JOURNAL Dimensions of religion How do you think it happened Ancient theories Herodotus 5 th C BCE Cicero 3 rd C BCE Judaism and Christianity so different Explorers and Missionaries ID: 602734
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Slide1
Theories
JOURNAL: Dimensions of religion: How do you think it happened?Slide2
Ancient theories: Herodotus (5th C BCE) Cicero (3rd
C BCE)
Judaism and Christianity: so different?Explorers and MissionariesReformationEnlightenmentDeism (Natural Religion)RomanticismMax Muller 1823-1900
Why?Slide3
A scientific endeavor:It was possible to find the root impulse or cause of religion everywhere
Inquiry, search far back in time to discover the earliest religious ideas and practices of the human race, trace it onward and upward to the present.
Model of the Natural SciencesArchaeology, history, language, mythology and ethnology (Tylor) and anthropologyReligious StudiesSlide4
Myths/storiesRitualsDoctrines
Ethics
CommunityEmotion/Experience (The Sacred)
Essential components (Substantive definition)Slide5
Myth and Ritual SchoolSlide6
Primitive Culture 1871British, self educated, agnostic religious skeptic
Born Quaker
Parents died when he was a young man. TuberculosisTraveled to Central America Became a reader and professor at Oxford.
E.B. Tylor 1832-1917Slide7
Intellectual IndividualismSimilarities are not coincidental but a result of the uniformity of the human mind Give me your reaction to this.
Social evolution (The Ascent of Man)
Variations are evidence of a difference in degree or a change in the level of developmentDoctrine of SurvivalsIdeas no longer credible that linger from an earlier more primitive time in societyAssociation of Ideas: Magic, Religion
Myths originate from the process of logically associating ideas.
Key IdeasSlide8
Ethnography: scientific analysis of an individual society, culture or racial group in all of its many component parts. Animism:
Belief in living personal powers behind all things
Pantheism: God is synonymous with the universePanentheism: God contains the universe
Religion: Belief in Spiritual Beings
VocabularySlide9
Are religion and culture originally rooted in myth or in ritual? Belief or in practice? Society or the Individual?
Max Muller (1823-1900)
Myth was poetic statements about the worldLater cultures misunderstood them as meaningful and symbolic languageSlide10
Myths are: Philosophical attempts to explain and understand the worldStudied as an interesting product of the human mind
Religion (and myth) originated in the experience of seeing the dead in dreams.
Then: explained in beliefs and myths of spirits and souls.Emphasized an evolutionary view of human social development (survivals)
E.B.
Tylor: SummaryOffer explanations for the world around us. Experience followed by belief, myth and ritual.Slide11
Chicken or the egg?
Myth is a remnant (survival) of ritual activity
Ritual is the original source of most of the expressive forms of cultural life
Ritual is unlikely to change
Sir James Frazer 1854-1941Builds on Tylor, but sees Ritual as the building block of religionSlide12
Psychoanalysis SchoolSlide13
Rooted in the myth and ritual schoolUnconscious forces shaping social behavior including ritual. (Smith)
“real” purposes of ritual were different at times even from what the participants thought.Slide14
Austria, Jewish but a natural atheist Lived in Vienna
Studied ideas like ambivalence, repression, neurosis, unconscious.
Developed the field of psychoanalysis. Totem and Taboo 1913, Future of an Illusion 1927 and Moses and Monotheism, 1938
Sigmund Freud
1856-1939Slide15
Totem and TabooIntellectual Evolution Psychic Ambivalence
Future of an Illusion
BeliefIllusion vs. delusionReligion is…..Key IdeasSlide16
Reductionist: Reducing a complex system to a single ideaPsychoanalysis: Science of the mindIllusion: belief in something we
want
to be trueDelusion: belief in something we know to be falseNeurosis: illness of the mind related to the subconsciousVocabularySlide17
Buried levels of meaning: repression, the unconscious and psychoanalysisReligious observances (rituals) are the acting out of obsessive neurotic impulses
Taboos bring about ritual since it attempts to appease repressed desires.
Religion is individualistic
Sigmund Freud Summary
Religion serves to provide humans with emotional coddling Slide18
Sociological SchoolSlide19
FranceJewish FatherAgnostic
Father of “Sociology”
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life” (1912)Emile Durkheim (1858-1917Slide20
The nature of society is the most suitable and promising subject of systematic investigationAll social facts should be investigated by purely objective scientific methods
Belief is a form of social practice
Sacred as a living, social realityElementary Forms:Key IdeasSlide21
Animism: the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe OR the attribute of soul given to inanimate objectsNaturalism: doctrine that all religious truth is derived from a study of natural processes and not from revelation.
Totemism: a system of belief in which each human is thought to have a spiritual connection or a kinship with another physical being or object
VocabularySlide22
Priority to the social dimension
A way of organizing groups of individuals.
Distinction between sacred & profane is at the root of all religion
Belief: expresses the nature of sacred things
Ritual: rules of conduct governing how people should act in the presence of the sacredReligion arose in activities that cemented the bonds of communityEmile Durkheim SummaryServes the function of ensuring the priority of communal identification and provide social bonding.Slide23
German philosopher
Founded Communism.
Class struggle is the primary mover of history,
Religion is a social construct developed to keep the masses in check
Opium of the People, the heart of a heartless worldKarl Marx (1818-1883)Slide24
Materialism : Social institution dependent upon the material and economic realties All religions operate this way, beliefs are irrelevantSuffering: Economic Freedom
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering
Liberation TheologyAdvocated the abolition of religionKey IdeasSlide25
Religion is irrational and a delusionReligion negates all that is dignified in a human being by rendering them servile and more amenable to accepting the status quo.
Religion is hypocritical. Although it might profess valuable principles, it sides with the oppressors.
Religion does give hope, but it is a false hope
Karl Marx Summary
Religion is the opiate of the masses, providing an escape to the suffering of reailty. It is meant to create illusory fantasies for the poor. Slide26
German,
Humanist
Well educated, a cerebral childhood. Asexual marriage, prone to anxiety attacks after death of fathemThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber (1864-1920)Slide27
Non-reductionistInterweaving of economics and societyProsperity Gospel:
Wealth and success are a sign of election
Inner-worldly asceticismPractice frugality in the worldReligious LeadersVariable ethicsTheodicy and SoteriologyGenerates variety
Key IdeasSlide28
Ideal Types: Opposite of generalization. Includes purposeful exaggeration Theodicy: Defense of God (Why he allows bad things to occur)
Soteriology: Study of teachings on salvation
VocabularySlide29
Strong anti-reductionist approach. Religion isn’t “just..”
Religion developed through an influence of social institutions on the ordering of society, especially economics
Ethics is a variable to be confronted at all times and in all places when studying religion, especially in its two problematic circumstances, Theodicy and Soteriology.
Religious trends are more an indication of cultural and historical changes than evolutionary progression
Max WeberReligion is a patterning of social relationships around a belief in supernatural powers, creating ethical considerations . Slide30
Phenomenology SchoolSlide31
Places myth before ritual
Rejects Myth and Ritual school as reductionist
Religious experience is real and irreducible
Exploration of the components of religion as “sacred” or “holy”
Origins weren’t as importantThe history of a religion (or ritual or myth) doesn’t tell us what a religious experience ultimately is Didn’t use an evolutionary frameworkMust look at underlying patterns Comparative in natureSlide32
RomaniaStudied and taught in Western Europe,
Ended in the University of Chicago
History of Religions. Humanistic approach: Religion must always be explained on its own terms. The Sacred and the Profane, 1907-1986,
Mircea
Eliade 1907-1986Slide33
Autonomy of religion. Combination of History and PhenomenologyAxis Mundi:
Religion is a total response of orientation towards Ultimate Reality
Religion is that which is wholly otherPatterns in Comparative Religion:Symbols, myths, modalitiesMyth of the Eternal returnNostalgia and the terror of history
Key IdeasSlide34
Hierophany: The appearance of the Sacred in the ProfanePhenomenology: study and analysis of things through observation
Axis Mundi: a sacred center
Imago Mundi: representation of the cosmos on earthTheophany: Appearance of God in a symbolVocabularySlide35
Minimize importance of ritual
Myth is the language of the sacred…
where we can experience
hierophany
Bring back myth and symbolMore stable and unlikely to changeTells a sacred story about the actions of godsExplains how things came aboutRituals are reenactments of this. Allows participant to identify the present with the pastRitual is dependent on mythAcknowledges that often you cannot separate one from the otherMircea Eliade SummaryReligion helps people make sense of the world through symbols and myths; to provide contact with the sacred, reenactment, history.Slide36
Is the function of religion to: to offer “scientific” explanations or
bind a community together or
to provide humans with emotional stability (coddling?) or to connect to the Other (The Sacred/Holy)?
How (and why) did it all start? Slide37
After having completed the course, reflect back on the essentialist, functionalist and contemporary theories of the origin of religion, Which theory(ies) best explain and support your understanding and interpretation of the purpose and function of religious experience and sacred traditions? Give evidence (examples) to support your argument.
Argument paper that defends a theory and definition of religion using sacred traditions to
support your claims 4 page essay
Signature AssignmentSlide38
Unit 1: Theories
Essentialist and Functionalist
Unit 2: Appearance of the Sacred:
Hierophany
Persons, objects, spaceUnit 3: Language of the SacredMyths, stories, scripture, visual, musicUnit 4: Sacred Time/TraditionsRites of passage, holidaysUnit 5: Sacred JourneyPilgrimageReview: