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About Chapter Religion
Looking Both Ways From
Stonehenge:
Basic Human Religion
Looking Back from Stonehenge
There are a few concepts, shared by virtually
all human cultures, that are fundamental to
what we call religion:
1. It seems that humans around the globe have
imagined the world to consist of three levels
sky, earth, and underworld.
Sky is typically the home of the greatest deities.
The underworld was typically the home of spirits,
serpents, or reptilian monsters often imagined as evil.
Looking Both Ways From
Stonehenge:
Basic Human Religion, contd.
2. Around the world, there are certain places set
apart from the everyday world and treated with
special respect.
Among these sacred places are high mountains, great
rivers, and waterfalls
2. Many peoples attribute spirits to animals. These
spirits often act as a guardian either to individuals
or to an entire family or group.
3. From ancient times, humans have taken great
care with the burial of their dead.
Positioning of the body and provisioning with grave
goods imply a belief in an afterlife
Looking Both Ways From
Stonehenge:
Basic Human Religion, contd.
Why are humans religious?
Religion seems to grow out of human
experiences of good or bad powers, including
fear, uncertainty and control.
Religion has many emotional dimensions.
Fear, awe, love and hate
Religion also has many intellectual dimensions.
Curiosity about what causes things to happen
A sense of order in the universe
The drive to make sense out of human experience
Ten Waves of Religion
Wave 1: Shamanism
Hunting Rituals
Religious behaviour is, at least in part, a way of
coping with dangerous situations.
Early humans believed that the spirits of the
animals they hunted had to be appeased.
Coping with unfriendly spirits
The spirits associated with natural phenomena are
appeased based on what would appease humans.
Some examples are offering food or other goods, or
invoking a stronger spiritual power to drive the unfriendly
spirit away
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
The Shaman
The word shaman comes from a specific central Asian
culture, but it has become the generic term for a person
who acts as an intermediary between humans and the
spirit world.
To communicate with the spirit world, the shaman
enters a trance state.
This is often induced by rhythmic chanting or drumming
After regaining normal consciousness, the shaman
announces what he has learned about the problem at
hand and what should be done about it.
In most cases the appropriate response is to perform a
ritual sacrifice of some sort.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 2: Connecting to the Cosmos
Discerning the Cosmic Cycles
One very important function of Neolithic priests was to
track the seasons and determine the best time for
seasonal activities, such as planting.
What we now call astrology developed as a way of
understanding the cycle of the seasons and how
humans fit into it.
Hilltop Tombs
Ancient cultures around the world appear to have
favoured high places as burial sites, often constructed
with a symbolic link between earth and sky (called an
axis mundi).
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Animals and Gods
Another common feature of Neolithic religion was a
tendency to associate certain animals with specific
deities.
For example, the ancient Egyptians had a cat goddess
named Bast who was revered as a symbol of both
motherliness and hunting prowess
The Bull God
The most powerful male deities tended to be linked
with the strength and virility of the bull.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 3: Temple Religion
Indo-European Priests
Indo-European is a modern term referring to a
language family and cultural system that eventually
stretched from India all the way through Europe.
Everywhere the IE warriors conquered, they set up
a social system with four basic divisions, which
consisted of priests, warriors, middle-class
commoners, and servants.
The priesthood was hereditary.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Priests and Temples Elsewhere
Priests became a powerful social class in many
other parts of the world as well, including Africa,
Asia, the Americas, and among the Jewish people.
Typically, the role of priest was reserved for males:
females were considered impure because of their
menstrual cycle.
The Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome, who tended the
sacred fires and performed rituals, where among the very
few exceptions to this general rule.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 4: Prophetic Religion
The word prophet derives from Greek and has
two related meanings, one referring to a person
who speaks on behalf of a deity and one referring
to a person who foresees or predicts the future.
Zarathustra, Prophet of the Wise Lord
The founding prophet of Zoroastrianism developed
the concepts of heaven and hell, which were
powerful tools for any prophet seeking to persuade
people to behave as they believed the deity
demanded.
Zarathustra also played an important part in the
development of monotheism.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Abrahamic Prophetic Traditions
Hebrew prophets messages were directed
towards the people of Israel as a whole, warning of
the disasters that loomed if they did not follow
Gods demands.
Christianity saw Jesus and certain events
surrounding his life as the fulfillment of Hebrew
prophecies.
Islam recognized the Hebrew prophets, beginning
with Abraham and including Jesus, as the
forerunners of the Prophet Muhammad, the last
and greatest of all.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 5: The Energy God
Around 2,500 years ago an idea developed that
the divine is neither a sky-father nor an earthmother, but a force, an energy, that is found by
looking within.
This divinity is understood to underlie everything that
exists.
Finding the Dao within
The sage, Laozi, of 600 BCE China, said the Dao
(or mysterious energy that underlies all things) is
like it water: will take on the shape of whatever
container we pour it into.
The Dao does not have a personality, and there is no
reason for humans to fear, love, or appease it.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
That is you: Sitting near the Sages of old
India
The Upanishads, of 1500600 BCE northern India,
talk of the sat (usually translated in English as
being, truth, or the real).
A god is an energy hidden within and sustaining
everything.
That ultimate reality, tat tvam asithat is you
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
The First Principle: Greek Philosophy before
Socrates
Greek philosophers around 2,500 years ago asked
the questions: What is the first principle, the first
cause, the source from which all else comes?
Their attempt to understand the causal principle
underlying all thingswithout bringing a god as the final
causemarked a major advance towards the
development of the scientific worldview.
Later theistic mysticism
Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics alike
believed in a god beyond the reaches of human
understanding.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 6: Purity and Monasticism
In this wave practitioners typically sought spiritual
enlightenment through asceticism.
Their ethic was one of non-violence towards all
creatures, and their goal was to perfect the human
potential for purity of mind.
Ganges Spirituality
A new type of religion came into bloom in the
region of the Ganges river around 500 BCE, which
taught the idea that it was wrong to harm any living
creature.
Students took vows of poverty and celibacy, and
considered themselves to have departed the
world.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 7: Mystery Religion
Mystery religion refers to a wave of Greek and
Roman traditions in which the core teachings and
rituals were kept secret from outsiders and
revealed only to those prepared to undergo
initiation in the hope of securing blessings during
this life and a heavenly paradise in the afterlife.
Mystery cults may have influenced early
Christians, who were initiated by undergoing
baptism.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 8: God on Earth
The Avatar
Avatara is a Sanskrit theological term for the
coming down of a god to earth.
The avatar is a god in truly human form.
The avatar god is a saviour figure who saves the
world from some evil power, as well as saving
those who put their faith in him from hell and
ensuring that they have a place in heaven.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Krishna, Avatara of Vishnu
In some Hindu stories Vishnu is the ultimate deity,
the god who lies at the origin of everything there is,
including the creator god Brahman.
The Bhagavad Gita tells the story of Krishna, one
of the most important avatars of Vishnu.
Krishna teaches of the many ways to lead a good
religious life, including the yoga (way) of good works
(karma yoga), the way of deep spiritual wisdom (jnana
yoga), and the way of faithful devotion to Krishna ( bhakti
yoga).
Krishna promises that those who practice devotion to
him will go to his heaven when they die.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Amitabha, the Buddha of Saving Grace
Amitabha Buddha promises to establish a paradise
free of all suffering, disease, and ill will, in which
whose who put their trust in him will be reborn after
their death.
Jesus the Christ: God come down
The New Testament says that Jesus emptied
himself of divinity and came down for the salvation
of the world.
By participating in the sacred ritualsthe
sacraments of baptism and the Eucharistand
placing their trust in Jesus as Lord, Christians
could expect to go to heaven after death.
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 9: Scriptural Religion
The earliest scriptures we have are the Zoroastrian
Avesta of Persian, the Hindu Vedas, and the Torah of
Judaism, all of which took shape approximately three
thousand years ago.
Scripturalism took shape much later, as different groups
began to insist that their particular scriptures were the
literal words of God, and to make adherence to those
scriptures the focus of their religious life.
Two or three generations passed after the death of
Jesus before the gospels were written, and the
Christian canon did not take shape until well into the
third century CE.
The Christian Bible became as central to Christianity as
the Torah was to Judaism.
The surahs that make up the Quran are believed to be
Ten Waves of Religion, contd.
Wave 10: Fundamentalism
The term fundamentalism was first used in the
early twentieth century to refer to a variety of
American Protestantism characterized by a fervent
belief in the absolute, literal truth of the Bible.
Adherents reject all forms of secularism and the
authority of science (particularly the concept of
evolution).
Fundamentalists tend to be male-dominated and to
understand malefemale relations and roles from a
hierarchical, patriarchal perspective.
Similar movements exist within most religious
traditions
The majority of adherents have no desire to force
their convictions on others, though within all these
groups there are militant minorities who are
Why Study Religion?
The first and most obvious reason to study
religion is that it exists.
Second, religion so pervades the human
world that it demands our attention
regardless of whether it plays a direct role
in our own personal life.
Why Study Religion?
Insider versus Outsider
When approaching an unfamiliar religious tradition,
outsiders need to be sensitive to the ways in which
it serves the needs of its followers.
Insiders need to understand how their own
tradition looks from the outside.
Note
Some Practical Matters
The so-called Western religions arose in
what we now term the Middle East: they are
Western only in the sense that they were
widely adopted in the West.
There is no clear dividing line between East
and West.
All the religions discussed in these volumes
are now found throughout the world.