Theo 111-08 9/21/2013

Christian Smith states in Moral, Believing Animals that humans are

animals that are “moral and believing”. This means that humans are born
with a set of beliefs that ultimately define them as people, and have a
spiritual side that they cannot escape. He states that “The lives that we live
and the knowledge we possess are based crucially on sets of basic
assumptions and beliefs that themselves cannot be empirically verified or
established with certainty, that are not universal, and for which no ‘deeper,’
more objective or independent, common body of facts or knowledge exists
to adjudicate between.” This is why he calls us “moral, believing animals”
due to our beliefs that cannot be verified in the physical world. But Smith
does not seem to characterize human cultures as “moral orders,” rather he
seems to say that every culture has an underlying sacred or “moral order.”
This is shown when he states “This book’s arguement has also suggested
that every social order has the sacred at its core. Social orders are not
merely populations carrying on instrumentally functional institutions but
rather are ultimately held together and set into motion by particular ideas
and ideals about themselves that comprise their collective identities, which
give social orders their essential locations, orientations, and significance in
the larger world.” This means that these ideas that every person has, which
drive all societies, are not born out of the culture, rather the culture is born
out of them.

The idea that our culture is driven by our beliefs rather than our
beliefs being driven by our culture is a fundamentally different approach
than what most sociologists seem to think. Most claim that if you took a
newborn baby to a completly different environment then it would take on
the culture of that environment. But Smith on the other hand is saying that
that baby would not be different than if you would have left it alone
because it is the human who shapes the culture not the other way around,
other than what that child learns from other hisorical narratives. This is
hard for me to believe, I do think that humans are born with several basic
beliefs and instincts, but I do not however think that all of our beliefs come
from our own narrative. I think that alot of what we believe is given by our
culture, but I do, however, believe that we can shape our culture.