Religion Chapter 1
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Religion is a universal and abiding dimension of human experience
Religion gives valuable insight into some essential aspects of religion
Our self-consciousness is AKA capacity for self-transcendence
Religion was practiced as long as 100,000 to 250,000 years ago
Propitiation is efforts made to appease or conciliate spirits or powers
Theism is the belief in God or gods
Nontheistic is not having or involving a belief in a God or gods
Schleiermacher and Otto focus on the affective, or emotional and feeling, dimension of religious
experience that is so important. They point especially to the profoundly real and pervasive
human experiences of finitude and dependence, awe, fear, and mystery as essential to religious
life. (Narrow in what they leave out)
Kant perceives the profound moral dimension of religion, but he essentially reduces religion to
the function of moral regulation; thus, he leaves out important affective, aesthetic, social, and
ritualistic dimensions of religious life. (Narrow in scope)
Dewey says that “the religious" is a quality of experience, a quality that may be found in
aesthetic, scientific, or political activity (Too inclusive)
For Tillich, the research scientist, or the political zealot whose commitment represents a "state
of being grasped by an ultimate concern" is, by his definition, religious.
for Dewey and Tillich almost everything and anything is capable of being religious.
The definition offered by John Hick attempts to emphasize that religion sees the object of its
belief, loyalty, and hope as real, and as transcendent of our human psychological or sociological
needs, although necessarily portrayed in human images and language.
Freud and Marx reduce religion to either psychological processes or socioeconomic factors.
Genetic fallacy is the confusing of the essence, value, or truth of religion with an explanation of
its origin.
Ontology is the theory of being
The existential questions of life; they are universal and perennial; they are part of what it means
be human
secularization is the widespread rejection of religious belief and institutions
Why are human beings religious?" the answer is that humans want to be delivered from the loss
of meaning, from moral guilt, and from the threat of finitude and fatedness.
Chapter 2 : Ways of studying religion
Textual Criticism The work of the literary critic often is divided into two distinct critical tasks:
lower, or textual, criticism and higher, or documentary, criticism
Functionalism has to been the method most widely used by anthropologists
James explored the psychological dimensions of such religious phenomena as conversion,
mysticism, and saintliness
What distinguishes philosophy from theology is that the former does not appeal to revelation or
authoritative doctrine but, rather, their logic, meaning, and truth claims
agnosticism, or the insufficiency of our knowledge, in the service of fideism (faith), a confident
or reasonable trust
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Phenomenology thus represents the effort to reexperience a certain religious phenomenon's
essential character or structure.
Phenomenology is, then, a study of the morphology (the structures or forms) of religion as
manifested in and across different cultures and temporal periods.
Notes from lecture 1
Sociology tellsusthe function o religigon