L1 Notes_What is religion
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School
The University of Hong Kong *
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Course
2390
Subject
Religion
Date
Nov 24, 2024
Type
docx
Pages
2
Uploaded by Athenian300
L1: What is religion?
Majority of this lecture is not examinable.
Part 1
: Associations
God, universal truths, spirituality, faith and acceptance, theories of morality, moral codes
(what you’re supposed to do), purpose of existence or meaning of life, holy scriptures,
transcendence [of what?], identity, ritual, death and the afterlife, mystical experience,
institutions, organizations
Institutions: worship, prayer, ritual, holy scriptures, organizations, charity, places of worship
Beliefs: God, gods, death and the afterlife, transcendence, faith and acceptance, theories of
morality, moral codes, meaning of life
Part 2
: Definition
What is religion?
more supernaturalism
1.
Institutions that are brought together by shared belief system that have ethical
implications and are expressed through artefacts (e.g. prayer, holy scriptures, etc.)
a.
X
no supernatural aspect in it
2.
A type of worldview involving the supernatural, especially supernatural beings/
forces that are worthy of respect or worship or obeying
3.
A set of personal or institutionalized beliefs that set forth believers in a certain
direction (guiding philosophy)
a.
smaller scale of religions are not institutionalized
b.
X
no supernatural aspect in it
4.
An all-encompassing explanation for the origin, or nature of the world and the things
that exist within it
5.
A colonialist social construct that elevates certain features of Western belief and
practice to the status of “real religions” and discounts other forms of belief as
“lesser”.
Lecture content
New continents
: why would God abandon two continents of people and not reveal
anything about Jesus to them?
It was hard not to believe in God before Darwin came along, because there were no
alternative explanations for the complex animals and plants on the planet
Projection of ourselves or things like us as nexus of hidden causes of things we
don’t understand
: Every group of people look at the world, confronted with a bunch
of things they don’t understand, and come up with their own made-up
understandings
“the history of the major religions is best organized as sectarian history, thereby
reproducing the apologetic patristic heresiological model”
o
Sectarian history: sects split from the mainstream beliefs
o
Patristic: early church fathers, up to 4
th
century
o
Heresiological: heresy
o
Early church fathers had similar models categorizing Christians religions
based on doctrinal differences
There was an attempt to replace idolatry with natural religion and its inner
distinctions
Instituted Religion in Fairbairn’s model
: someone came along and formalized it with
a fixed set of scriptures
Tiele’s 1876 Classification
: national nomistic religions (for particular people groups)
vs. world religions (seek to spread throughout the world)
Can we have something more than a Western perspective?
“Some Old Chinese terms relating to religion, mythology, ritual” (Axel Schuessler, Language
Log, 17/9/23):
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=60614
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