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Title In Karen Armstrong’s essay “Homo Religiosus,” she describes religion as a result of rituals. The more a person practices rituals, the more they believe that they work. For example, in “Homo Religiosus,” Armstrong describes a scene from the Paleolithic age in which a crucial, initiation ritual was performed. Young boys were taken from their mothers and forced to go through terrifying situations. When the initiations are complete, the boys will fully understand the, “...link between hunter and prey in their common struggle for survival”(5). Understanding the similarities between the animals and the people will make the hunt more sacred and will honor the animals. This ritual encourages the boys to face their fears and to learn to embrace …show more content…
Religion, rituals, and selflessness are all connected. Rituals create religion and from the religion, selflessness arises. In Robert Thurman’s essay “Wisdom,” he explains the journey to selflessness and the bond all humans share with their world. According to Thurman, the first step is to start with the body by pinpointing each of the different senses in the Self. This will lead to the “recogniz[ation] that for each of these sensations you are experiencing, you are receiving data from the outside world”(491). The environment and the Self are one therefore, people have a connection through their shared environment and the similarities shared with the people around them. Thurman uses this to represent the ways that humans and their perceptions of themselves are ever-changing. This can relate to the way that the idea of artificial intelligence has changed over time and is constantly evolving. Before there was artificial intelligence, people had to fend for themselves and perform rituals for the things that they could not control in life. These days, people accept artificial intelligence in their lives and look to it for comfort. In Sherry Turkle’s “Selections from Alone Together,” artificial intelligence becomes something people can love and shows them that there are different types
Miller-Thayer, Jennifer. “Religion and Belief Systems.”Class Lecture. Anthrology 3: Cultural Anthropology. Chaffey College, Rancho Cucamonga. 06 March. 2014
More than forty-five thousand years ago, there have existed two types of bipedal humans, the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, but only one has survived. The survivors were the humans who we are comprised out of and still breathing and living today the Homo sapiens. Some scientist say that the lack of imagination was the key factor to the Neanderthals demise, while the Homo sapiens with a broader imagination lived on. In Karen Armstrong’s essay “Homo religiosus” she describes her time in the caverns of Lascaux, while she explains the painting on the walls as part of the ancient civilization’s rituals. The painting tells us a story of their daily lives and the myths in which they believe in, that keeps them in a peace of mind. As there were many
As children, we are often told stories, some of which may have practical value in the sense of providing young minds with lessons and morals for the future, whereas some stories create a notion of creativity and imagination in the child. In Karen Armstrong’s piece, “Homo Religiosus”, a discussion of something similar to the topic of storytelling could translate to the realm of religion. Armstrong defines religion as a, “matter of doing rather than thinking” (17) which she describes using an example in which adolescent boys in ancient religions, who were not given the time to “find themselves” but rather forced into hunting animals which ultimately prepares these boys to be able to die for their people, were made into men by the process of doing.
Religion, by far, is one of the most dominant forces the human race has ever seen. It has influenced and continues to influence billions of people all over the world. It has driven some of the most beneficial cooperative humanitarian efforts and some of the most heinous acts of violence anybody can perpetuate on another human being. In his book, When Religion Becomes Evil, Dr. Charles Kimball explores the causes and slippery slopes that lead to these kinds of atrocious behaviors. Many of his points were incredibly well thought out and valid, but one repetitive phrase that Dr. Kimball used caught my attention: “authentic religion.” This one phrase contains so many troublesome presuppositions that it is impossible not to question.
The human condition: seeking answers without truly understanding them. At a certain point in a person’s life, one faces an existential crisis that leads one to question much of what was blindly believed to be true including religion. The purpose of religion is a question that always emerges from this period of self-reflection. During her own crisis, Karen Armstrong questioned the notion of religion and voiced her findings in the book, The Case for God. In the chapter, “Homo Religiosus”, she addresses the purpose of religion. She states that humans “created religions and works of art to help them find value in their lives, despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary.”(38) Armstrong then continues to give the reader her perspective on religion.
According to Haviland, Kilmurray, Fedorak and Lee (2013), religion is universal across cultures, and it serves several purposes for humankind, both psychological and social. It meets human needs by explaining the unknown, promoting group membership, denoting right from wrong, and absolving accountability for individuals by placing responsibility on God(s). In recent years, however, interest in mainstream religions has declined. In its place, Haviland et al. (2013) explain that there has been a resurgence of pagan religions, now referred to as neo-paganism.
In the midst of his already successful career, Sigmund Freud decided to finally dedicate a book of his to religion, referring to the subject as a phenomena faced by the scientific community. This new work, Totem and Taboo, blew society off its feet, ultimately expanding the reaches of debates and intellectual studies. From the beginning, Freud argues that there exists a parallel between the archaic man and the contemporary compulsive. Both these types of people, he argues, exhibit neurotic behavior, and so the parallel between the two is sound. Freud argues that we should be able to determine the cause of religion the same way we determine the cause of neurosis. He believes, since all neuroses stem from childhood experiences, that the origins of this compulsive behavior we call religion should also be attributed to some childhood experiences of the human race, too. Freudian thought has been dominant since he became well known. In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, religion becomes entirely evident as a major part of the novel, but the role it specifically plays is what we should question. Therefore, I argue that Freud’s approach to an inborn sense of religion and the role it plays exists in The Last of the Mohicans, in that the role religion plays in the wilderness manifests itself in the form of an untouchable truth, an innate sense of being, and most importantly, something that cannot and should not be tampered with.
Internal forces can have great effects on human behavior, but how do the external forces influence human behavior? One could be influenced by internal forces such as morals and values, on the contrary, the external forces of society can also influence and shape human behavior in distinct ways. In “Homo Religiosus” by Karen Armstrong, the essay tries to show the relation of myth, religion, and art, and how they have changed over time with society. In “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” by Ethan Watters, the essay talks about how pharmaceutical companies are trying to establish the disease of the depression in Japan, but they are not doing it for the needs of the others but rather for the benefit of themselves. In today’s technologically
Ordinary religion shows people how to live well within boundaries, and concern themselves with living well in this current world, not in another. Ordinary religion promotes cultures, traditions, values, and common social acts. In contrast, extraordinary religion helps people to transcend beyond their ordinary culture and concerns, crosses the borders of life as we used to know it and seeks to new better place. It is also believed that people have chance to contact God through spiritual ceremonies and get helped by supernatural power. For instance, ceremonies and rituals of baptism and circumcision for infants, and conformations for adolescents, marriage, and funerals for the dead. Through these spiritual ceremonies, people are crossing the physical boundaries and reaching something supernatural that they believe will give them power to encounter challenges and difficulties during stages of life. There are three elements in religious belief developing most religions in America, which are fundamental, ritual, and tradition. The first element is the fundamental structures which are defined with a myth, philosophy, or theology and limited by the boundaries that create the basic ways in which people, cultures and communities imagine, define, and accept how things are and what they mean. A second essential element of religion is ritual. Rituals are a representative set of
Religion is a symbolic representation of society. The sociological approach to religious belief looks at how society behaves on a whole, to answer the question, “Why are people religious?” We express our participation in religious events through plays, acts of confession, religious dances, etc. To begin to understand why we have such term, let’s understand the common elements of religion. There are different types in which people believe in or follow and that is: animatism, animism, ancestral spirits, god and goddesses, and minor supernatural beings. Beyond these different elements, such one is to have religious leaders to follow.
Religion is an ever-growing idea that has no set date of origin. Throughout history religion has served as an answer to the questions that man could not resolve. The word religion is derived from the Latin word “religio” meaning restraint in collaboration with the Greek word “relegere” which means to repeat or to read again. Religion is currently defined as an organized system of beliefs and practices revolving around, or leading to, a transcendent spiritual experience. Throughout time, there has yet to be a culture that lacks a religion of some form, whether it is a branch of paganism, a mythological based religion or mono/polytheistic religion. Many religions have been forgotten due to the fact that they were ethnic religions and globalizing religions were fighting to be recognized, annihilating these ancient and ethnic religions. Some of these faiths include: Finnish Paganism, Atenism, Minoan Religion, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Vedism, Zoroastrianism, Asatru, and the Olmec Religion. Religion is an imperative part of our contemporary world but mod...
Scholars have been trying to come up with a well-founded, acceptable and universal definition of religion for years; however, none of these definitions so far are a perfect fit for all religions of the world. There are many things in our life that are well defined and well understood but, unfortunately, religion is not one of them. There is no common ground and understanding of what religion really means. Religion is what we make of it, so no one can truly define religion in a way that is meaningful across all borders as it is outside of the realm of reason and rationale and the definitions we give could be either too exclusive or inclusive.
Across the world there are many cultures that practice some type of spiritual or religious traditions. Having a religious society helps in determining each cultures identity. Religious and spirituality vary from one culture to the next. Within every religion there lies rituals that are practiced by a group of followers. It has been known that no group of individuals anywhere on earth over the past 100,000 years has been without religion.
Durkheim’s study of religion in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is widely renowned to be one of the founding theories and definitions of the sociology of religion. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life presents Durkheim’s core belief that sociology of religion should be studied in a rational and objective manner. This essay will go into the definition of religion provided in chapter 2 in depth, particularly Durkheim’s sacred and profane dichotomy, which he views as fundamental to religion, and his controversial denial of the divine being necessary for all religions. This essay will examine the counterargument of how the Divine could arguably be a feature common in all religions. Furthermore, we will focus on Durkheim 's problematic
" Religion is not just a social, cultural, political, or ideological factor; instead it finds its power in the personal chambers of the soul of the individual. Within the soul we discover the source of the private motivation that forms perceptions and behavior ( pg 7, Rediscovering the Kingdom)."