Post by Dalelet's say for a moment that religion is blind faith
maybe the concept of the wisest alpha being came into question when
groups of beings asked what were the qualities of an alpha being, a
leader, that they wanted
maybe leaders are judged by such a concept
maybe the concept is roused up to rouse out leaders that factions do
not want, or leaders that do not live up to the concept
maybe the concept is roused considerably for another look at the
concept to date and the establishment by progressives
religion may be blind faith, but the concept is not
if we are material
if are brains are material
if concepts in our brain are material
the concept of religion is material, in some way
this is psychologically
when the concept is shared it is manifest socially
how far can a concept go? methinks only as far as the concept is
valuable to the balance of the establishment and progress
Revelation 6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say,
Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on
him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure
of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and
see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation 6&version=KJV
A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and
world views that relate humanity to an order of existence. Many religions
have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that aim to explain the
meaning of life, the origin of life, or the Universe. From their beliefs
about the cosmos and human nature, people may derive morality, ethics,
religious laws or a preferred lifestyle.
Many religions may have organized behaviors, clergy, a definition of what
constitutes adherence or membership, holy places, and scriptures. The
practice of a religion may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or
veneration, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary
services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance,
public service, or other aspects of human culture. Religions may also
contain mythology.
The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or set of
duties; however, in the words of Émile Durkheim, religion differs from
private belief in that it is "something eminently social". A global 2012
poll reports 59% of the world's population as "religious" and 36% as not
religious, including 13% who are atheists, with a 9% decrease in religious
belief from 2005. On average, women are "more religious" than men. Some
people follow multiple religions or multiple religious principles at the
same time, regardless of whether or not the religious principles they follow
traditionally allow for syncretism.
Etymology
Religion "respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods," "obligation,
the bond between man and the gods") is derived from the Latin religiō, the
ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possibility is an interpretation
traced to Cicero, connecting ' "read", i.e. re + lego in the sense of
"choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully". Modern scholars such as
Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the derivation from ' "bind, connect",
probably from a prefixed, i.e. re + ligare or "to reconnect," which was
made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.
The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities
like those of monastic orders: "we hear of the 'religion' of the Golden
Fleece, of a knight 'of the religion of Avys'".
According to the philologist Max Müller, the root of the English word
"religion", the Latin religio, was originally used to mean only "reverence
for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety" . Max Müller
characterized many other cultures around the world, including Egypt, Persia,
and India, as having a similar power structure at this point in history.
What is called ancient religion today, they would have only called "law".
Many languages have words that can be translated as "religion", but they may
use them in a very different way, and some have no word for religion at all.
For example, the Sanskrit word dharma, sometimes translated as "religion",
also means law. Throughout classical South Asia, the study of law consisted
of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as
practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between
"imperial law" and universal or "Buddha law", but these later became
independent sources of power.
There is no precise equivalent of "religion" in Hebrew, and Judaism does not
distinguish clearly between religious, national, racial, or ethnic
identities. One of its central concepts is "halakha", sometimes translated
as "law"", which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of
daily life.
The use of other terms, such as obedience to God or Islam are likewise
grounded in particular histories and vocabularies.
Definitions
There are numerous definitions of religion and only a few are stated here.
The typical dictionary definition of religion refers to a "belief in, or the
worship of, a god or gods" or the "service and worship of God or the
supernatural". However, writers and scholars have expanded upon the "belief
in god" definitions as insufficient to capture the diversity of religious
thought and experience.
Peter Mandaville and Paul James define religion as "a relatively-bounded
system of beliefs, symbols and practices that addresses the nature of
existence, and in which communion with others and Otherness is lived as if
it both takes in and spiritually transcends socially-grounded ontologies of
time, space, embodiment and knowing". This definition is intended, they
write, to get away from the modernist dualisms or dichotomous understandings
of immanence/transcendence, spirituality/materialism, and
sacredness/secularity.
Edward Burnett Tylor defined religion as "the belief in spiritual beings".
He argued, back in 1871, that narrowing the definition to mean the belief in
a supreme deity or judgment after death or idolatry and so on, would exclude
many peoples from the category of religious, and thus "has the fault of
identifying religion rather with particular developments than with the
deeper motive which underlies them". He also argued that the belief in
spiritual beings exists in all known societies.
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined religion as a "system of symbols
which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and
motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of
existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality
that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." Alluding perhaps to
Tylor's "deeper motive", Geertz remarked that "we have very little idea of
how, in empirical terms, this particular miracle is accomplished. We just
know that it is done, annually, weekly, daily, for some people almost
hourly; and we have an enormous ethnographic literature to demonstrate it".
The theologian Antoine Vergote also emphasized the "cultural reality" of
religion, which he defined as "the entirety of the linguistic expressions,
emotions and, actions and signs that refer to a supernatural being or
supernatural beings"; he took the term "supernatural" simply to mean
whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency.
The sociologist Durkheim, in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life, defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things". By sacred things he meant things "set
apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral
community called a Church, all those who adhere to them". Sacred things are
not, however, limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing
can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a
word, anything can be sacred". Religious beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends
are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and
the virtues and powers which are attributed to them.
In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, the psychologist William
James defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual
men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in
relation to whatever they may consider the divine". By the term "divine"
James meant "any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or
not" to which the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and
gravity.
Echoes of James' and Durkheim's definitions are to be found in the writings
of, for example, Frederick Ferré who defined religion as "one's way of
valuing most comprehensively and intensively". Similarly, for the theologian
Paul Tillich, faith is "the state of being ultimately concerned", which "is
itself religion. Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of
man's spiritual life." Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century
defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly
translated as "a feeling of absolute dependence". His contemporary Hegel
disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming
conscious of Himself through the finite spirit."
When religion is seen in terms of "sacred", "divine", intensive "valuing",
or "ultimate concern", then it is possible to understand why scientific
findings and philosophical criticisms do not necessarily disturb its
adherents.
An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations about ever
defining the "essence" of religion. They observe that the way we use the
concept today is a particularly modern construct that would not have been
understood through much of history and in many cultures outside the West .
Theories
Origins and development
The origin of religion is uncertain. There are a number of theories
regarding the subsequent origins of organized religious practices.
According to anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just, "Many of the
great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of
some sort, as the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the imaginations of
people seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel
is provided by everyday beliefs. Charismatic individuals have emerged at
many times and places in the world. It seems that the key to long-term
success – and many movements come and go with little long-term effect – has
relatively little to do with the prophets, who appear with surprising
regularity, but more to do with the development of a group of supporters who
are able to institutionalize the movement."
The development of religion has taken different forms in different cultures.
Some religions place an emphasis on belief, while others emphasize practice.
Some religions focus on the subjective experience of the religious
individual, while others consider the activities of the religious community
to be most important. Some religions claim to be universal, believing their
laws and cosmology to be binding for everyone, while others are intended to
be practiced only by a closely defined or localized group. In many places
religion has been associated with public institutions such as education,
hospitals, the family, government, and political hierarchies.
Anthropologists John Monoghan and Peter Just state that, "it seems apparent
that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human
life that are significant, persistent, and intolerable. One important way in
which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about
how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate
anxieties and deal with misfortune." Among the main proponents of this
theory of religion are Daniel Dubuisson, Timothy Fitzgerald, Talal Asad, and
Jason Ānanda Josephson. The social constructionists argue that religion is a
modern concept that developed from Christianity and was then applied
inappropriately to non-Western cultures.
Daniel Dubuisson, a French anthropologist, says that the idea of religion
has changed a lot over time and that one cannot fully understand its
development by relying on consistent use of the term, which "tends to
minimize or cancel out the role of history".
Dubuisson prefers the term "cosmographic formation" to religion. Dubuisson
says that, with the emergence of religion as a category separate from
culture and society, there arose religious studies. The initial purpose of
religious studies was to demonstrate the superiority of the "living" or
"universal" European world view to the "dead" or "ethnic" religions
scattered throughout the rest of the world, expanding the teleological
project of Schleiermacher and Tiele to a worldwide ideal religiousness. Due
to shifting theological currents, this was eventually supplanted by a
liberal-ecumenical interest in searching for Western-style universal truths
in every cultural tradition.
According to Fitzgerald, religion is not a universal feature of all
cultures, but rather a particular idea that first developed in Europe under
the influence of Christianity. Fitzgerald argues that from about the 4th
century CE Western Europe and the rest of the world diverged. As
Christianity became commonplace, the charismatic authority identified by
Augustine, a quality we might today call "religiousness", exerted a
commanding influence at the local level. As the Church lost its dominance
during the Protestant Reformation and Christianity became closely tied to
political structures, religion was recast as the basis of national
sovereignty, and religious identity gradually became a less universal sense
of spirituality and more divisive, locally defined, and tied to nationality.
It was at this point that "religion" was dissociated with universal beliefs
and moved closer to dogma in both meaning and practice. However there was
not yet the idea of dogma as a personal choice, only of established
churches. With the Enlightenment religion lost its attachment to
nationality, says Fitzgerald, but rather than becoming a universal social
attitude, it now became a personal feeling or emotion.
Asad argues that before the word "religion" came into common usage,
Christianity was a disciplina, a "rule" just like that of the Roman Empire.
This idea can be found in the writings of St. Augustine . Christianity was
then a power structure opposing and superseding human institutions, a
literal Kingdom of Heaven. It was the discipline taught by one's family,
school, church, and city authorities, rather than something calling one to
self-discipline through symbols.
These ideas are developed by S. N. Balagangadhara. In the Age of
Enlightenment, Balagangadhara says that the idea of Christianity as the
purest expression of spirituality was supplanted by the concept of
"religion" as a worldwide practice. This caused such ideas as religious
freedom, a reexamination of classical philosophy as an alternative to
Christian thought, and more radically Deism among intellectuals such as
Voltaire. Much like Christianity, the idea of "religious freedom" was
exported around the world as a civilizing technique, even to regions such as
India that had never treated spirituality as a matter of political identity.
In nineteenth century Japan, Buddhism was radically transformed from a
pre-modern philosophy of natural law into a "religion," as Japanese leaders
worked to address domestic and international political concerns. In summary,
Josephson argues that the European encounter with other cultures has led to
a partial de-Christianization of the category religion. Hence "religion" has
come to refer to a confused collection of traditions with no possible
coherent definition.
George Lindbeck, a Lutheran and a postliberal theologian, says that religion
does not refer to belief in "God" or a transcendent Absolute, but rather to
"a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the
entirety of life and thought ... it is similar to an idiom that makes
possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the
experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments."
Comparative religion
Nicholas de Lange, Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Cambridge
University, says that "The comparative study of religions is an academic
discipline which has been developed within Christian theology faculties, and
it has a tendency to force widely differing phenomena into a kind of
strait-jacket cut to a Christian pattern. The problem is not only that other
'religions' may have little or nothing to say about questions which are of
burning importance for Christianity, but that they may not even see
themselves as religions in precisely the same way in which Christianity sees
itself as a religion."
Types
Categories
Some scholars classify religions as either universal religions that seek
worldwide acceptance and actively look for new converts, or ethnic religions
that are identified with a particular ethnic group and do not seek converts.
Others reject the distinction, pointing out that all religious practices,
whatever their philosophical origin, are ethnic because they come from a
particular culture.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative
religion divided religious belief into philosophically defined categories
called "world religions." However, some recent scholarship has argued that
not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive
philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a
certain philosophy, or even calling a given practice religious, rather than
cultural, political, or social in nature, is limited. The current state of
psychological study about the nature of religiousness suggests that it is
better to refer to religion as a largely invariant phenomenon that should be
distinguished from cultural norms .
Some academics studying the subject have divided religions into three broad
categories:
# world religions, a term which refers to transcultural, international
faiths;
# indigenous religions, which refers to smaller, culture-specific or
nation-specific religious groups; and
# new religious movements, which refers to recently developed faiths.
Interfaith cooperation
Because religion continues to be recognized in Western thought as a
universal impulse, many religious practitioners have aimed to band together
in interfaith dialogue, cooperation, and religious peacebuilding. The first
major dialogue was the Parliament of the World's Religions at the 1893
Chicago World's Fair, which remains notable even today both in affirming
"universal values" and recognition of the diversity of practices among
different cultures. The 20th century has been especially fruitful in use of
interfaith dialogue as a means of solving ethnic, political, or even
religious conflict, with Christian–Jewish reconciliation representing a
complete reverse in the attitudes of many Christian communities towards
Jews.
Recent interfaith initiatives include "A Common Word", launched in 2007 and
focused on bringing Muslim and Christian leaders together, the "C1 World
Dialogue", the "Common Ground" initiative between Islam and Buddhism, and a
United Nations sponsored "World Interfaith Harmony Week".
Religious groups
The list of still-active religious movements given here is an attempt to
summarize the most important regional and philosophical influences on local
communities, but it is by no means a complete description of every religious
community, nor does it explain the most important elements of individual
religiousness.
The five largest religious groups by world population, estimated to account
for 5.8 billion people and 84% of the population, are Christianity, Islam,
Buddhism, Hinduism and traditional folk religion.
Abrahamic
Abrahamic religions are monotheistic religions which believe they descend
from Abraham.
Judaism is the oldest Abrahamic religion, originating in the people of
ancient Israel and Judea. Judaism is based primarily on the Torah, a text
which some Jews believe was handed down to the people of Israel through the
prophet Moses. This along with the rest of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud
are the central texts of Judaism. The Jewish people were scattered after the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. Today there are about 13
million Jews, about 40 per cent living in Israel and 40 per cent in the
United States.
Christianity is based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as
presented in the New Testament. The Christian faith is essentially faith in
Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and as Savior and Lord. Almost all
Christians believe in the Trinity, which teaches the unity of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. Most Christians can
describe their faith with the Nicene Creed. As the religion of Byzantine
Empire in the first millennium and of Western Europe during the time of
colonization, Christianity has been propagated throughout the world. The
main divisions of Christianity are, according to the number of adherents:
Catholic Church, headed by the Pope in Rome, is a communion of the Western
church and 22 Eastern Catholic churches.
Eastern Christianity, which include Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy,
and the Church of the East.
Protestantism, separated from the Catholic Church in the 16th-century
Reformation and split in many denominations.
There are also smaller groups, including:
Restorationism, the belief that Christianity should be restored along the
lines of what is known about the apostolic early church.
Latter Day Saint movement, founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s.
Jehovah's Witnesses, founded in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell.
Islam is based on the Quran, one of the holy books considered by Muslims to
be revealed by God, and on the teachings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a
major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is the
most widely practiced religion of Southeast Asia, North Africa, Western
Asia, and Central Asia, while Muslim-majority countries also exist in parts
of South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Europe. There are also
several Islamic republics, including Iran, Pakistan, Mauritania, and
Afghanistan.
Sunni Islam is the largest denomination within Islam and follows the Quran,
the hadiths which record the sunnah, whilst placing emphasis on the sahabah.
Shia Islam is the second largest denomination of Islam and its adherents
believe that Ali succeeded Muhammad and further places emphasis on
Muhammad's family.
Ahmadiyya adherents believe that the awaited Imam Mahdi and the Promised
Messiah has arrived, believed to be Mirza Ghulam Ahmad by Ahmadis.
There are also Muslim revivalist movements such as Muwahhidism and Salafism.
Other denominations of Islam include Nation of Islam, Ibadi, Sufism,
Quranism, Mahdavia, and non-denominational Muslims. Wahhabism is the
dominant Muslim schools of thought in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Bahá'í Faith is an Abrahamic religion founded in 19th century Iran and
since then has spread worldwide. It teaches unity of all religious
philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam as well as additional prophets including its founder Bahá'u'lláh.
Smaller regional Abrahamic groups also exist, including Samaritanism, the
Rastafari movement, and Druze .
Iranian
Iranian religions are ancient religions whose roots predate the Islamization
of Greater Iran. Nowadays these religions are practiced only by minorities.
Zoroastrianism is based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster in the 6th
century BC. Zoroastrians worship the creator Ahura Mazda. In Zoroastrianism
good and evil have distinct sources, with evil trying to destroy the
creation of Mazda, and good trying to sustain it.
Mandaeism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview.
Mandaeans are sometime labeled as the "Last Gnostics".
Kurdish religions include the traditional beliefs of the Yazidi, Alevi, and
Ahl-e Haqq. Sometimes these are labeled Yazdânism.
Indian
Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent.
They are sometimes classified as the dharmic religions, as they all feature
dharma, the specific law of reality and duties expected according to the
religion.
Hinduism is a synecdoche describing the similar philosophies of Vaishnavism,
Shaivism, and related groups practiced or founded in the Indian
subcontinent. Concepts most of them share in common include karma, caste,
reincarnation, mantras, yantras, and darśana. Hinduism is the most ancient
of still-active religions, with origins perhaps as far back as prehistoric
times. Hinduism is not a monolithic religion but a religious category
containing dozens of separate philosophies amalgamated as Sanātana Dharma,
which is the name by which Hinduism has been known throughout history by its
followers.
Jainism, taught primarily by Parsva and Mahavira, is an ancient Indian
religion that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living
beings in this world. Jains are found mostly in India.
Buddhism was founded by Siddhattha Gotama in the 6th century BCE. Buddhists
generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their
suffering by understanding the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping
the cycle of suffering and rebirth, that is, achieving nirvana.
Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced mainly in Sri Lanka and Southeast
Asia alongside folk religion, shares some characteristics of Indian
religions. It is based in a large collection of texts called the Pali Canon.
Mahayana Buddhism under which are a multitude of doctrines that became
prominent in China and are still relevant in Vietnam, Korea, Japan and to a
lesser extent in Europe and the United States. Mahayana Buddhism includes
such disparate teachings as Zen, Pure Land, and Soka Gakkai.
Vajrayana Buddhism first appeared in India in the 3rd century CE. It is
currently most prominent in the Himalaya regions and extends across all of
Asia .
Two notable new Buddhist sects are Hòa Hảo and the Dalit Buddhist movement,
which were developed separately in the 20th century.
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak
and ten successive Sikh gurus in 15th century Punjab. It is the
fifth-largest organized religion in the world, with approximately 30 million
Sikhs. Sikhs are expected to embody the qualities of a Sant-Sipāhī—a
saint-soldier, have control over one's internal vices and be able to be
constantly immersed in virtues clarified in the Guru Granth Sahib. The
principal beliefs of Sikhi are faith in Waheguru—represented by the phrase
'''', meaning one God, who prevails in everything, along with a praxis in
which the Sikh is enjoined to engage in social reform through the pursuit of
justice for all human beings.
East Asian religions
East Asian religions consist of several religions of East Asia which make
use of the concept of Tao or Dō . They include:
Taoism and Confucianism, as well as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese
religion influenced by Chinese thought.
Chinese folk religion: the indigenous religions of the Han Chinese, or, by
metonymy, of all the populations of the Chinese cultural sphere. It includes
the syncretism of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, Wuism, as well as many
new religious movements such as Chen Tao, Falun Gong and Yiguandao.
Other folk and new religions of East Asia and Southeast Asia such as Korean
shamanism, Chondogyo, and Jeung San Do in Korea; Shinto, Shugendo, Ryukyuan
religion, and Japanese new religions in Japan; Satsana Phi in Laos; Cao Đài,
Hòa Hảo, and Vietnamese folk religion in Vietnam.
African traditional
African traditional religion encompasses the traditional religious beliefs
of people in Africa. In north Africa, these religions have included
traditional Berber religion, ancient Egyptian religion, and Waaq. West
African religions include Akan religion, Dahomey mythology, Efik mythology,
Odinani of the Igbo people, Serer religion, and Yoruba religion, while
Bushongo mythology, Mbuti mythology, Lugbara mythology, Dinka religion, and
Lotuko mythology come from central Africa. Southern African traditions
include Akamba mythology, Masai mythology, Malagasy mythology, San religion,
Lozi mythology, Tumbuka mythology, and Zulu mythology. Bantu mythology is
found throughout central, southeast, and southern Africa.
There are also notable African diasporic religions practiced in the
Americas, such as Santeria, Candomble, Vodun, Lucumi, Umbanda, and Macumba.
Indigenous and folk
Indigenous religions or folk religions refers to a broad category of
traditional religions that can be characterised by shamanism, animism and
ancestor worship, where traditional means "indigenous, that which is
aboriginal or foundational, handed down from generation to generation…".
These are religions that are closely associated with a particular group of
people, ethnicity or tribe; they often have no formal creeds or sacred
texts. Some faiths are syncretic, fusing diverse religious beliefs and
practices.
Australian Aboriginal religions.
Folk religions of the Americas: Native American religions
Folk religions are often omitted as a category in surveys even in countries
where they are widely practiced, e.g. in China. However, sociologist and
political economist Max Weber has argued that Protestant Christian countries
are wealthier because of their Protestant work ethic.
Health
Mayo Clinic researchers examined the association between religious
involvement and spirituality, and physical health, mental health,
health-related quality of life, and other health outcomes. The authors
reported that: "Most studies have shown that religious involvement and
spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater
longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life and less
anxiety, depression, and suicide."
The authors of a subsequent study concluded that the influence of religion
on health is "largely beneficial", based on a review of related literature.
According to academic James W. Jones, several studies have discovered
"positive correlations between religious belief and practice and mental and
physical health and longevity."
An analysis of data from the 1998 US General Social Survey, whilst broadly
confirming that religious activity was associated with better health and
well-being, also suggested that the role of different dimensions of
spirituality/religiosity in health is rather more complicated. The results
suggested "that it may not be appropriate to generalize findings about the
relationship between spirituality/religiosity and health from one form of
spirituality/religiosity to another, across denominations, or to assume
effects are uniform for men and women.
Violence
Charles Selengut characterizes the phrase "religion and violence" as
"jarring", asserting that "religion is thought to be opposed to violence and
a force for peace and reconciliation. He acknowledges, however, that "the
history and scriptures of the world's religions tell stories of violence and
war as they speak of peace and love."
Hector Avalos argues that, because religions claim divine favor for
themselves, over and against other groups, this sense of righteousness leads
to violence because conflicting claims to superiority, based on unverifiable
appeals to God, cannot be adjudicated objectively.
Critics of religion Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins go further and
argue that religions do tremendous harm to society by using violence to
promote their goals, in ways that are endorsed and exploited by their
leaders.
Regina Schwartz argues that all monotheistic religions are inherently
violent because of an exclusivism that inevitably fosters violence against
those that are considered outsiders. Lawrence Wechsler asserts that Schwartz
isn't just arguing that Abrahamic religions have a violent legacy, but that
the legacy is actually genocidal in nature.
Byron Bland asserts that one of the most prominent reasons for the "rise of
the secular in Western thought" was the reaction against the religious
violence of the 16th and 17th centuries. He asserts that "he secular was a
way of living with the religious differences that had produced so much
horror. Under secularity, political entities have a warrant to make
decisions independent from the need to enforce particular versions of
religious orthodoxy. Indeed, they may run counter to certain strongly held
beliefs if made in the interest of common welfare. Thus, one of the
important goals of the secular is to limit violence."
Nonetheless, believers have used similar arguments when responding to
atheists in these discussions, pointing to the widespread imprisonment and
mass murder of individuals under atheist states in the twentieth century:
In response to such a line of argument, however, author Sam Harris writes:
Richard Dawkins has stated that Stalin's atrocities were influenced not by
atheism but by dogmatic Marxism, and concludes that while Stalin and Mao
happened to be atheists, they did not do their deeds in the name of atheism.
On other occasions, Dawkins has replied to the argument that Adolf Hitler
and Josef Stalin were antireligious with the response that Hitler and Stalin
also grew moustaches, in an effort to show the argument as fallacious.
Instead, Dawkins argues in The God Delusion that "What matters is not
whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically
influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that
it does."
Dawkins adds that Hitler in fact, repeatedly affirmed a strong belief in
Christianity, but that his atrocities were no more attributable to his
theism than Stalin's or Mao's were to their atheism. In all three cases, he
argues, the perpetrators' level of religiosity was incidental.
D'Souza responds that an individual need not explicitly invoke atheism in
committing atrocities if it is already implied in his worldview, as is the
case in Marxism.
Law
The study of law and religion is a relatively new field, with several
thousand scholars involved in law schools, and academic departments
including political science, religion, and history since 1980. Scholars in
the field are not only focused on strictly legal issues about religious
freedom or non-establishment, but also study religions as they are qualified
through judicial discourses or legal understanding of religious phenomena.
Exponents look at canon law, natural law, and state law, often in a
comparative perspective. Specialists have explored themes in western history
regarding Christianity and justice and mercy, rule and equity, and
discipline and love. Common topics of interest include marriage and the
family and human rights. Outside of Christianity, scholars have looked at
law and religion links in the Muslim Middle East and pagan Rome.
Studies have focused on secularization. In particular the issue of wearing
religious symbols in public, such as headscarves that are banned in French
schools, have received scholarly attention in the context of human rights
and feminism.
Science
Religious knowledge, according to religious practitioners, may be gained
from religious leaders, sacred texts, scriptures, or personal revelation.
Some religions view such knowledge as unlimited in scope and suitable to
answer any question; others see religious knowledge as playing a more
restricted role, often as a complement to knowledge gained through physical
observation. Adherents to various religious faiths often maintain that
religious knowledge obtained via sacred texts or revelation is absolute and
infallible and thereby creates an accompanying religious cosmology, although
the proof for such is often tautological and generally limited to the
religious texts and revelations that form the foundation of their belief.
In contrast, the scientific method gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to
develop theories through elucidation of facts or evaluation by experiments
and thus only answers cosmological questions about the universe that can be
observed and measured. It develops theories of the world which best fit
physically observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is subject to later
refinement, or even outright rejection, in the face of additional evidence.
Scientific theories that have an overwhelming preponderance of favorable
evidence are often treated as de facto verities in general parlance, such as
the theories of general relativity and natural selection to explain
respectively the mechanisms of gravity and evolution.
Regarding religion and science, Albert Einstein states : "For science can
only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain
value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand,
deals only with evaluations of human thought and action; it cannot
justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts…Now, even though
the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from
each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal
relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determine
the goals, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest
sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set
up."
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal to appease
or maintain favour with a deity. Such forms of sacrifice are practised
within many religions around the world and have appeared historically in
almost all cultures.
Related forms of thought
Superstition
Superstition has been described as "the incorrect establishment of cause and
effect" or a false conception of causation. Religion is more complex and
includes social institutions and morality. But religions may include
superstitions or make use of magical thinking. Adherents of one religion
sometimes think of other religions as superstition.
Some atheists, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as superstition.
Greek and Roman pagans, who saw their relations with the gods in political
and social terms, scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the
thought of the gods, as a slave might fear a cruel and capricious master.
The Romans called such fear of the gods superstitio. Early Christianity was
outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica, a "Jewish superstition", by Domitian in
the 80s AD. In AD 425, when Rome had become Christian, Theodosius II
outlawed pagan traditions as superstitious.
Ancient greek historian Polybius described superstition in Ancient Rome as
an instrumentum regni, an instrument of maintaining the cohesion of the
Empire.
The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense
that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as
such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of
the Catholic Church states that superstition "in some sense represents a
perverse excess of religion" . "Superstition," it says, "is a deviation of
religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even
affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an
importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or
necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to
their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that
they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16-22"
Myth
The word myth has several meanings.
# A traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold
part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural
phenomenon;
# A person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence; or
# A metaphor for the spiritual potentiality in the human being.
Ancient polytheistic religions, such as those of Greece, Rome, and
Scandinavia, are usually categorized under the heading of mythology.
Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or cultures in development, are
similarly called "myths" in the anthropology of religion. The term "myth"
can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By
defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one
implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and
beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, "Mythology is often thought of as other
people's religions, and religion can be defined as mis-interpreted
mythology."
In sociology, however, the term myth has a non-pejorative meaning. There,
myth is defined as a story that is important for the group whether or not it
is objectively or provably true. Examples include the death and resurrection
of Jesus, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed
from sin and is also ostensibly a historical event. But from a mythological
outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead,
the symbolism of the death of an old "life" and the start of a new "life" is
what is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such
symbolic interpretations.
Secularism and irreligion
The terms "atheist" and "agnostic", though specifically contrary to
theistic religious teachings, do not by definition mean the opposite of
"religious". There are religions, in fact, that classify some of their
followers as agnostic, atheistic, or nontheistic. The true opposite of
"religious" is the word "irreligious". Irreligion describes an absence of
any religion; antireligion describes an active opposition or aversion toward
religions in general.
As religion became a more personal matter in Western culture, discussions of
society became more focused on political and scientific meaning, and
religious attitudes were increasingly seen as irrelevant for the needs of
the European world. On the political side, Ludwig Feuerbach recast Christian
beliefs in light of humanism, paving the way for Karl Marx's famous
characterization of religion as "the opium of the people". Meanwhile, in the
scientific community, T.H. Huxley in 1869 coined the term "agnostic," a
term—subsequently adopted by such figures as Robert Ingersoll—that, while
directly conflicting with and novel to Christian tradition, is accepted and
even embraced in some other religions. Later, Bertrand Russell told the
world Why I Am Not a Christian, which influenced several later authors to
discuss their breakaway from their own religious upbringings from Islam to
Hinduism.
Some atheists also construct parody religions, for example, the Church of
the SubGenius or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which parodies the equal time
argument employed by intelligent design Creationism. Parody religions may
also be considered a post-modern approach to religion. For instance, in
Discordianism, it may be hard to tell if even these "serious" followers are
not just taking part in an even bigger joke. This joke, in turn, may be part
of a greater path to enlightenment, and so on ad infinitum.
Criticism of religion
Religious criticism has a long history, going back at least as far as the
5th century BCE. During classical times, there were religious critics in
ancient Greece, such as Diagoras "the atheist" of Melos, and in the 1st
century BCE in Rome, with Titus Lucretius Carus's De Rerum Natura.
During the Middle Ages and continuing into the Renaissance, potential
critics of religion were persecuted and largely forced to remain silent.
There were notable critics like Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake
for disagreeing with religious authority.
In the 17th and 18th century with the Enlightenment, thinkers like David
Hume and Voltaire criticized religion.
In the 19th century, Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution led to
increased skepticism about religion. Thomas Huxley, Jeremy Bentham, Karl
Marx, Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Ingersol, and Mark Twain were noted
19th-century and early-20th-century critics. In the 20th century, Bertrand
Russell, Siegmund Freud, and others continued religious criticism.
Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor J. Stenger, and the late
Christopher Hitchens were active critics during the late 20th century and
early 21st century.
Critics consider religion to be outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful
to society, to impede the progress of science, to exert social control, and
to encourage immoral acts . A major criticism of many religions is that they
require beliefs that are irrational, unscientific, or unreasonable, because
religious beliefs and traditions lack scientific or rational foundations.
Some modern-day critics, such as Bryan Caplan, hold that religion lacks
utility in human society; they may regard religion as irrational. Nobel
Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi has spoken out against undemocratic Islamic
countries justifying "oppressive acts" in the name of Islam.