HUM 400 week1 Religion and Philosophy The Religious Response Slide 1 Introduction Welcome to week one of Philosophy

y and Religion. This week we will discuss the religious response. Next slide

Slide 2

Objectives

Upon completion of this lesson you will be able to: Explain the four perspectives on religion. Describe the eight forms of Ultimate Reality. Describe three outer forms of religion. Name five ways people may interpret their religious traditions. Give a brief history beginning from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century on the relationship between science and religion. Explain currently scholarly thinking about early changes from female high goddess worship. And Describe five negative sides to religion.

Slide 3

Overview

Next slide In this first lesson we will discuss the diverse ways religion has evolved in many cultures over the worlds long history. We will discuss religion from the perspectives of materialism, growth, faith, and science. We will cover the various ways different religions understand and envision the Ultimate Reality. The expressed outer forms of religion in terms of worship, symbols and myths will be explored. Briefly covered will be the relationship of science and religion over time. The feminine side of religious beliefs will be touched upon. Lastly we will look at the negative effects of religion on mankind. Next slide

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Slide 4

Materialism

The word religion is derived from the Latin word, religare, meaning to tie back or bind fast. All religions share the common goal of tying people back to a greater reality which lies behind the surface of life and not perceived by our five senses. In this lesson we will examine religion as a separate aspect of human life. Religion can be found in some form in every culture around the world. From a materialistic point of view, the supernatural is imaginary and only a material world exists. Therefore, in this view, religions have been invented by humans. The nineteenth century philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, reasoned that people made gods of aspects of nature that they most feared. The twentieth-century psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud described religion as a collective fantasy of creating a god who is so powerful that he or she could protect us from lifes problems and offer us rewards or punishments for our social behaviors. The social philosopher, Karl Marx, believed that a cultures religion may have developed from the feelings of oppressed people who, unable to change society or their status in life, turned to another world as an expression of unfilled desires for a better life. According to Marx, then, religion can falsely pacify people and allow others to use religion to control them. Next slide From a functional perspective, religion as an institution is useful. There are several people who have provided insight into this concept of religion. Emile Durkheim proposed that humans cannot live without organized social structures and that religion holds society together like glue. John Bowker believed that religions are organized systems that serve a biological purpose of bringing people together for their common survival. The twentieth-century psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, concluded that humans have a need for a stable frame of reference and religion fulfills this need. Research conducted by the Center for the Study of Religion and Spirituality and Health at Duke University indicated that religious faith is beneficial Page 2 of 11 Chapter One 6/28/2012 Prof. Russu

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Religion as Function

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to our physical health. Many of our psychological needs are not met by the material aspects of our life on earth. We seek an assurance that life continues in some form beyond the grave. However, we all want our present life to have some meaning. Religion helps us to uncover meaning in the midst of the mundane. We look to religion for understanding and for answers to our questions about life and why we were put here on earth. Some religions offer dogma or systems of doctrines proclaimed as absolute truth and accepted even though no one has had any personal experiences. An absolute faith provides people with a sense of relief from anxieties, a secure feeling of rootedness as well as rules for living. Other people are drawn to religion in reaction to a discomforting sense of being alone in the universe. The divine may be sought as a loving father or mother or as a friend. Next slide From the point of view of religious faith, there is an underlying reality that cannot readily be perceived but that some people have experienced. Religious belief often springs from a mystical experience or an overwhelming awareness that one has been touched by a reality that far transcends ordinary life. These encounters with a transcendent reality are given various names in spiritual traditions: enlightenment, illumination, kensho, awakening, self-knowledge, gnosis, ecstatic communion, or coming home. Various scholars believe that a spontaneous experience of being grasped by reality is the essential basis of religion. A person feels great awe or even dread and a feeling of great attraction. According to Joachim Wach, a German scholar, religion follows certain patterns: 1. An experience of what is considered ultimate reality; 2. Involves a persons whole being; 3. Involves an intensity of feeling and experience; and 4. Motivates the person to action, through worship, ethical behavior, service, and sharing with others in a religious grouping.

Slide 6

Faith

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Slide 7

Scientific Perspective

Last we will look at religion from a scientific perspective. We can know reality through rational thought or through non-rational modes of knowing. We reason by establishing abstract general categories from the data we have gathered with our senses and then organize these abstractions to form logical ideas about reality. However, reasoning can lead different people to different conclusions: People may come to religious convictions indirectly through belief in what they heard from religious figures or traditions, or they may come more directly after their own questions have been answered. In some religions people are encouraged to develop their own intuitive abilities to perceive spiritual truths directly and beyond their sense and limits of human reason. This is often called mysticism. And some religions have developed meditation techniques that encourage intuitive wisdom to arise in ones mind or for the voice of the divine to arise into ones consciousness. This enlightened awareness cannot be communicated to those who have not had a similar experience as human language is not adequate to describe the experience of ultimate reality. Next slide

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Slide 8

Ultimate Reality

The sacred has many forms as different people from different times and different cultures have different ways of knowing the Ultimate Reality: The Ultimate Reality may be conceived as immanent or present in the world, or transcendent or existing above and outside of the material universe. Religions based on ones relationship to the Divine Being as a Father, Mother, Teacher or Friend is called theistic. If the being is worshipped as a singular form, the religion is monotheistic. If there are many attributes and forms of the divine, the religion is labeled polytheistic. Religions that hold that beneath the multiplicity of apparent forms there is one underlying substance are called monistic. Ultimate Reality can also be conceived in non-theistic terms. It may be experienced as a changeless unity or as the Way, and there may be no sense of a personal Creator God in such understandings. And some people believe that the sacred reality is usually invisible but occasionally appears visibly in human incarnations, such as Christ or Krishna or in special manifestations such as a flame. In contrast, atheism is the belief that there is no deity. In the twentieth century, following Karl Marx, many communist countries suppressed religious beliefs replacing them with secular faith in supposedly altruistic government. Atheism may also arise from within where peoples experiences give them no reason to believe that there is anything more to life than the mundane. Agnosticism is the denial of metaphysical beliefs because these beliefs cannot be proven or unproven; agnostics might replace those beliefs with the scientific method for examining facts and experiences.

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Slide 9

Worship, Symbol, and Myth

The outer forms of religion are human attempts to express a reverence and an attempt to enter the sacred state of communion with that which is worshipped. Rituals, sacraments, prayers, and spiritual practices are used to create a sacred atmosphere or state of consciousness in which people hope to be touched by the spiritual. When group ceremonies involving food, fire, purification with water, flowers or monetary offerings, occur often, they are called rituals. Symbols, images borrowed from the material world, are used to represent divine spiritual experiences. Religious myths or stories attempt to express ultimate divine reality, basic truths, or the inner meaning of life for believers. Their function is to establish models for human behavior. Next slide

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Slide 10

Interpretation of Religion

People manifest their religious traditions in ways depending upon their faith. The orthodox try to be strict followers of their religions historical practices, laws, and creeds. Those who resist contemporary influences and hold fast to the historical core of their religion are called absolutists. The term fundamentalism is often wrongly applied to people who insist that their religious tradition is literally and exclusively true and may resort to violence against people of other religions. Many socalled fundamentalists are trying to preserve cultural practices that are not directly part of the religion, and many so-called fundamentalists are not violent, but reacting against trends away from the religions roots. So other terms more applicable to the specific situation are often more useful than fundamentalist. It can be useful to keep in mind that, as Valson Thampu has argued, true spiritual enthusiasm stakes everything on being faithful to the spiritual ultimate reality and not on selective extremism of a tradition. Religious liberals see scriptures as products of a specific culture and time rather than the eternal voice of truth, and may interpret passages metaphorically rather than literally. People who are labeled heretics assert controversial positions that are unacceptable to the orthodox establishment. Mystics are people guided by their own spiritual experiences in their given religion. Next slide Like religion, science is also engaged in searching for universal principles that explain the forces of nature. These two approaches have influenced each other throughout history. In ancient Greece, the philosophers tried to understand the world through their own perceptions of it. By contrast, Plato made a series of distinctions: Page 7 of 11 Chapter One 6/28/2012 Prof. Russu

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Science and Religion

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between what is perceived by the senses and what is accessible through reason; between body and soul; between appearance and reality; and between objects and ideas. Platos thought was that the soul was superior to the body and the activity of reason preferable to the input from our senses.

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Science and Religion cont

In the seventeenth century, knowledge of nature became more secularized. Nature could be explained through human reason and through the use of mathematics. During the eighteenth-century of Enlightenment, rational ways of knowing became popular and hypotheses were developed and then subjected to investigation and revision. Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution by natural selection and argued that this process has directed the development of all the diverse forms of life. This theory seemed to contradict the Judeo-Christian belief that God created the different kinds of life. From twentieth-century scientific research, it is clear that the cosmos is extremely complex and that what we perceive with our five senses is not Ultimate Reality. Our senses operate as filters, selecting from a multidimensional universe only those characteristics that we need to perceive in order to survive. New branches of science are finding that the universe is not always predictable, nor does it always operate according to our notions of cause and effect. One of the major controversies between science and religion is the conflict between religious concepts of intentional divine creation and the scientific concept of a universe that has evolved by processes such as genetic mutations and random combinations of elements. However, scientific research is continually revealing a universe whose perfections are suggestive of purposefulness. Nevertheless, religious beliefs that, if interpreted literally, seem to be contradicted by scientific fact

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can instead be interpreted as belonging to the realm of myth. Myths give us symbolic answers to ultimate questions that cannot be answered by empirical experience or rational thought. Next slide Archaeological evidence from many cultures suggests that worship of a female high goddess was originally widespread. Temples and images that seem to have been devoted to worship of a goddess have been found in almost every Neolithic and early historic archaeological site in Europe and West Asia. The goddess was often symbolically linked with water, serpents, birds, spirals, the moon, the womb and the eternal creation and renewal of life. In the early agricultural cultures that may have worshipped the goddess, women frequently held strong social positions. Hereditary lineages were traced through the mother, and women were honored as priestesses, healers, agricultural inventors, counselors, prophetesses, and sometime warriors. According to Eli Sagan and many feminist scholars, in Europe and West Asia, worship of the goddess was suppressed throughout the third and second millennia BCE by invading Indo-European groups in which males were dominant and championed worship of a supreme male deity. At the same time ritual participation of women was also diminished. In patriarchal societies, women became property and were expected to be obedient to the rule of men. Although women are still barred from equal spiritual footing with men in many religions, this situation is now being challenged. The contemporary feminist movement includes strong efforts to make womens voices heard in the sphere of religion. Next slide

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The Feminine Side

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Slide 14

Negative Side of Religion

Unfortunately, through the ages, religion has often split rather than unified humanity, has oppressed rather than freed, and has terrified rather than inspired. The following is a summary of some of the negative aspects of religion. Those who hold religious power are often in a position to dominate and control their followers through the political process. Because some religions offer a state of blissful contemplation as the reward for spiritual practice, some people may use religion to escape from their everyday problems. Other religions have such a strong hold on their followers, that it may be used as a rallying point for wars against other nations. Sometimes as institutionalized religions attempt to spread the teachings of their founders, more energy goes into preserving the traditions than into maintaining the inner spirit. Max Weber, a twentieth-century scholar of the sociology of religion, called this routinazation of charisma. Charisma is the rare quality of personal magnetism often ascribed to founders of religion. Their followers believe that these teachers have extraordinary or supernatural powers. Thus, when the founder dies, others turn the religious movement into routine rituals and dogma. Next slide

Slide 15

Summary

Religions try to help us make ethical choices in our lives, to develop a moral conscience. We have tried to understand why religion exists, its relationship to modern science, and the general forms it takes. We looked at religion from the materialistic perspective that humans invented religion, from the functional perspective that religion is useful and promotes survival, from the faith perspective that there truly is an underlying reality that cannot be perceived, and from the scientific perspective that science like religion is searching for universal principles that explain the nature of the universe. We learned that myths are stories that can give us symbolic answers to the ultimate question of, What are we here for? Symbols are images borrowed from the material Page 10 of 11 Chapter One 6/28/2012 Prof. Russu

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world that are similar to sacred spiritual experiences. We learned that people are labeled orthodox, absolutists, or fundamentalists depending on the ways they interpret their religious traditions. We briefly traced throughout history how the development of modern science, like religion, has constantly searched for universal principles to explain the facts of nature. We also discussed that archaeological evidence from many cultures suggests that worship of a female high goddess was originally widespread. It is possible that many of the myths surviving in todays religions may be related to the suppression of early female-oriented religions by later male-oriented religious systems. Lastly, we discussed that religion can have negative effects on societies by offering escape from everyday problems, providing too strong of a hold on people in order to manipulate them, and by the use of religion as a rallying point to begin wars.

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