intro
1. Religion today is a common denominator in world politics (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism) which is why it is all the more important to understand it correctly.
2. People confuse religion with the easy stereotype of ignorant people that believe the world was created in seven days and Adam and Eve. In other words, they confuse the whole of religion with "religious narratives."
3. A misconception is to blame religion for the ills of the world. A silly as blaming the world itself for world history. It's US HUMANS who benefit from religion, otherwise it would not exist.
4. Another misconception is that religion is "oppressive," but what is exactly oppressive about? If religion is a cultural product, then it has to come with all the goods and evils of culture.
click here for theories of religion,
we need to understand why religions perdure after 150,000 years of human existence and still provide important social cohesion.
present facts:
there are 2.2 billion christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), 500 million buddhists (7%), 14 million jews and an estimated 58 million practicing others faiths like, jainism, sikhism, taoism, etc,
1. religions are cultural systems of beliefs behaviors and practices: they include moral rules, holy narratives, holy texts, holy places, holy martyrs, all of which relate to supernatural, transcendental and spiritual beliefs and practices, worldviews, prophecies, codified morals and devout human groups dealing with godly, the supernatural, the transcendental, the spiritual REALM.
religions exhibit the following:
a) cosmology, the PAST (creation of the universe), the NOW and the FUTURE (teleology),
b) rituals include worship, commemorations, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, worship, holy music, holy art, devout public service, etc.
c) canonic texts, (bible, koran, upanishads, baghavad gita, etc)
d) prophets (Christ, Buddha, Mohamed, Confucius, Zarathustra),
2. religions provide viable symbols, which explain the origin and the meaning of life, the universe, human finitude, and our purpose on this earth,
what would we be without the richness of our cultures' symbols?
evolution
3. religions' origins hark back to paleolithic and neolithic rituals with the dead (keep in mind that non-human animals display only a casual interest in the dead).
why did homo sapiens developed specific behaviors toward the dead? for sure not out of a mushroom induced orgiastic ritual.
why do we as humans need the afterlife? because human life is not enough to explain the finitude of human life.
4. quite early, homo sapiens develop specific religious symbols across cultures. how? homo sapiens anchored supernatural entities through representational art and rituals. once they are translated into material form, supernatural concepts become easier to communicate and understand.
moral precepts are simply explained, what's right is right because God commands it!
this is a didactic feat of social and moral evolution! the simplicity and effectiveness of religions absorbing moral behaviors cannot be underestimated from the anthropological standpoint.
5. then about 10,000 years ago, religion becomes a civilizing engine, by establishing theocracies with defined priesthood classes, along with kings and emperors.
virtually all state societies from around the world have founded political power through divine authority. in spite of all the noise, secularism cannot properly succeed without a amicable relationship with religion (the quintessential example is the forced secularization of the soviet union under communism in the 20th century. it didn't work).
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