World Religions

1
World Religions

• Lecture One
• The Academic Study of Religion

2
World-Wide Religion Estimates

• Christianity 2 billion
• Islam 1.3 billion
• Hinduism 900 million
• Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 850
  million
• Buddhism 360 million
• Chinese traditional religion 225 million
• primal-indigenous 150 million
• African Traditional Diasporic 95 million
• Sikhism 23 million
• Judaism 14 million

3
Ground Rules

• Tour Guide
• Academic Discourse
• Respect
• History Description

4
Some Explanations

• Karl Marx, 1818-1883
• Emile Durkheim 1858-1917
• Sigmund Freud 1856-1939
• Mircea Eliade, 1906-1987
• Clifford Geertz, 1926-2006

5
Marx, The Critique of Hegels Philosophy of
Right (1844)

• Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
  Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and
  self-awareness so long as he has not found
  himself or has already lost himself again. But,
  man is no abstract being squatting outside the
  world. Man is the world of man -- state, society.
  This state and this society produce religion,
  which is an inverted consciousness of the world,
  because they are an inverted world. Religion is
  the general theory of this world . . . The
  struggle against religion is, therefore,
  indirectly the struggle against that world whose
  spiritual aroma is religion.
• Religious suffering is, at one and the same time,
  the expression of real suffering and a protest
  against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of
  the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
  world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is
  the opium of the people.
• The abolition of religion as the illusory
  happiness of the people is the demand for their
  real happiness. To call on them to give up their
  illusions about their condition is to call on
  them to give up a condition that requires
  illusions. The criticism of religion is,
  therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale
  of tears of which religion is the halo.

6
Durkheim The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
(1912)
7
Durkheim, (cont)
8
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939

• Religion a universal obsessional neurosis
• Great emphasis on patterned, ceremonial behavior
• Guilt feelings if not followed precisely
• Ceremonies related to repression of instincts
  (i.e., neurosis)

9
Freud,Totem and Taboo (1929)
10
Totem and Taboo (cont.)
11
Freud, Take Away

• Reductionist
• Religion as psychological manifestation
• Guilt Projection

12
Mircea Eliade The Sacred the Profane (1957)
13
Eliade (cont)
14
Eliade Take Away

• Non-reductionist homo religiosis sui generis
• Sacred Profane
• Sacred Time - Illud Tempus
• Eternal Return
• Axis Mundi Archetypal pattern

15
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
(1973)

• Geertz defines religion as 1) a system of
  symbols which acts to 2) establish powerful,
  pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations
  in men by 3) formulating conceptions of a general
  order of existence and 4) clothing these
  conceptions with such an aura of factuality that
  5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely
  realistic

16
Geertz, Take Away

• Non-reductionist culture history contingency
• Cultural symbols
• Thick description
• Relations/relationships

17
Some Analytical Concepts

• Paths of Transformation
• The Sacred
• Community
• Central Stories (myths)
• Ritual
• Ethics
• Beliefs

18
Analytical Concepts (cont)

• Characteristic emotions
• Material expressions
• Transcendent
• Immanent
• Monotheistic
• Polytheistic
• Non-theistic

19
Directions

• Time - linear/cyclical
• Human Purpose
• Words and Scriptures
• Exclusive/Inclusive
• This/Other Worldly