would appear inexplicable/irrational to us (unless we involve religion).If we saw a chimpanzee kneeling with their hands pressed together and making quiet noises, would we be able to explain that behaviour without mentioning religion?

We can explain what they are doing, but not what they are thinking.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Ok, a hypothetical situation:
If we saw wild chimpanzees kneeling with their hands pressed together and making quiet noises: what would be the explanation (without mentioning religion)?Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

That they are kneeling with their hands pressed together and making quiet noises; we can't go much further than that. We can look at their next acts and see if that tells us more but that's about it.For example if immediately after that behavior they always go out one a coordinated hunt we can assume that whatever they were doing was related to the hunt.We could even be very wrong about that though.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

(I think I misunderstood your previous point.)
So, you agree that we could identify if animals were behaving irrationally (as opposed to 'hunting', etc.).Ok: the other part of my 'hypothesis' was that their gods would be Chimpocentric - their gods would be based on themselves.So my 'speculation' would mean that we should see chimps behaving in a manner as if there was an unseen chimp.
e.g. Leaving favourite chimp food in a tree which no chimp eats.Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

Not quite. I'm not even sure we can apply the term "irrational". Again, I would not go as far as to say why they did that or that it implies any particular belief system.

So, what reason could be given for chimps putting good food in a tree and then not eating it (maybe even then going off and eating food)?You seem to be arguing that we cannot identify what animals are doing unless we can talk to them - which is patently untrue.
Why do you think that religious behaviour is uniquely unidentifyable?Edited by Panda, : No reason given.Edited by Panda, : typo

Because it is unidentifiable even in humans.There are atheistic pastors and people that follow all the rituals and still not believe. Sometimes (pretty often) their motivation is family peace, what someone else believes, comradeship or social networking, the food, fear or custom.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!