People Have Many Different Meaning Towards Religion

Religion is the belief and worship of a higher power which is in control of the universe. The most popular religions in the world today are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. All four of these religions teach peace. However, followers do not always get along with each other peacefully. All of these religions have a moral code to live by and encourage devotion and prayer.

Through history, religion has shaped civilizations in several aspects. In ancient Indian and Egyptian civilizations it was very strong shaping force in political structures, but both the religious beliefs and the resulting political system were different, just like pharaohs were different from rajas.

Zoroastrianism is the belief in one god being Ahura Mazda, the creator of all that is good and who alone is worthy of worship. Zoroastrianism became the official religion

Religion has played a very important role in society and the history of mankind for over thousands of years. Originally created by ancient peoples as a way to explain the unknown, religion has greatly evolved and spread across the globe. As new religions have formed and spread, the diversity and similarities between these new religions have also increased, especially due to their geographic locations. Two civilizations in particular with both similar and distinct religions are ancient China, and ancient Egypt. Ancient Chinese religion and ancient Egyptian religion share many things in common with each other, yet at the same time they are

Religion is one of the greatest creations of mankind. Human beings are different from any other animals because of their ability to think and to create. When man evolved to form societies or countries, when they need to understand better the world around them, religions were created naturally.

Religion has been a major focal point in any society and in any culture. Starting from the first civilizations in Sumer and Ur to the vast metropolitans of today like New York and London, religion has been around and played a key part in lives of people. Possibly two of the oldest religions in the world, Judaism and Zoroastrinism share distinct qualities that are still alive today. Both religions are practiced but Zoroastrianism is not as popular as it once was. Meanwhile, Judaism is one of the world’s largest religions. These two religions are similar in the way that they are designed and practiced throughout history.

Almost all religions around the world are based on a belief. Almost every religion have certain rules and principles that order together within a society: Many people misunderstand and misinterpret the holy texts the Bible, Quran, Torah, and others fabricate. Religion is defined as faith to a higher being who one believes has created us. It has also been used as laws through history to stop the committing of crimes. In many religions, the consequences of breaking rules and regulations of the religion are burning in the pit of hell. Religion is man-made and was created for many reasons but mainly to keep peace and justice in the world. But the words can be manipulated and used as an excuse to start wars on this planet. This caused many to believe that the world would be a better place without religion.

David Chidester defines religion as the ways of being a human person in a human place. He further goes on to describe it as “the practices and discourses that negotiate what it is to be human in person in relation to the superhuman or in relation to whatever might be treated as subhuman” (Chidester). As such religion can be said to encompass the beliefs customs and even the cultures of the people. It defines and shapes the human out view to life and how they relate to each other based on the morals and ethical guidelines outlined in the various doctrines governing the religions. Over the years, religion has been interpreted from different perspectives. Over time in history, religion was directly intertwined with the activities and the lives of the people. For instance, where the people practiced farming, they had deities or gods which were thought to control and protect the seasons which were an integral part of the farming activities. The same case applied to those who practiced pastoralism activities. In all aspects, the religion was in tandem with their activities.

The religion of Zoroastrianism is very interesting. It is interesting because even though it is not like the Christian religion, there are quite a few similarities. A man by the name of Zoroaster is the founder of this religion. Zoroaster was a Persian prophet. The teachings of Zoroaster became the guiding light of Persian Civilization (Olmstead pg 508). This would mean that even the government official like Cyrus and Darius who were great ruler in the Persian Empire embraced the religion of Zoroastrianism. Here are a few things about Zoroastrianism that compares to Christianity:

Zoroastrianism is a religion founded by a priest named Zarathustra Spitma or Zoroaster far back in the 1200BCE, with the principle belief of an almighty God or “the One” Ahura Mazda and the context of a cosmic battle between the good and evil forces.

Religion can invade, conquer, and rule masses of people far more effectively and efficiently than any empire or conqueror. This is not to spark a heated discussion about religions. Its purpose is, to say that, even though it is highly debatable whether religions are false or true, most of them serve a very basic purpose of establishing morals and values. Early religions were used as a source of power and economic growth. Even if one doesn’t believe in or agree with the teachings of any religion, history shows proof that it creates a sense of order. There are many religions in the past that have brought order and civilized conduct to large numbers of people, not through military conquest, but through the promise of reward or the fear of punishment. Religion is the glue that binds local communities into nationhood and creates common understandings and shared values that are essential to the growth of a civilization. No religion is fully formed at its start, so why did some religion play such a big role in growth of the Ancient Civilizations.

Religion can be defined as a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. It contains a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices that allow its followers to live their life a certain way. The world consists of 19 major religions, which are further subdivided into 270 larger groups. According to David Barrett et al, editor of the “World Christian Encyclopedia,” there are 34,000 separate Christian groups around the world. Just from those numbers alone, we can conclude that religion has a prevalent effect on people and society. Religion is viewed as a positive influence on an individual both psychologically and physically. Throughout history we can study the various effects that religion has on society. Studies generally provide great evidence in favor of religion having a positive effect on individuals and society as a whole.

Religion has been a powerful force in human history. Mankind has longed and searched for the answers to its purpose, the reason for being and the possibility of life after physical death. They reasoned that an afterlife would be a place of accounting and reckoning for the life they lived on earth. Religious belief systems seemed to give the answers as to how to prepare for the afterlife. Religion became the means of giving answers to those basic yet deep-seated questions of both life and death. Religion provided a format of rules and laws for conduct and treatment toward others based on the desires and wishes of a god or gods that people envisioned, imagined or invented. Religious belief systems have been a powerful force for good and bad...good in the sense that it provided a measure of individual behavior and order in society for the wellbeing of the whole, but bad in the sense that men of ambition who craved power and control over others would often use religion as a tool of manipulation and fear. A casual glance of history tells us that complete civilizations have been built, grown and maintained around elaborate religious systems, ancient Egypt being a prime example.

In every point of human history, we observe, a common scenario of religious activities is to establish peace. The way of religion to establish peace may be

They became the cornerstone of many earlier and later civilizations. Even today many countries, especially those in the Middle East, have religious leaders who work with the government to enact laws and “guide” the spiritual aspect of the lives of their citizens. Unfortunately, with such strong beliefs and convictions can come conflict. This conflict can be on a small scale, such as discrimination against those who don’t share the same beliefs to full-scale war which was the case in the first Crusades. In more recent times we have seen mass genocides of people based in part on religious beliefs such as the annihilation of the Jews during the Second World War. Today we see it played out in acts of terrorism, jihads. Religion is a powerful tool that can be used both to help and enrich the lives of people or used as justification for intolerance against others.