Religion
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“”…a prominent Cambridge theologian, turned to me and said: ‘That is what makes anthropology so fascinating and so difficult too. You have to explain how people can believe such nonsense’.
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| —Dr. Pascal Boyer, commenting on religions |
A religion is a systematic set of beliefs, rituals and codifications of behaviour that revolve around a particular group's worldview, and that are usually rooted in some supernatural views about the world at large and humanity's place in the world.
To the extent that the system of beliefs and rules are codified, they are called dogma; religions vary in how much dogma they include and how strictly they define it and enforce it. Although religious mythology may have some basis in historical events, religious beliefs tend to arise from other ways of knowing. As a result, the supernatural aspects of religious belief usually can't be distinguished from what is usually termed superstition.
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Definition and identification
Like "beauty" and "porn", it is very easy to tell a mainstream religion is a religion - the term fails, however, as you move away from the obvious.
By academic definition, a collection of ideas and rituals is a religions when the have the following features:
- Religions are generally shared social systems. A solitary practitioner of a set of beliefes he or she made up, is generally not considered part of a religion.
- Religions have mythologies, usually containing major supernatural themes. (Most believers of any particular tradition tend to see their own mythology as "distinct" and "unique" because they are literally true, whilst all other mythologies are just myths. Hinduism is a specific exception to this rule.)
- Religions address a person's path in life (rites of passage), including rites of marriage, coming of age, and funerary rites. Most religions have some form of rite for those who wish to follow the religion more intimately (including priests, healers, monks, nuns, shamans, etc.)
- Religions explore and attempt to answer life's mysterious questions (What happens before life and after death? What is the meaning of life? Where do lost socks go?)
- Religions generally attempt to explanation about the beginning and ending of the world, even if their answer is "no one knows" or "look to science for answers".
- Religions, being social, provide guidelines for morality or ethics and how to best live in the world. These views are usually supported by the mythology and may be recorded as part of the dogma.
- Beyond the rites of life, religions generally have other ritual acts of worship, especially social ones.
- Taboos; a proscribed list of things that must not be done or else very bad things will happen.
Other traits are common to religions, but are not definitive.
- A requirement to have faith in the religion's ideals, mythology (as "truth"), and the legitimacy of the religion as source for the dogma.
- Festivals that take place at certain times of the year, marking both historical and mythological aspects of the religion.
To what extent each religion has the above features varies widely. Some religions are so bereft of ritual and dogma that they can be called philosophies.
History of religion
A major theory of the development of religion is that the concept of "supernatural" powers (gods) socially "evolved" as a people began to speculate about the world around them, and started to say "why and how" to that natural world. Simplistic gods were believed to be in the human mindset roughly 10,000 years ago.
The first sort of "religion" that most Westerners would recognize as such likely came into being between 4000 and 2500 BCE. These religions provided solutions to how to live with others and to survive as a people and how to understand and explore the natural world, which might have been suited to the times, but became hallowed and lived on past their own obsolescence.
It is probable that at least some pagans recognized the anthropogenic nature of their gods, since practitioners of these religions are known to have deified a number of people (e.g., the Roman imperial cult). Ansgar, an archbishop of Hamburg who also carried out missions to Sweden, reported that a goði there, being opposed to Christianity, had told the locals that if they needed another god they should deify one of their dead kings instead of adopting Christianity.
Modern approaches
For the last thousand years, religious life in the West has been dominated by the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the latter two claiming the most followers. These religions have traditionally demanded that their adherents form a tight and at least somewhat homogeneous bloc, professing or following a non-negotiable set of principles handed down by a prophet or the magisterium.
When the Enlightenment came along and the old theological basis of Christianity came under more rigorous questioning, many within the church responded by emphasizing its social role of caring for the needy and aiming to better the world. This eventually gave rise to the tradition of the Social Gospel, which is still influential today in the mainline Protestant traditions.
More recently, with the continued decline of the organized form of the Abrahamic religions, many fairly non-religious people have again adopted a more individualistic approach to life philosophy, assembling a "personal philosophy" that is a grab-bag of the religious, philosophical, and moral concepts that they think or feel works well for them. Others cobble together more explicitly religious ideas and practices along the same lines; this is called variously neopaganism or cafeteria Christianity depending on the source of the ideas.
A minority, by contrast, have chosen to insert their heads where the sun don't shine and attempt to ignore this decline, still insisting that everyone accept every teaching of their religion as absolutely true. These people are known as fundamentalists.
Religion and science
Historically, religions, especially Islam and Christianity, have asserted control over people, wealth and cultural memes. As science has improved its explanations of reality, the two bodies have experienced friction.
The histories of both Christianity and Islam have included moments where they have been the developers of new thought, science and knowledge, and conversely, there are many times when they have attempted to severely suppress science, philosophy, and free thinking.
Throughout the rest of the world, religions have generally encouraged naturalistic explorations and explanations, finding successful ways to integrate the two, or accept them as different answers for the same questions. It is difficult for most who grow up in a Western Abrahamic tradition to imagine a religion which does not, at some level, rely on supernatural or miraculous explanations.
Examples of science-friendly attitudes within religion
- In the Middle Ages, the Muslim world had a mini-renaissance due to their open-mindedness towards science.
- In the modern era, many Christian denominations accept fully modern science and its ramifications. See NOMA.
- The Irenaean theodicy to explain the existence of evil in the world is dependent upon the 'evolution' (his words) of humans. It is, perhaps, interesting to note that he was writing in 160 CE.
- The Roman Catholic Church's acceptance of a form of evolution - though with Adam and Eve involved somewhere in the fall.
- The Bahai Faith has a tenet expressly concerning the "Unity between science and religion". They do not go so far as to claim they are the same thing, but insist one is worthless without the other. According to Baha'is, when science and religion irreconcilably disagree, science wins by default.
Examples of anti-science attitudes within religion
- Every religion that teaches people to trust a holy book over their own eyes (e.g., creationists who trust Genesis more than chemical kinetics or the fossil record).
- The Roman Catholic Church's treatment of Galileo.
- The opposition to Darwin's theory of evolution by fundamentalists among his contemporaries, and on down to modern times.
See also
- First Great Awakening
- State Religion
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- Fun:Starting a new religion
- Neopaganism