Editing Auguste Comte (section)

==== Theological stage ====
The first stage, the theological stage, relies on supernatural or religious explanations of the phenomena of human behavior because "the human mind, in its search for the primary and final causes of phenomena, explains the apparent anomalies in the universe as interventions of supernatural agents".<ref name="ReferenceA">Bourdeau, Michel. Auguste Comte. Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ [28 April 2016].</ref> The Theological Stage is the "necessary starting point of human intelligence" when humans turn to supernatural agents as the cause of all phenomena.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015">"Auguste Comte." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition (2015): 1. MAS Ultra School Edition. Web.</ref> In this stage, humans focus on discovering absolute knowledge. Comte disapproved of this stage because it turned to simple explanation humans created in their minds that all phenomena were caused by supernatural agents, rather than human reason and experience. Comte refers to Bacon's philosophy that "there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts", but he observes that the primitive mind could not have thought that way because it would have only created a vicious circle between observations and theories.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> "For if, on the one hand, every positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observations, it is, on the other hand, no less true that, in order to observe, our mind has need of some theory or other".<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> Because the human mind could not have thought in that way in the origin of human knowledge, Comte claims that humans would have been "incapable of remembering facts", and would not have escaped the circle if it were not for theological conceptions, which were less complicated explanations to human life.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> Although Comte disliked this stage, he explains that theology was necessary at the beginning of the developing primitive mind.

The first theological state is the necessary starting point of human intelligence. The human mind primarily focuses its attention on the "inner nature of beings and to the first and final causes of all phenomena it observes." (Ferre 2) This means that the mind is looking for the cause and effect of an action that will govern the social world. Therefore, it "represents these phenomena as being produced by a direct and continuous action of more or less numerous supernatural agents, whose arbitrary interventions explain all the apparent anomalies of the universe." (Ferre 2)

This primary subset of the theological state is known as fetishism, where the phenomena must be caused and created by a theological supernatural being such as God, making humans view every event in the universe as a direct will from these supernatural agents. Some people believed in souls or spirits that possessed inanimate objects and practiced Animism. These natural spiritual beings who possessed souls and may exist apart from the material bodies were capable of interacting with humans, therefore requiring sacrifices and worship to please the agents.

With all these new reasons behind phenomena, numerous fetishisms occur, needing several gods to continue to explain events. 
People begin to believe that every object or event has a unique god attached to it. This belief is called polytheism. The mind "substituted the providential action of a single being for the varied play of numerous independent gods which have been imagined by the primitive mind."

These Gods often took on both human and animal resemblance. In Egypt, there were multiple gods with animal body parts such as Ra, who had the head of a hawk and had sun associations with the Egyptians. The polytheistic Greeks had several gods such as Poseidon who controlled the sea and Demeter who was the goddess of fertility. However, with all these new gods governing the phenomena of society, the brain can get confused with the numerous gods it needs to remember.

The human mind eliminates this problem by believing in a sub-stage called monotheism. Rather than having multiple gods, there is simply one all-knowing and omnipotent God who is the center of power controlling the world. This creates harmony with the universe because everything is under one ruler. This leaves no confusion of how to act or who is the superior ruler out of the several gods seen in polytheism. The theological state functions well as the first state of the mind when making a belief about an event because it creates a temporary placeholder for the cause of the action which can later be replaced. By allowing the brain to think of the reason behind phenomena, the polytheistic gods are fillers that can be replaced by monotheistic gods.

The theological stage shows how the primitive mind views supernatural phenomena and how it defines and sorts the causes. "The earliest progress of the human mind could only have been produced by the theological method, the only method which can develop spontaneously. It alone has the important property of offering us a provisional theory,… which immediately groups the first facts, with its help, by cultivating our capacity for observation, we were able to prepare the age of a wholly positive philosophy." (Comte 149)

Comte believed the theological stage was necessary because of the foundational belief that man's earliest philosophy of explanation is the act of connecting phenomena around him to his own actions; that man may "apply the study of external nature to his own".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings|last=Lenzer|first=Gertrud|publisher=Transaction Publishers|year=1998|pages=286, 289, 292}}</ref> This first stage is necessary to remove mankind from the "vicious circle in which it was confined by the two necessities of observing first, in order to form conceptions, and of forming theories first, in order to observe".<ref name=":0" /> Additionally, the theological stage is able to organize society by directing "the first social organization, as it first forms a system of common opinions, and by forming such a system".<ref name=":0" /> Though, according to Comte, it could not last, this stage was able to establish an intellectual unity that made an impressive political system. The theological state was also necessary for human progress on account that it creates a class in a society dedicated to "speculative activity".<ref name=":0" /> It is in this way that Comte sees the theological stage continue to exist into the Enlightenment. Comte momentarily admires the theological stage for its remarkable ability to enact this activity amidst a time when it was argued to be impractical. It is to this stage that the human mind owes "the first effectual separation between theory and practice, which could take place in no other manner" other than through the institution provided by the theological stage.<ref name=":0" />

The Theological Stage is the stage that was seen primarily among the civilizations in the distant past. Having been used before the 1300s, this is a very basic view of the world with little to no involvement in the world of science, and a world of illusions and delusions, as Freud would put it. To seek the nature of all beings, mankind puts its focus on sentiments, feelings, and emotions. This turned mankind towards theology and the creation of gods to answer all their questions.

The Theological Stage is broken into three sections:
# [[Fetishism]] is the philosophy in which mankind puts the power of a god into an inanimate object. Every object could hold this power of a god, so it started to confuse those who believed in Fetishism and created multiple gods.
# [[Polytheism]] is, in basic terms, the belief in an order of multiple gods who rule over the universe. Within polytheism, each god is assigned a specific thing in which they are the good of. Examples of this would be the Greek god, Zeus, the god of the sky/lightning, or Ra, the sun god, in Egyptian mythology. A group of priests was often assigned to these gods to offer sacrifices and receive blessings from those gods, but once again, because of the innumerable number of gods, it got confusing, so civilization turned to Monotheism.
# [[Monotheism]] is the belief in one, all-powerful God who rules over every aspect of the universe. The removal of an emotional and imaginational aspects of both Fetishism and Polytheism resulted in intellectual awakening. This removal allowed for the Enlightenment to occur as well as the expansion of the scientific world. With the Enlightenment came many famous philosophers who brought about a great change in the world. This is the reason why "Monotheism is the climax of the theological stage of thinking."<ref>Priya, Rashmi. "Law of Three Stages: The Corner Stone of Auguste Comte's.” Your Article Library, 1 December 2014, www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/law-of-three-stages-the-corner-stone-of-auguste-comtes/43729.</ref>