Paint by French artist Paul Gauguin

Title: Where Do We Come From? What Are

We? Where Are We Going?
 Reasons why religion exists:
1. It serves many human needs. One
primary need is having a means to
deal with our mortality.
Religion can help us cope with
death, and religious rituals can
offer us comfort.
2. It helps us to respond to our natural
wonder about ourselves and the
cosmos
3. Its a human attempt to feel more
secure in an unfeeling universe.
4. It grows out of psychological needs
5. It is a way of life founded upon the
apprehension of sacredness in
existence
1. Religion must provide answers to the great questions that people
ask:
What should be our relationship to the world of nature? Why
do human beings exist? How do we reach fulfillment,
transformation, or salvation? Why is there suffering in the
world, and how should we deal with it? What happens when we
die? What should we hold as sacred? THE QUESTIONS DO NOT
VARY, BUT THE ANSWERS DO.
Religion is to join again, to reconnect.
The Latin roots of the word religion are
thought to be re and lig
Re means again
Lig means join or connect (as in ligament)
The word religion suggests the joining of our
natural, human world to the sacred world.
First, we are not looking to validate them or
to disprove them or to enhance our own
belief or practice
As a result, we want to comprehend the
particular religions as thoroughly as possible
and to understand the experience of people
within each religion.
 Each religion is interesting in its own right, as a complex system of values,
relationships, personalities, and human creativity.
The study of religions require sympathy and objectivity. While it is true that being a
believer of a particular religion brings a special insight that an outsider cannot
have, it is also true that an outsider can appreciate things that are not always
obvious to the insider.
In a multicultural world, tolerance of differences is valuable, but enjoyment of
differences is even better.
The value of the study of religions is that it helps us recognize and appreciate the
religious influences that are everywhere.
Matters of faith are
serious for those whose
faith matters
The catholic church rejects nothing
of those things which are true and
holy in these religions.
There are those who without any
fault do not know anything about
Christ or his church, yet who
search for God with a sincere
heart and, under the influence of
grace, try to put into effect the
will of God as known to them
through the dictate of conscience:
these too can obtain eternal
salvation.
With the world religions we share a common
respect for an obedience to conscience, which
teaches all of us to seek the truth, to love and
serve all individuals and peoples.
All hold conscience and obedience to the
voice of conscience to be an essential element
in the road toward a better and peaceful
world.
 Christians: Percent of World: 33%
Catholics
Other groups make up the rest (Orthodox, Anglican, etc).
Muslim: Percent of World: 21%
Judaism: Percent of world: 0.22%
Sikhism: Percent of the world: .24%
Hinduism: Percent of World: 14%
Buddhism: Percent of World: 6%
(Chinese traditional religion stats exactly the same, as is primal
traditions)
non-religious: Population of world: 16%
(Includes atheists, agnostics)

As cited in:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Christianity
We begin with the knowledge that at the end of every
journey we are not quite the same as we were when we
started.