Summary: The Reproductionist Interpretation Of Religion

The common ground of religions in the world is that they claim the existence of god/gods who holds the power beyond human ability. Each religion explains its existence in their own unique ways and implement it to people’s lifestyle. The film, 330 Million Gods, seeks to understand the Hinduism way of explanation. This documentary mainly focuses on the Hindu concept of divine, religious practices, and the stages of life. Also, the documentary illustrates how Indian lifestyle blends into its religion in the big cities – city of Benares and rural areas – village of Bhith Bhagwanpur. The most interesting points of this film presents to me are the idea of many gods with different sets of ability, how the Hindus practice the religion, and the concept

Religion is that which grows out of, and gives expression to, experience of the holy in its various aspects. (Rudolf Otto)

1. Which early theorist of religion said the following: “The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true sun”?

When dwelling into the explorations about science and religion, one can find it quite amusing. "If science and religion are to continue to coexist it seems opposed to the conditions of modern thought to admit that this result can be brought about by the so-called

Religion is constructed on faith and belief of an individual even though it is the individual choice to follow it or not. It has stirred a lot of debates for years; those who are trying to prove that God exists throughout history and follow to modern day. While, those who are atheist are trying to prove their point of God does not exist. There are still more and more theories and debate over the subject of religious view. It is a matter of theism versus atheism; new and old philosophers have joined the debate and all with different sides to another philosopher’s theory or view on the matter. In this paper, I will attempt to illustrate the reasons given by Louis Pojman of why religion is good or bad, as well as evaluating Bertrand Russell argument about religion. This can define the meaning of life and the creation of life as we know it. It can change views or switch sides for there is always another explanation to exactly what religion is all about and having a superior ruler that created all.

What he fails to mention is the purpose of the so called rituals of worship. Every religion entails some methods of worship but their purpose is to express reverence, praise and adoration for the creator and to get solace and comfort in it. People choose religion not to get ‘imprisoned’ by its teachings but to be ‘guided’ by its teachings and to live a meaningful life by following something they believe in.

However, before exploring this idea, I must introduce William James’ conception of religion to find these disposed and amenable persons. In Varieties, James defines religion as,“the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider divine” (James, 32). In other words, religion is

James taught at several universities including both Brown and Yale where he often had arguments and lengthy discussions with his students about religion. In his introductory comments, he clearly states that a lot of his freethinking students did not believe one should believe in religion if it cannot be rationally proven. This was contradictory to his thoughts and consequently wrote the paper in order to try sway his students view.

It has become an enforced idea that has become an important factor when it concern's a person morality, work ethic, personality, perception and many more qualities. He explained that there is no," such thing as religion "so it can't be identified as good nor bad, meaning that religion itself can be classified as an ideal or an persuasive method. It was established to have a hold on one's mind or to ensure they follow a certain code of morals or practices used to worship deities so the tradition can be passed down to future generations. He also explained that religion can be interpreted in two different ways, that it involves belief in gods or in spiritual beings or an ideal that pertains to practices that involves certain gods. When it concerns other religion we tend to compare them with the main practices while being dismissive to the idea that there are other religious practices out there. It also stated that during the eighteenth-century, anything you did or thought of concerning the physical or spiritual your ideas were "framed against the background of a set of assumptions that were religious" whereas in the nineteenth-century your ideas can either be credited using an spiritual or scientific

general theory and also that he speaks of religion as an illusion; a fantasy structure from

Again, he does not disprove or prove any certain religion, but only makes a statement. By stating that the belief of a God or any god is proved through one’s own experience, we get to see his thoughts. William James allows people to believe what they want in this statement since religious experience is person to person. Another quote where this is shown is in his book “The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”. Here he states ,” It does , indeed, depend on you the Liver.” This was in response to whether life was worth living or not, and this quote can prove his thoughts. LIke previously stated, he believed that religion is based on personal experience and correlates to this. This is because it also shows that in his belief, life will only be worth living if you think it is.

Finally, James further assesses the positive value of religion just like Jung. However, he evaluates religion in terms of the significance of religious experiences rather than in terms of self-realization. Thus, James uses both a descriptive and an explanatory approach to explain religion’s role in the human consciousness. He emphasizes that mental states of religious experiences can be explained biologically. For instance, he suggests that religious visions are actually epileptic seizures (Kanaris, Psychological and Phenomenological Approaches Final, 19).This kind of emphasis is explanatory because it concerns the origin of a psychological phenomenon. Furthermore, James’s descriptive approach involves dividing mythical states into 2 types:

Sigmund Freud was a psychologist known as the ‘father of psychoanalysis’ who believed that our sense of moral understanding is a result of the conditioning of a growing being.

What is the relationship between religion and science? In his book, Consilience, Edward O. Wilson aims to find a unified theory of knowledge. Consilence also seeks to show how science is superior to and can replace religion. In this paper, I intend to show how Wilson understands this relationship and science as well as how. as well as show John Stuart Mill would agree or disagree with Wilson.

As long as humans have walked the Earth, we have sought out answers. Answers for questions like: "Why are we here? Where do we go when we die? Where did we come from? and What's that?" How different people answered these questions is important to study because it shows us the spiritual side of human nature. Especially now, a time of conflict between Islam and Western Civilization, it is important to look back and trace the evolution of religion. To see where we started and perhaps, gain some perspective into what is happening now and what may happen in the future.