Religion(1): What Is Religion?

Case Study: Divination

Odin ExperiencesExperiencesZeus Shiva Ecstasy

Yahweh TranquilityAllah Gods Gods Ishtar Sanctified

Mystery Ahura Mazda

What is Religion?What is Religion?

Atonement symbols BeliefsBeliefs Prayer ImmortalityPracticesPractices (rituals) (rituals) Transubstantiation Meditation Hungry Ghosts

SpiritsSpirits Demons Ancestors

Religion is COMPLEX!!!COMPLEX!!!

Religion is neither a single phenomenon, nor a “thing”; rather, it is a messy and dynamic collection of feeling, experience, institutions, practices, and beliefs.

Attempts at a DefinitionEdward Tylor Edward Tylor

“The belief in spiritual beings.”

Clifford Geertz Clifford Geertz “A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful,

pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men 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.”

Emile Durkheim Emile Durkheim “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to

sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”

Attempts at a DefinitionMelford Spiro Melford Spiro

“Religion is an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings.”

Peter Berger Peter Berger “Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order

that includes within it all being—human or otherwise—i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man.”

Max WeberMax WeberRefused to attempt a definition of religion. [Smart

Man!]

Theories of Religion …from Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained (2001)

Religion provides Religion provides explanationsexplanationsPeople created religion to explain puzzling natural

phenomenaReligion explains puzzling experiences: dreams, prescience,

etc.Religion explains the origins of thingsReligion explains why there is evil and suffering

Theories of Religion

Religion provides Religion provides comfortcomfortReligious explanations make mortality less unbearableReligion allays anxiety and makes for a comfortable world

Theories of Religion

Religion provides Religion provides social ordersocial orderReligion holds society togetherReligion perpetuates a particular social orderReligion supports morality

Theories of Religion

Religion is a Religion is a cognitive illusioncognitive illusionPeople are superstitious; they will believe anythingReligious concepts are irrefutableRefutation is more difficult than belief

Functionalism: Religion as explanation and comfort

Social institutions are collective means to fill individual biological needs

Why does religion do? What does it do that makes it especially functional?Examples?

Structural-Functionalism: Religion aids social order

Agreement (consensus) between members of a society on morals maintains social order

Moral consensus creates equilibrium, which is the normal state of society

When things disrupt equilibrium religion is often the method of setting things right again…outside personal interest, sometimes sole institution for arbitration

Cognitive Science of Religion:Religion as illusion

The use of ideas from cognitive psychology to explain why religious ideas are so “catchy”

Epidemiology of representations (Sperber) Culture is “ecological patterns of psychological phenomena” “Relevant mysteries” Selective transmission Not the same as memes (Dawkins) Inferential salience, greater intuitive appeal Boas on Bastian’s elementary ideas: “They may be indigenous, they may

be imported, they may have arisen from a variety of sources, but they are there. The human mind is so formed that it invents them spontaneously or accepts them whenever they are offered to it. This is the much misunderstood elementary idea of Bastian.”

Cognitive Science of Religion:Religion as illusion

Anthropomorphism as an intuitively appealing type of explanation (Guthrie) Complex things/processes easily apprehended when envision to have

human intention Inferring human-intention behind things a “good bet”

Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device

Capture one’s attention (Boyer) Minimally counterintuitive concepts

Are easily and selectively remembered (Whitehouse) Modes theory of religion

Semantic memory=doctrinal religiosity Episodic memory=imagistic religiosity

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Religion is a single phenomenon, nor a “thing”; rather, it is a messy and dynamic collection of feeling,

, , , and beliefs.