Humans, Hume argues, anthropomorphize the unknown causes behind significant events and, thereby, create gods. Otherwise, religion would have disappeared long ago under the pressure of massive disconfirmation because religious beliefs are "barely more than a fabric of errors" (p. 227). The two tendencies produce contrary movements, furthermore, and initiate a continuous "flux and reflux" between polytheism and monotheism. I did not like that class so much, but this book helped me get through most of my essays and it did teach me a lot on various religions and why they believe in what they believe in. People around me sometimes wonder what exactly I am doing studying comparative religion. Not only does Hume consider religion a fit object for scientific investigation, he also theorizes that religion arises in the absence of science. They are based variously on ideas human social structures, emotions, or cognition. james strachey. ulysses and the sirens: studies in rationality and irrationality, rev. totem and taboo: some points of agreement between the mental lives of savages and neurotics (1913), trans. The general term religion reflects this differentiation. Please subscribe or login to access full text content. 31–32). london: routledge and kegan paul, 1975. durkheim, emile. Schleiermacher's religious approach to religion influenced later theory as much as Hume's humanistic one. ." Because they need "to form some particular and distinct idea" of the causes and because science "exceeds" their comprehension, "the ignorant multitude" allow the imagination to clothe the unknown causes with human features (p. 29). "magical hair." new york: basic books, 1973. guthrie, stewart. INTRODUCTION Anthropological theories of religion are diverse. David Hume's The Natural History of Religion (1757) is the most influential eighteenth-century humanistic theory of religion. Feuerbach complicates matters, however, by insisting that theological statements predicating attributes of God must be inverted. Something went wrong. Sometimes he treats it purely as an illustration of a universal psychological conflict. manuel, frank. notre dame, ind. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 1990. leach, edmund. Religiosity is a term used by social scientists to refer to religious behavior. cambridge, mass. the future of an illusion (1928), trans. Pals breaks down the theories into their simpliest forms and makes them so easy to understand. A religion is a shared system of beliefs and practices concerning sacred things that unites a community. Stewart Guthrie, on the contrary, adheres to Hume's anthropological approach. 44). BIBLIOGRAPHY religion explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought. Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. "Religion, Theories of Nevertheless, he offers a salutary corrective. Valid histories are hard to find that are not written by Christian apologists with evangelical agendas. Second, Durkheim supplements his explanation of the origin of religion with a functional explanation of its persistence. london: routledge and kegan paul, 1966. douglas, mary. What is the structure of religion? the varieties of religious experience (1902). Durkheim argues that religion persists because it satisfies social needs. William James also holds that religious feelings are primary and the explanation of religion. Specifically religious concepts (as opposed to folklore, myths, etc.) This new cosmopolitanism eroded some of the inevitability clothing Western forms of theism. on religion. Humans must constantly draw implicit or explicit explanatory conclusions about their surroundings. Like the concept of religion itself, it is the product of, among other influences, the Age of Exploration and Empire (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), the Protestant Reformation (sixteenth century), and the Augustan Age (eighteenth century). It produced different and warring "religions" (i.e., conceptions of piety and worship), justified by competing criteria of religious authority. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. There is unlikely to ever be a completely satisfying theory of religion. Others, like Mary Douglas and Edmund Leach, who follow even more closely in Durkheim's footsteps, have documented rich correlations between social arrangements and religious representations. Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. They explicitly aver that their models explain the origin of religion. To characterize religion most generally, he introduces a notion that influenced Eliade and his followers, and that eventually succumbed to ethnographic counterexamples. Unable to add item to List. new york: arno press, 1978. penner, hans. FUNDAMENTALISM Rather, the latter simply make some supernatural concepts—the one's concerning full access strategic agents—more relevant. new york: penguin, 1984. andresen, jensine. . are those supernatural concepts that are "serious" and arouse strong emotions. Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to the diverse contents of religious traditions as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. Non-Western cultures, furthermore, did not have terms with anything like the same connotations or semantic scope. What is distinctive/specific about religion? Sometimes he portrays the primal crime as an historical phylogenetic truth. PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). This comparatively coherent religious horizon eventually collapsed under the growing pressure exerted by European expansion. --Thomas W. Martin, Susquehanna University Science as an institution, by contrast, has historically resisted the tendency to anthropomorphize. Concern about the "various and contrary events of human life" elicits hopes and fears whose object are the unknown causes of those events (p. 28). Christians, for instance, could view Jews as stiff-necked people who refused to accept the gospel, and Muslims as schismatics who split Christ's Church. new york: basic books, 2001. d'aquili, eugene, and newberg, andrew. Indeed, the Qur'han itself carefully positions Jews and Christians in relation to Islam. Encyclopedia.com. Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. He argues that simply demonstrating that unintended, beneficial effects result from the presence of an institution or behavior in a society does not suffice to explain the presence of the institution or the behavior. All Rights Reserved. In the modern West science has largely replaced the theoretical role for religion, granting communion greater prominence. The distinction between data and theory is best conceived of in a relative sense: there is no qualitative abyss separating data and theory. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). If religion itself is not universal, it is, nevertheless, a response to universal feelings. 1: the inferno, trans. Please try again. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, 2001. boyer, pascal. Although Durkheim relies on irremediably faulty ethnography and untenable assumptions about the simplicity of "primitive" societies, his interpretation of Australian religion well illustrates his general theory. The focus of this chapter is one segment of theory in the study of religion, namely theories of religion, i.e. the divine comedy, vol. Theories of Religion Topic 1 – AQA Sociology 2. Michael Stausberg is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. Although Hume believes that both polytheism and monotheism compromise and distort natural human virtue, he believes that monotheism engenders intolerance and exhibits a greater proneness to enormities.

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