Theories On The Existence Of Religion

As time has progressed, religious scrutiny has expanded. Systems of faith are often written off as fruitless, but religion holds strong purposes. Cultures have religion to explain surroundings, unite individuals, and provide hope.

In the study of religion, one can quickly discern that there are two major differentiations between the anthropological definition of religion, and that of religion in the context of belief systems. Religion, in the context of anthropology, can often be related to social institutions. On the other hand, religion in the context of belief systems indicate faith in something or someone...such as oneself, a god, or object. As identified by scholar Clifford Geertz, the anthropological definition of religion is “a system of symbols which acts to (1) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (2) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (3) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality

Most of the human ‘Homo sapiens’ is born into a religion. That religion could be Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or Atheism, etc, a set of beliefs which someone inherits from his family, and till the death, that man will likely stay with his or her religion because almost every human has tendency to be religious. On the other hand, the reality of the religion does not matter to him unless someone conducts any investigation to get to the religious truth. In the essay ‘Homo religiosus,’ Karen Armstrong says that, today’s religious followers accept the religion into which they were born, without doing the hard work required. This means that someone follows his ancestor’s religion from the beginning for his life and he or she is not able to prove his ancestors were wrong because he or she has faith in his own religion. Faith is the main concept of the religion because people have deep faith in their own religion. In addition, faith is nothing but mere fantasy and faith has no basis in reality. Therefore, people have no ability to conduct investigations to find out the religious truth. In addition, elements and places of religion vary from religion to religion. Religion is one of the most prehistoric institutions which have been noticed to practice in any society past and present even in the ancient world where cave paintings were popular. Institutions, like politics and entertainments, have been greatly influenced by the religious faith. The truth of religion might give

For purpose of this essay, religion will be defined as a collection of institutional beliefs and customs concerning humanity and the purpose of the universe [1]. Key beliefs within religion that will be explored, as well as there relation to reason, are:

“Religious belief evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness, but their essential strength” these words spoken by Edward Osborne Wilson an American Biologist speaks volume in our daily lives, George Lucas in his science fiction film Star Wars Episode 1V: A New Hope, explores the theme of religion. Religion means to have faith in something. It explains the things we are unable to see. To find true religion, we must have “ Force” and believe.

The issue of the emergence of religion is a very tense issue. The very nature of what constitutes a religion is undefined. Furthermore, archeological evidence alone doesn’t give full insights into religious practices.

In this essay I will be looking at the theories of Edward Burnett Tylor and Émile Durkheim, and comparing them to see which theory I think gives a better explanation about what religion is, or whether religion is actually definable. On the one hand we have Tylor’s theory that tells us that religion is belief in spiritual beings and that religion is just a step on the way to reaching full evolutionary potential. Durkheim’s theory, however, says that religion is very much a social aspect of life, and something can only be religious or “sacred” if it is something public (Durkheim 1965:52). Ultimately these theories do not give us an outright explanation about what ‘religion’ is, but there are aspects of the theory that can be used to gain an understanding or idea.

Religion has existed for countless centuries. Christianity is one of the major religions in this world, which had people be criticized, battle in wars, and killed for, but it still survived to this day. The purpose of this paper is to study the source of the religion, recognize the teachings, observe its spread throughout the world, and to identify how it stands among people today. Approaching this paper by a factual report I will explain these major points and why we need to know about this religion and other religions that existed before our generation.

Religion Religion is a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred. Religiosity is the importance of religion in a person’s life. In scene one, Alicia’s father told her to “Pray, and pray hard and God will give you a miracle. God is good and you can always depend on him!” Christianity, the religion in this case, provides purpose and meaning in the sense that praying and having faith in God is believed to bring forth results.

Talal Asad published Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz in 1983. The article focuses on redefining Geertz concept of religion. More importantly, Asad explores the importance of power in religion. Talal's views were simple, Geertz formula was too simple to accommodate different cultures. With this in mind, Zande divination is a notion that explains unfortunate events. The concept of witchcraft supplies the missing link and inexplicable situations lead to rituals, revenge, and oracles. According to Asad (1983: 243), "It was not the mind that moved spontaneously to religious truth, but power that imposed the conditions for experiencing that truth." Agreeing with this, Zande does not profess to understand witchcraft,

Over the course of history, religion has always been an aspect of culture. Looking at religion followers many believe in the statement,” In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth “(Genesis 1:1, NIV Bible). For many years’ people were confident in the bible fact, logic and evidence. In 1859 when the Publishing of Origin of Species by Darwin that arouse the debate on creationism vs. evolution began. For many years all that people knew was religion and only the evidence told in church. “Only by looking back to our origins can we see the common root of both our spiritual and scientific impulses in the ancient universe of myth” (Scott D. Sampson Sampson106).

In the following pages I will discuss this metaphor, as well as Rudolf Otto and his theories on the creation of religion, Peter L. Berger’s theory of “the sacred canopy,” and finally the intermingling of these two theories in the evolution of religion.

Human history is littered with those who project the air of absolute and divine knowledge, knowledge of who we are, where we are from, and where we are going in this ocean of chaos that is the ever changing human consciousness. These savants are all agents of doubt and intend to proliferate the idea that it is they who hold the power of knowledge, that one should align with them because their beliefs are "correct" and that it is shameful to believe otherwise. It is precisely this idea that will be brought into question. How is it that there are slightly differentiated variations of seemingly the same religion with a shift in context? And why is it that religious conflict is one of the most pressing issues of the twenty-first century, when seemingly every religious idea has an equivalency in one or more, if not all, religions? There must be due cause for all of these aspects and the assertion that one may make is that all religions surfaced from a similar collection of spiritual tales and events that occurred in the infancy of humanity.

The systematic testing of observations, and the belief of something larger than ourselves, have been part of the human experience since time began. Both science and religion have influenced human thought and civilization. When a question could not be answered by time and observation, people fell back on spiritual explanations. The need to resolve important everyday questions, such as; what controlled their environment, or, what system of morality is needed to best promote the stability of the tribe, meant that for early peoples, some response was required, so some people within started to come up with answers simply based on guesses, thus developing the first religious belief system.  Having religion, for the majority of people, offered a sense of order and purpose.

The purpose of this report is to note the religiousness of the planet Earth. In order to do so, I will use three criteria to contextualize and help enlighten members of our planet those of the human race found on planet Earth. This report will contain three examples relating to three criteria to help give some definition and detail to these particular ways of measuring this phenomenon. I will conclude this report by summarizing my experiences dealing with the religious qualities of those of the human race found on the planet Earth.