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Theories Theories

Theories - PowerPoint Presentation

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Theories - PPT Presentation

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

sacred religion social ritual religion sacred ritual social myth ideas belief religious history experience human school key vocabulary summary

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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: