Religion HW

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Belief & Unbelief 1

One fact is inescapable in the study of religions: Different religions make competing and incompatible claims about the nature of God and the nature of reality. One cannot believe all the things that all religions teach without self-contradiction. Some people find this to be an enormous stumbling block. Having decided that one religion is “true,” they are reluctant to look at other religions except as examples of flawed, inaccurate, or even sinful thinking and practice.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Belief & Unbelief 2

Claiming the unique truth of one’s religious traditions (or even one’s personal religious beliefs) is known as a confessional or believer’s perspective. Such a perspective is not incompatible with learning about other religions. Whatever one may think about the value of other religions, one can study them as an exercise in cross-cultural understanding. Applying this same openness to the study of one’s own tradition can even reveal it in a new light without undermining belief in or commitment to that tradition.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion E. B. Tylor

In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists who were studying other cultures often asked themselves about the origins of religion. E. B. Tylor offered one answer that was quite influential in its day. Tylor proposed that religion came about when people had dreams about dead friends and relatives and became convinced that these people somehow lived on in another form, in the spirit world. Gradually, the idea that people had spirits grew to include the idea that all things (trees, stones, the wind) had spirits as well.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Emile Durkheim

Others saw the function of religion in a more positive way, one that did not anticipate that it would cease to be of use to “modern” people. Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, was one thinker for whom religion had an enduring value. For Durkheim, the value of religion was social. He postulated that when people thought they were worshiping gods, God, or the universe, they were really worshiping themselves, their own social unit and its coherence.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Functionalism

Many thinkers have weighed in on the question “why religion?” Typically they claim that religions exist all over the world because human beings, wherever you find them, have the same basic needs, and they create religions to fill these needs. In other words, religion has specific functions, or ways in which it is useful. To take a functionalist view of religion is not necessarily to be an atheist; one can believe both that God actually exists, and that humans envision God and relate to God in ways determined by their psychological and social needs.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Karl Marx 1

Frazer and Freud both believed that religion was not based on anything real, and would gradually end as people learned to live without the magical and psychological props of religion. Another theorist who expected religion to pass away was Karl Marx. Marx rather famously declared that religion was “the opiate of the masses,” a tool to keep working-class people in their place.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Karl Marx 2

According to Marx, religion was used to convince the lower classes that God ordained their social station, and to keep them from rebelling against their lot in life by encouraging them to concentrate on going to heaven in the next life. Once working-class people were given opportunities in this life, Marx maintained, they would have no more use for religion, which would then “wither away.”

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Rudolf Otto

The German theologian Rudolf Otto was unwilling to reduce religion to a non-religious function, whether scientific, psychological, political, or social. He saw religions as a response to what is an essentially religious experience. He called this experience mysterium tremendum et fascinans: the mystery that causes trembling and fascination. These experiences of awe and fascination come to us unbidden, Otto argued, and human religions are but an effort to understand and make sense of them.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Sigmund Freud

The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, found the origins of religion in psychological needs that developed through the family dynamics inherent in the simple process of growing up. Basically, Freud said that children regard their parents as authority figures who, when they are pleased, will respond by protecting and caring for the child. When these children grow to be adults, in an effort to continue feeling safe in the universe, they project this childlike relationship with a protecting and judging parent outward onto the universe and call it God.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Sir James George Frazer

Tylor described this early vision of a spirit-filled universe as animism, and saw it as the first stage in a religious evolution that progressed through ancestor reverence to polytheism and finally reached its pinnacle in monotheism. Some of Tylor’s peers, such as James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough, thought religion was destined to die. Frazer believed religion was simply a primitive form of science, a way people tried to make sense of the world and influence events. Once they were availed of “real” science and technology, Frazer said, religion would fade away.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Summary: Studying Religion

You have learned:

• Functionalist theories state that religion exists because it fills certain social and psychological functions.

• Drawing on the work of anthropologist E. B. Tylor, animism is often described as the earliest form of human religion.

• In the early twentieth century, thinkers like Sir James George Frazer, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx thought religion was doomed to die as the needs that originally gave rise to religion would be filled in other ways.

• Other thinkers, such as Emile Durkheim and Rudolf Otto saw religion as a more permanent part of the human experience.

• Many different disciplines are part of the study of religion, and one can study the world’s religions without giving up one’s personal faith.

• Understanding the beliefs and practices of the world’s religions helps to increase cross-cultural understandings.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion The Religious Quest

The study of religion is also valuable in helping one to answer one’s own religious questions. Until you know more than one religion, it could be said that you don’t really know any. You may know a religion, but still lack insight into the overall phenomenon of religion. Exposure to a variety of religions can enhance an appreciation for one’s own religion. It can also make available spiritual and intellectual resources that can be incorporated into one’s own developing religious quest.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Ways to Study Religion

This overview of theories about the origin and purpose of religions indicates the study of religion can be approached in a multiplicity of ways. Religion can be (and has been) studied from a wide variety of academic perspectives including psychology, sociology, anthropology, literary criticism, art history, and philosophy, as well as by disciplines—such as the history of religions, comparative religions, and theology—that are devoted specifically to religion (whether one religion in particular or all religions cross-culturally).

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Why Is There Religion?

Those who, like atheists and agnostics, take a more skeptical view toward the existence of God are confronted by an obvious question: Why is there religion? If there is no sacred reality, why do so many people all over the world behave as though there were, worshiping deities, writing scriptures, enacting rituals, and building temples? Even those who believe there is a sacred reality may feel compelled to explain why human beings desire to interact with the divine realm, and to do so in the specific ways that characterize the practice of religion worldwide.

Revealing World Religions Studying Religion Why Study Religion?

Particularly at this stage in history, it is essential to have a basic understanding of the world’s religions. Our personal interactions with people of different religious traditions and our public interactions with other nations are deeply inflected by our differing religious beliefs, values, and practices. Being aware of the basic features of other religions will enrich our understanding of other people, cultures, and nations, helping us to discuss religious questions—and the political questions that often flow from them—from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.