world religions - bethany...
TRANSCRIPT
World Religions
Part 1: Introduction
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Slide 1
World Religions
Part 1: Introduction
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Slide 2
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Slide 3
Why Study World Religions?
Understanding Our World
*Includes followers of African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American Religions and Australian aboriginal religions.** Includes Bahai’s, Jains, Sikhs, Shintoists, Taoists, followers of Tenrikyo, Wiccans, Zoroastrians and many other faiths.Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.
Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Global Religious Landscape, December 2012
http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/
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Slide 4
Why Study World Religions?
Understanding Our History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux/
Painting from Lascaux caves, near
Montignac, France
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Slide 5
Why Study World Religions?
Understanding Our Neighbor
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
Romans 13:8 (ESV); see also 1 Corinthians 13:1-7
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Slide 6
Why Study World Religions?
Understanding Our Ourselves
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 (ESV), see also 1 Corinthians 13:8-11
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Slide 7
What Is Religion?
Discussion
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Slide 8
What Is Religion?
From the Latin, religare, meaning "to bind fast", carrying the notion of
"place an obligation on," or "bond between humans and gods."
Origin
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Slide 9
What Is Religion?
“…the recognition of all duties as divine commands….”
Immanuel Kant (1788)
Critique of Practical Reason, (trans. T. Abbot, 226)
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
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Slide 10
What Is Religion?
“There's naught, no doubt, so much the
spirit calms as rum and true religion.”
Lord Byron (1788)
Don Juan, Canto II, Stanza 34
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron
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Slide 11
What Is Religion?
“Religion is the dream of the human mind.”
Ludwig Fueuerbach (1843)
The Essence of Christianity , 10 (trans. M.Evans, 1854)
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Feuerbach
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Slide 12
What Is Religion?
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless world, and the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Karl Marx (1843)
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction (trans. J. O’Malley, 1970)
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
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Slide 13
What Is Religion?
“A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to
sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden— beliefs and
practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church,
all those who adhere to them.”
Émile Durkheim (1912)
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 47 (trans. J. Swain, 1915)
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Durkheim
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Slide 14
What Is Religion?
“Religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis
of humanity; like the obsessional neuroses of
children, it arose out of the Oedipus Complex, out of the
relation to the father.”
Sigmund Freud (1927)
The Future of an Illusion, 43 (trans. J. Strachey, 1961)
Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
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Slide 15
What Is Religion?
Collections of beliefs, practices and people that seek to explain the transcendence of
human experience.
Our Definition
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Slide 16
Windows into Religion
Religion
Anthropology
Philosophy
PsychologySociology
History
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Slide 17
Windows into Religion
Anthropology of Religion
The study of religion as a cultural phenomenon that
spans all of human time and geography
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Slide 18
Windows into Religion
Anthropology of Religion
• Franz Boas (1858–1942) Cultural relativism, in opposition to racial determinism and western supremacy. A German-born rigorous opponent of Nazi racial doctrines
• Clifford Geertz (1926– 2006) “Thick descriptions” of meanings behind cultural symbols; religion as patterns of cultural meaning
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Slide 19
Windows into Religion
Philosophy of Religion
The study of the rational basis and concepts that inform religious belief
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Slide 20
Windows into ReligionPhilosophy of Religion
• Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) Regarded as the leader of the “Cambridge Platonists”, he is credited with first using the English phrase “philosophy of religion” as he defends the rational basis of theism and other religious truth claims.
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) Argues that synthetic knowledge can only be based upon experience, so we cannot ultimately know God, since by definition He exists outside of our experience. Religious truth therefore rests on Practical Reason which, by human consensus, provides ethical direction to our lives.
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Slide 21
Windows into Religion
Psychology of Religion
The study of religion as a basis for self-understanding
and human behavior
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Slide 22
Windows into ReligionPsychology of Religion
• William James (1842–1910) His Varieties of Religious Experience categorizes personal religious experience as either “healthy-minded” or “sick-souled”, depending upon the ability of these experiences to help the person get past the evil in the world and focus upon the good.
• Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) His Idea of the Holy argues that religion, at root, is a non-rational, fundamentally emotional reaction to the numinous, something beyond perception which both fascinates and terrifies us.
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Slide 23
Windows into Religion
Sociology of Religion
The study of how religion influences social institutions,
beliefs and behavior
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Slide 24
Windows into ReligionSociology of Religion
• Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life examines religion as a social force that binds and unites a culture.
• Max Weber (1864–1920) His Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues that Calvinist beliefs and ethics contributed heavily to the development of capitalism.
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Slide 25
Windows into Religion
History of Religion
The study of how religion developed over the centuries throughout various cultures
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Slide 26
Windows into ReligionHistory of Religion
• David Hume (1711–1776) His Natural History of Religion argues that religion began as primitive anthropomorphic interpretations of natural events that developed over time into more advanced monotheism.
• Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Sees religion as a series of hierphonies; i. e., appearances of the sacred that give shape and meaning to life.
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Slide 27
Reflection Question #1
Is Biblical Christianity a religion? Why or why not?
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