Religion Test 1

Imago Mundi

An image of the original world order. an Opening to heaven and a reproduction on the human scale of the cosmos or creation itself.

Sacred texts

Documents that are sources of influence and doctrine in religious traditions.

Isaiah

Prophet who had a vision of the Lord God in the Temple of Jerusalem.

Cro-Magnon

Term that designates the first group of fully evolved representatives of Homo sapiens, who entered Europe from the Middle East between 42,000 and 30,000 B.C.E.

Mount Sinai

The axis mundi holy space where Moses received the Torah from God.

Edward Tylor

The father of modern anthropology.

Anthropology

The study of human beings and societies viewed primarily as both the creators and the creations of culture.

Epoche

To suspend one's judgment

Extrinsic religion

find religion useful, providing things such as solace, sociability, and social status.

Collective unconscious

A Jungian theory that states that the unconscious includes materials that are psychically real prior to their personal appropriation. Inherent potentials in the psychic structure of all individuals. Archetypal in character.

Myth

A complex of stories - some no doubt fact, and some fancy - which, for various reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and of human life.

Mantras

A sacred sound of one syllable or more. In Hinduism, repeated during meditation in order to empty the mind in preparation for liberation; in Buddhism, expresses the essence of some transcendental power or being such as the Buddha or Bodhisattva. The most famous is the syllable OM.

Mount Zion-Jerusalem

A sacred space in Judaic tradition, the site of the monarchy of the great King David and the Temple. King David brought the ark of the Covenant here and it become the holy mountain, an axis mundi. a place of protection from God.

Stupa

Axis mundi in the Buddhist tradition, function as reliquaries in homage to the Buddha (India and Sri Lanka)

Mandala

Buddhist circle, symboling the perfection of Buddhahood, inscribed within a square drawn in bright colors on hte earth or as a paiting on cloth or paper.

Visakha's Sorrow

Buddhist parable of regarding the extinction of craving. Desire and suffering relationship.

Human problem

Fundamental flaw in human nature; religion offers the solution.

The falsification principle

If nothing is incompatible with the purported truth of a statement, then the statement does not assert anything. If there is nothing an assertion denies, then their is nothing is asserts either.

Ethics

Patterns of morality

Morphology

Structure or forms of religion

Tripitaka

The Buddhist sacred canon of writings.

Fideism

faith. associated with those who believe that faith must precede reason with regard to knowledge of God and that reason alone is incapable of producing genuine knowledge of God.

Philosophy

concerned with examining the principles and rules that govern logic, theories of knowledge, morals, aesthetics, and metaphysics, the nature of being or reality.

Mysterium tremendum

experience of a reality that, when encountered, is perceived as lying beyond our capacity to comprehend or conceptualize fully; it is extraordinary, unfamiliar, and therefore mysterious. a feeling of peculiar dread and awe.

Sociology

focuses its attention on social behavior and the way in which religion interacts with other dimensions of our social experience.

Signs

form of expressing meaning - symptom or natural reminder.

Extended metaphor

A drawn out comparison of two unlike things (the mundane and the sacred) through story.

Descriptive reduction

A failure to identify an emotion, practice, or experience under the description by which the subject identifies it. To describe a religious experience in nonreligious terms is to misdescribe it.

Soteriology

A religion's characterization of how to get to salvation.

Psycho-therapeutic Theory of Myth

A theory developed by Jung that points to myth's function as therapy for humans.

Neanderthal

A type of prehistoric man from the middle Paleolithic age, whose remains were found in a cave near Dusseldorf, Germany.

Ka-ba

Abraham's shrine to God. Axis mundi for Islam.

Propitiation

Act of appeasing, pacifying, or making favorable, often through some form of sacrifice to a deity.

Parable

An extended metaphor, drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to lease it into active thought. The revelation in the story comes through the presence of the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Amulets

An object that is carried on a person or is displayed in a home or place of business to ward off or repel disease, evil, or the assaults of demonic spirits.

Bronislaw Malinowski

Anthropologist who uses functionalist approach to myth - myth as indispensable feature of all cultures. Distinguished from fairy tale or legend. its meaning is to understood in terms of its social function within a particular culture.

Axis Mundi

Center of the world. A place where communication with the divine is made possible.

Fish

Christian symbol for Christ. Literal in the eschatological Banquet, represents Christian baptism, and the followers of Christ.

Evangelical

Christians of any protestant church or sect who place great importance on a conscious, personal conversion to Christ rather than on becoming a Christian through birth or baptism.

Karl Marx

Defines religion as "Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature...It is the opium of the people...Religion is only the illusory such which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself." This definition is reductionist.

Paul Tillich

Defines religion as "Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life." This definition is too broad.

John Dewey

Defines religion as "The religious is any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal and against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of its general and enduring value." This definition is too broad.

Clifford Geertz

Defines religion as "a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."

Reductionism

Describing religion is a way that evaluates them as untrue or degrades them.

Gordon Allport

Developed a classic study of religion and prejudice in the U.S. demonstrated that those whose religion is extrinsic held bigoted views while those with intrinsic views exhibited ethnic and racial tolerance.

Mircea Eliade

Historian of religion and the ways in which the sacred appears in space and time. According to him, their are two fundamental modes of being in the world assumed by humankind throughout history. The sacred always manifests itself as something nonordinary and thus wholly distinct from what is profane, common, or simply utilitarian. But, anything can be set apart as disclosing the sacred. Argued that axis mundi is a human act.

Functionalism

Interest in questioning what function particular institutions or activities serve in the total life of a community.

Intrinsic religion

Internalized religion so that it is the master motive. authentically live their religion.

Thomas O'Dea

Sociologist who spoke of religion as a response to three fundamental features of human existence: uncertainty, powerlessness, and scarcity.

Max Weber

Sociologist who was interested in how religious belief and behavior act on and transform social behavior. Demonstrated that forms of social life deeply reflect the decisive influence of religious belief and practice on societies. protestant ethic --> work ethic.

Emile Durkheim

Sociologist who was most responsible for turning the interest of anthropologists to the study of the social functions of religion. Popularized: the fundamental contrast between the sacred and the profane.

Self-transcendence

The ability of human beings to be self-conscious; to question life and existence.

Hermeneutics

The art of science concerned with the conditions and methods required to understand the meaning of a written text. In contract to exegesis, this broadly concerns itself with the preconditions that make understanding possible. a specific one involves the particular preconditions that are necessary to understand a distinctive text.

Animism

The belief that all things possess a soul or spirit, all reality is animate. Introduced by E.B. Tylor to refer to what he conceived to be the earliest form of religion.

Homo religiosus

The description of human beings as religious animals. The idea that humans are naturally religious.

Historiography

The historian selects the accounts of the evidence that she or he deems appropriate and relevant, based on some principles of choice.

Ontology

The nature of being, the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature, the essential properties, and the relations of being.

Ontology

The nature of being; the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature, the essential properties, and the relations of being.

Doctrines

The product of second order interpretative process. The translation from symbolism to concepts and propositional language.

Theology

The study of religion from within the tradition.

Oedipus Complex

The theory of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud that children (particularly boys) have an unconscious tendency to be attached to the parent of the opposite sex and to show hostility toward the other parent. Freud used this theory to explain certain social facts, including religion.

Eschatology

The understanding of nature, of human life, and of history in terms of their goals or destinies. Often associated with beliefs concerning life after death, judgment, and Heaven and Hell. End of the world.

Textual criticism

This uses a number of methods and procedures to try to determine whether we are reading the original or the most authentic version of a particular text, or a later copy that may have been altered, revised, or edited.

Symbol

To bring together. These bring together meaning to the representer, transcendent and the mundane, and groups of people. Points beyond itself to something else. communicates meaning.

Metaphor

a distinctive form of symbolic communication: not a literal statement, but a comparison of two unlike things.

Reliquaries

a small box, container, or shrine used to hold or exhibit a religious relic, such as the bones of a saint.

Icons

a symbolic sacred image, usually painted on flat wood panels or canvas, that materially embodies a spiritual meaning and powerful. They are sacramental in that they make present the sacred or the divine and are venerated in Eastern Orthodox Christian churches.

Primal

preliterate human societies, either primordial or contemporary.

Fascinans

provokes expressions of joyful thanksgiving, praise, and adoration.

Fetish

refers to various objects, either natural or artificial, that are endowed with supernatural magical power or virtue and are capable of averting evil or bringing good.

Models

represent enduring structures of the cosmic order which myths dramatize in narrative form. Images which originated in religious experience and key historical events are extended to interpret other areas of individual and corporate experience. Organizing images which restructure one's perception of the world.

Individuation

self-realization. According the Jung, the development of genuine selfhood, better and more complete qualities of human beings. the development of self that involves the integration of the personal ego with archetypes of the unconscious.

Sacred

the term that best conveys the objective reference or ultimate reality about which the religions speak or to which their symbols point.

Agnosticism

applies to any proposition (but usually with respect to God) for which evidence for belief or dogmatic unbelief is insufficient.

Forms of religious experience

Ritual, sacred texts, symbol and myth, and society.

Two sides of religion

Joy and mystery

Ritual

Repetitive patterns of behavior.

Bhagavad-Gita

Sacred text of Hindu religion, tells the story of Arjuna's request to Krishna - the God Vishnu in human form - that he be allowed to see the Supreme Being Vishnu.

Taboo

Associated with the sacred, dangerous, object or person who is not to be touched or approached for fear or supernatural contagion.

Totem

Associating human tribes or classes with animals or plants, from which the group is descended or has some close relationship. Some writers claim that the group worships the animals and that this is the earliest form of religion.

Ethnocentric

Assumption that a person's own race or culture is normative or superior to others.

Pagoda

Axis mundi in the Buddhist tradition, function as reliquaries in homage to the Buddha (Burma, China, and Japan).

Monotheism

Belief in one personal, transcendent Creator God as opposed to belief in many gods e.g. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Cosmogony

Branch of philosophical or scientific speculation that deals with the origin and structure of the world.

Elements of a religious worldview

Concept of the divine or ultimate reality, ethics, theodicy (justifying the ways of god, explanation for why evil exists), Cosmogony (a story of the creation, birth of the universe, order, and humankind's place in the world), Soteriology (how to get to salvation and going along with this, eschatology (religious description of the end of the world), and the human problem (the fundamental flaw of humankind and the solution to it).

Documentary criticism

Concerned with establishing whether a writing is a whole or a composite work of more than one author of editor, when and where the work was composed, to whom it was addressed, and for what purpose.

Representational symbol

Contextually meaningful and depend on learned associations, they are reminders of previous knowledge.

Sigmund Freud

Defined religion as "Religion is comparable to childhood neurosis." This definition is reductionist. Describes religion through Oedipal Complex.

Rudolf Otto

Defined religion as "Religion is that which grows out of, and gives expression to, experience of the holy in its various aspects." This definition is too broad. He also detailed the primal experience of a sacred power with the accompanying feelings of awe, fear, purity, and danger in his study, The Idea of the Holy. Regarded the holy as an experience peculiar to religion. Viewed the holy as fundamentally nonrational and ineffable datum of human experience. Coined the word numinous to describe the unique religious phenomenon to isolate the holy from either ethical or theological conceptions. Coined the terms mysterium tremendum and fascinans as well.

James Martineau

Defined religion as "Religion is the belief in an ever-living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind." This definition is too narrow.

Immanuel Kant

Defined religion as "religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands." This definition is too narrow. Support agnosticism in the service of fideism (faith).

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Defined religion as "the essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence." This definition is too vague and encompassing.

John Hick

Defines religion as "Religion centers upon an awareness and response to a reality that transcends ourselves and out world whether the direction of transcendence by beyond or within or both...this object is characterized more generally as a cosmic power, or more specifically as a Personal God." This definition is too narrow.

Proselytize

Engaging in the effort of persuading or converting a person from one religion or opinion to another; one who has been converted from one religion to another.

Literary criticism

Evaluating sacred texts for their origin (author), purpose (audience for whom they are written), values and limitations.

Anthony Flew

Formulated the falsification principle.

Theodicy

Justification of the ways of God; a religion's explanation for why evil and suffering exists

Genetic fallacy

Logical error of judging the nature, value, or truth of a religion based on a description or analysis of its origin or earliest expression. e.g. Carl Marx's definition.

Expiation

Making right by some ritual act or offering for the injury or sin done to some other person or god; closely related to atonement and propitiation, it involves an act of sacrifice to remove pollution or sin.

Sacred time

Set apart for worship, holy days, and religious festivals. Break from the unvarying mundane, profane ordinary, and meaningless or chaotic.

Psychology

Methodology for studying religion which looks at religion through the lens of human behavior and cognition.

Second-order religious discourse

More abstract that seeks greater clarity and coherence by translating the symbolic and mythic language into concepts and doctrines.

Bwadela myth

Myth of why we must grow old. Grandmother sheds skin and is unrecognizable.

Explanatory reduction

Offering an explanation of an experience in terms that are not those of the subject and might not meet with his or her approval.

First-order religious discourse

Ordinary religious language - richly metaphoric, analogic, and poetic in character.

Archetypal

Original pattern, or model, from which other things - such as institutions, beliefs, and behavior - are patterned. in many religions, it is important to follow the model of behavior established by God or the gods "in the beginning."

Phenomenology

Seeks to concentrate on types of religious experience as it directly presents itself to those engaged in religious activity. Not concerned with explaining experience but description only. The goals is to portray religion in its own terms as a distinctive expression, a reality not to be reduced to or explained in other terms. Does not evaluate religion for truth or value.

William James

Philosopher and psychologist who explored the psychological dimensions of such religious phenomena as conversion, mysticism, and saintliness.

Sacred space

Places that are separate from the profane. An axis mundi is an example.

Numinous

Powers or spirits associated with special places or functions.

Hierophany

Proposed by Mircea Eliade to designate any act or manifestation of the sacred; something sacred showing itself to us. The process by which the mundane becomes sacred.

Carl Jung

Psychologist who developed the psycho-therapeutic theory of myth, and theory of archetypes of the collective unconscious. The human psyche consists of three layers: the conscious, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.

Polytheism

Recognition and worship of more than one god; conceives sacred power as being manifested in diverse forms.

Presentational symbol

Resemble the reality the depict; make present the holy.