About Religion -posted by Yang Hyun(양 현) in 3th week.

Religion

 

1. Summarization

***Definition of Religion

Religion is belief in a god or gods and the activities that are connected with this belief. People can pray or worship their god in church or temple.

 

***Sacred vs Profane

In each religion, people have things which they consider sacred or profane. profane menas NOT sacred. For example, Torah in Judaism is considered sacred. But secular things like cars or toys are NOT considered sacred.

 

***Religion as Existential Questioning

Another definition of religion among social scientists views religion as any attempt to answer existential questions. For example, we can ask question like 'Is there life after death? This definition views religion as a function of serving a specific purpose in society. In this perspective, someone who attends religious services weekly but makes no attempt to answer existential questions would not be considered religious. In other extreme perspective, people who don’t believe gods but believes that our existence ends with physical death, would be considered religious because he or she has attempted to answer a key existential question. So in this view, people who attend religious service can’t be considered religious and people who don’t believe gods can be considered religious.

 

***Theories of Religion

Many of the early sociological theorists proposed theories attempting to explain religion. In addition to these classical approaches to understanding religion, one modern explanation for the continued high levels of religiosity will be proposed along with a social psychological explanation that will attempt to explain the continued attraction of religion. These theories approach religion from slightly different perspectives, trying to explain the function of religion in society, the role of religion in the life of the individual.

 

(1) Structural-Functional

The Structural-Functional approach to religion has its roots in Emile Durkheim's work on religion. Durkheim argued that religion is, in a sense, the celebration and even self-worship of human society. Given this approach, Durkheim proposed that religion has three major functions in society:

1) social cohesion - religion helps maintain social solidarity through shared rituals and beliefs

2) social control - religious based morals and norms help maintain conformity and control in society; religion can also legitimize the political system

3) providing meaning and purpose - religion can provide answers to existential questions

 

The primary criticism of the structural-functional approach to religion is that it overlooks religion's dysfunctions. For instance, religion can be used to justify terrorism and violence. Religion has often justified the motivation for war.

 

(2)Religious Pluralism

Religious pluralism is the belief that one can overcome religious differences between different religions and biased conflicts within the same religion. For most religious traditions, religious pluralism is essentially based on a non-literal view of one's religious traditions focusing on core principles rather than more marginal issues. So it doesn’t focus on immaterial differences. Instead, it gives respect to those whose beliefs are common.

2. New, interesting items I learned

 

I have heard of kind of neo-religion these days. The world famous movie star ‘Tom Cruise’ believes ‘Scientology’

 

(1)Scientology

Scientology is created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard(1911–1986) Scientology teaches that people are immortal beings who have forgotten their true nature. And it says that people can escape from death if people go through scientific 8 processes. The purpose of Scientology is getting rid of war, crime, addict drugs by making people clean.

 

(2)Flying Spaghetti Monster

 

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a movement that promotes a light-hearted view of religion and opposes the teaching of creationism in public schools.

The "Flying Spaghetti Monster" was first described in a satirical open letter written by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes. In that letter, Henderson satirized creationism by insisting his opinion.

3. Question, concern or discussion

 

Q) Is religion based on the hypothesis that all religion has goodness to everyone?

In my high school age, I always wondered that all religion is based on goodness to everyone or not. I thought all religion must be good to everyone and it must do good things to people because I thought it is not interest group. But I think it can be considered interest group to people who don't believe that religion. So I wanna discuss how students think about this.

 

Thank you for reading^^