CHAPTER 1 Overview Nature of Religion 1 Ahura Mazda The supreme creator god of the Zoroastrians called the Wise Lord In ancient times Zoroastrians called themselves the Mazda worshipers Monotheistic developed in Persia Iran The good god Ahura Mazda is the one whom all praise and thanks are due Evil counterpart is Angra Mainyu 2 Allah Arabic word for God The Lord of all beings who demands faith and worship of all rational creatures used by pagan Arabs before Islam and is still used in that sense by Arab Jews and Christians today 3 Clifford Geertz For American anthropologist Clifford Geertz religion reconciles the ways people leads their everyday lives ethos with the way they assume the world is worldview our individual experiences is a succession of events that we may or may not think of as any connection one to the other When we look around we see injustice and suffering and can t explain it in rational terms and what religions do is give us that framework 4 Cults originally meant worship but later used disparagingly indicating that such movements is fraudulent and coercive that the leaders demanded excessive dedication from followers The Cargo cults in Melanesia people would mimic the source of new material when they saw the European planes land build them and they will keep coming New religious groups were often defamed as cults 5 Dualism two ultimate themes that oppose each other Mainly good and evil or matter and spirit In Zoroastrianism Gnosticism and Manichaeism 6 Gerardus Van Der Leeuw Dutch theologian and historian Religion in Essence and Manifestation Contributed to the phenomenological analysis of religious experience He proposed that a nonrational mystical tradition underlies the evolution of religious manifestations Said that mystical and logical modes of thought coexist in man Treated religion as a response to a divine stimulus 7 Hagia Sophia was built as the seat of the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople and was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of 1453 The Christian iconography was replaced by non representational Islamic motifs today you can see both 8 Jonestown 1978 70 black and 30 white over 900 people committed mass suicide on the orders of their leader Reverend Jim Jones Moved his base to Guyana The mass suicide was carried out after a number of investigations convinced Jim and his followers that evil forces were closing in on them and the only honorable way out was death 9 Life after death either righteousness or condemned under Second Temple Judaism 10 Mircea Eliade roman work in the area on comparative religions drew particularly on Hindu and tribal traditions religion as a response to a transcendent reality a reality called the sacred the reality of religion behind all the multiple appearances 11 Missionary religions actively seeks convicts Believe not only that all religions are different but that the differences are so consequential they cannot be dismissed Those who know the truth are obligated to spread it Buddhism Christianity and Islam have succeeded as missionary religions because of their worldwide diffusion See themselves as possessing a redemptive message that they must disseminate throughout human society 12 Monotheism believe in only one god and that the worship of any other deity is an abomination to God and that no other gods even exist Owes it to ancient Israel the idea that there is only one god Coined the term in the 3 principle regions in the West Judaism Christianity and Islam 13 Muslim Expansion 13 century it started with its appeal of the juridical status and tax relief if offered to those who accepted Islam ability to convert significant number of nations by granting advantageous administrative and legal status to converts and a generous tax policy The Mediterranean from Iraq to Gibraltar became Muslim and adopted the Arabic language Iran and central Asia also became Muslim although they kept Persia as their language The third great wholesale conversion was that of the Turkish people The first case in which Islam didn t covert an entire population was in India it remained mainly Hindu Islam grew more through trade and missionary activity of the Sufis rather than military conquest in SE Asia similarly in Africa trade and the Sufis were the principle vehicles for Islam 14 Polytheism worship of more than one god Greek societies 15 Rudolf Otto Rudolf Otto the concept of holy the mysterious overpowering of numinous was a feature of all religions response to the holy everyone has an emotional approach you feel by the encounter that you get in things such as prayer bearing supernatural power numinous We see the world as a bunch of appearances and we need to put them aside and see what the essence of it all is The Idea of the Holy compare to Mircea 16 Secularism the principle that no religious group or institution should receive public support or play any role in public decision making no religion in government 17 The Satan evil trickster deity in Christianity 18 Structuralism religion reflects the way the mind categorizes the world in terms of contrasts such as Good evil Virtue sin and Pure impure Claude Levi Strauss All religions were structured in similar ways Meaning is not inherent it is found in the relations between things or ideas such as religious people such as Jews Christians may look at people that practice magic and say we don t do that defining themselves in opposition to something else such as magic 19 Yahweh means Lord God s personal name how God identifies himself to Moses in a flame in the bush that burns without being consumed the one who causes things to happen CHAPTER 2 Indigenous Religions 1 Axis Mundi A place believed to be the spiritual centre of the world where the celestial world and the underworld meet the earth and it s possible to travel between realms term coined by Mircea Eliade Point that in the world at which the world originated where the spiritual and human Zuni and Hopi Pueblo areas meeting place of heaven earth and underworld 2 Conflict Dualism the concept common to the Abrahamic or Western religious traditions that the universe contains good and evil forces that are wholly separate and in constant opposition 3 Complementary Dualism the concept common too many indigenous religions that the universe contains life enhancing and life diminishing forces that work together and are equally necessary to its survival Tawiskaron used utgo to create disease and to cure it The eastern woodlands
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