To avoid previous confusions, and to simplify some of the terms into stricter more narrow definitions:
- When I say "animals" I mean excluding humans.
- When I say "religious" I do NOT mean the belief in or worship of supernatural entities, I mean it in the sense of "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects" (or in this case, non-human animals).
- When I say "abstract thought" I mean "Thinking characterized by the ability to use concepts and to make and understand generalizations, such as of the properties or pattern shared by a variety of specific items or events."
Straggler writes:
Oni writes:
I'm saying humans have a much higher ability to think in the abstract because of our complex language, and thus internal dialogue, but not in the sense that you have to be able to speak to do it.
I agree.
But why does that make abstract thought amongst (e.g.) chimps impossible?
Perhaps I missed it, as this thread was rather cumbersome to catch up on, but I don't think Oni explicitly ruled out abstract thought in chimps. There does in fact seem to be evidence that various animals are indeed capable of abstract thought.
Examples:
Signs Of Abstract Thought Seen In Old World Monkeys
Dogs smarter than we think, study shows | Animal behaviour | The Guardian
(These and simliar stories originated with peer-reviewed journals such as Animal Behaviour and Animal Cognition).
I am not prepared to comment on the possible religiosity of animals, except to say that there is (as previously pointed out) a difference between "religious behaviour" and a belief in supernatural beings.
Death rituals are not evidence of a belief in supernatural beings. Grieving behaviour appears in some animals, but again this does not provide evidence in any belief in supernatural entities.
The instances of spirituality in the originally cited origins.net articles make no reference to God apart from a quote credited to Jane Goodall in which the term "gods" is
not used in the sense of divine creators:
Goodall writes:
"If the chimpanzee could share his feelings and questions with the others, might these wild elemental displays become ritualized into some form of animistic religion?Would they worship the falls, the deluge from the sky, the thunder and lightning -- the gods of the elements? So all-powerful; so incomprehensible (Goodall 2001)
It seems that all references to religion in the article are confined to the very narrow definition of religion as provided at the start of this post: "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects" (or in this case, non-human animals).
So, to weigh in on your original questions:
Straggler writes:
Do animals exhibit belief in supernatural beings?
I see no evidence of this in anything you've linked or anything I can find.
Straggler writes:
If they do is this evidence in favour of the actual existence of supernatural beings?
Of course not. There are still people (human animals) that believe the earth is flat (
The Flat Earth Society). That is NOT evidence in favour of its proposed lack of curvature into the third dimension.
Straggler writes:
Or does it point to the evolutionary origins and causes of human belief in supernatural beings?
This seems the only cogent and salient question here. There are two primary schools of thought on the evolution of religiosity: religion as an adaptation, and religion as a by-product... but that's another thread.
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