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Christianity influence on western civilization
The influence of christianity on the traditional religion
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Violence in Christianity
Violence, it has been a main tool in the Christian arsenal since the middle ages. From the Crusades to the Inquisitions of Spain, violence is ever prevalent. Even in this day and age, intolerance and violence continue to be preached. But is this violence an instrument of God or man? Is violence an inherent part of this religion? Some would say that it is indeed built in to the very fabric of its being. The Old Testament is full of the smiting of infidels and those who defy God. The Book of Revelations tells of the violent and fiery demise of this entire planet. There are instances of mass genocide, the killing of innocent children, holy wars, you name a violent act and God has called for it. The story of Noah recounts how God killed off everyone in the world save one family. This violence, some speculate, is a result of man?s own doing. Perhaps God?s word was miss-interpreted or those in power sought to legitimize their own violent acts through the involvement of religion. Regardless of whether it was God or man that made religion violent, it is now deeply a part of it. The very involvement of religion into a dispute can cause the dispute to escalate exponentionally. ?Limited mundane conflict may escalate into violence when the issues at stake are imbued with religious ultimacy. (Klausner 268)?
Violence not only plays a strong role in both commandment and practice, it is part of the very core of this belief system. From the zeal and fervor of conversion to the conquest in the name of a deity, violence is ingrained into religion?s very being. ?Religion? engenders an energy that may be experienced as despair or as enthusiasm? Despair can feed an urge to rid the world of pollution and sin (Klausner 268).? Violence in the religious realm may serve several purposes. It can be an end unto itself, a means to accomplish a religious or religious/economic/political goal. It can be done to invoke terror and awe, as in ?witness the power of our God and tremble before his might.? However it is enacted and whatever its reasons, violence is now an inescapable inevitability in religion?s ongoing battle between Good and Evil. In attempting to prove this, I will be drawing on a body of information collected from the Bible; The Encyclopedia of Religion: Articles on: Violence, Crusades, Inquisition; Ethics: Violence; Dictionary of Middle Age...
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... Roman gods certainly seem to be human projections onto the divine; perhaps we as Christians just projected a human father figure onto a beard in the sky as a means of protection and justification for the wickedness of man. After all, if it is in the name of God, how can we be wrong?
Bibliography
Candelaria, Michael R. Ethics. Ed. John K. Roth. ?Violence.? Salem Press Inc.: 1994.
Finucane, R.C. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. ?Inquisition, The.? Macmilian Publishing Co.: 1986.
Johnson, James Turner. The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Ed. James F. Childress & John Macquarrie. ?Just War?. The Westminster Press: 1986
Klausner, Samuel Z. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. ?Violence.? Macmilian Publishing Co.: 1986.
Little, Donald P. Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Mircea Eliade. ?Crusades.? Macmilian Publishing Co.: 1986.
New American Standard Bible.
Russell, Frederick H. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Ed. Joseph R. Strayer. ?Crusade, Concept of.? American Council of Learned Societies: 1984.
Wakefield, Walter L. Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Ed. Joseph R. Strayer. ?Inquisition.? American Council of Learned Societies: 1984.
Odysseus faces life-threatening adversities in the sea and the situation only continues to worsen from there. A reader can easily picture the “whole storms of all the winds and covered earth and ocean alike”(291-292). Once the unique sentence structure is deciphered vivid images form. Epics intend to portray the central hero in action. Calypso eloquently, but with peculiar language paints the image of the battle, in this case, our Greek king facing the raging storm. While Odysseus fares in the stormy sea in an unnerved state he fears the goddess is correct regarding her assumption of his journey home being filled with pain. Accurately the circumstances he finds himself in are specified with a reference to the Danaans. Odysseus tells himself, “Thrice and four times blessed are the Danaans who perished” (305). Danaans is a title Homer utilizes to label the expeditionary force of Troy, the Greeks. As the, now, solitary hero confronts the wrath of Poseidon believes himself to be more unfortunate than the miserable Greeks during a difficult time. The pain he is experiencing is apparent when such remark is made. Odysseus continues to reveal and provide insight on his hardship. Specifically, he comments the Danaans lost while “doing the pleasures of the sons of Atreus” (306). A better sense of the ruthless waves and circumstances Odysseus is in is
by God you will see that God was opposed to war, violence and any form
This course dove into medieval history and touched on all of the most critical elements of the period giving a well-rounded look into the lives and cultures of the middle ages. As the class moved forward it became evident that religion is central to understanding the people, advances, and set backs of this period. We learned how inseparable the middle ages and religion are due to how completely it consumed the people, affected the art, and furthered academics. Since, there is a tendency to teach about history and literature separately from religion and since religion possessed a dominant position in every aspect of a medieval person’s life, while many of us had already looked into the period we missed some crucial cultural context allowing
Robinson, John J. Dungeon, Fire, and Sword: The Knights Templar in the Crusades. New York: M. Evans &, 1991. Print.
Circe first tells Odysseus two different routes that he could take home, the first one consists of Rovers, moving rocks that are impossible for any ship to pass and the second route consisting of having to pass by a six-headed eating monster named Scylla and a whirlpool named Charybdis that sucks in and vomits out the sea. Odysseus chooses the second route and Circe gives advice, suggesting him that once they pass Scylla, to not give up from rowing and she asserts, “No, no put all your backs into it, row on; invoke Blind Force, that bore this scourge of men, to keep her from a second strike against you” (12. 86-88). Circe hates the fact that Odysseus will have to take this peril and sacrifice six of his men to Scylla so, she encourages him to take his ship on a racing stroke past it. Odysseus asks Circe to instruct him about if it’s possible fighting off Scylla and she responds saying that no power could fight her and to instead pray to the goddess of blind force, who gave birth to Scylla. Not being aware of all these dangers or knowing these tips, Odysseus could have been one of the six
Religion is a part of society that is so closely bound to the rest of one’s life it becomes hard to distinguish what part of religion is actually being portrayed through themselves, or what is being portrayed through their culture and the rest of their society. In Holy Terrors, Bruce Lincoln states that religion is used as a justifiable mean of supporting violence and war throughout time (Lincoln 2). This becomes truly visible in times such as the practice of Jihad, the Reformation, and 9/11. The purpose of this essay is to show that as long as religion is bound to a political and cultural aspect of a community, religious war and destruction will always occur throughout the world. A historical methodology will be deployed in order to gain
In different circumstances using violence on behalf of religion has aided a reformation, or the spreading of the gospel. Other times, millions of people have died due to resistance. Some situations call for violence and others do not. However, there is a failsafe way of determining whether violence should be used on behalf of religion, or not.
Thomas Aquinas held the view that violence was necessary when it was justified and meant to ensure the common good. Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy can be broken down into one easy to remember phrase, ““Good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided.” All other precepts of the natural law are based on this” (Aquinas I-II.94.2). Aquinas’s bases his entire philosophy around the simple idea that evil should be shunned from individual’s lives and they should instead focus on the good. Yet, Aquinas did foresee that in certain cases, violence and war were necessary to ensure the common good, “Therefore, if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin,...
Once he is dropped off, the Phoenicians immediately set off back to their homeland. Poseidon is still very angry, so he immediately destroys the ship with waves and currents. This phenomenon is clearly expressed in Current flow through the Straits of Mackinac, and article explaining peculiar interactions between different currents. James Saylor says “The region of intense thermal gradients that separate the upper and lower water layers is called the thermocline. The warmer water, the upper layer, is moved easily about the lakes by winds acting on the lake’s surfaces, causing the familiar downwellings and upwellings of the thermocline that are observed along the lake coasts. Downwellings represent the piling up of the wan water, pushing the thermocline to deeper depths. This often causes unexpected currents that can exceed 3 m/s, thus making the waters extremely dangerous.” The destruction of the Phoenician ship was clearly caused by downwellings. The ancient Greeks showed downwellings by expressing the as an instrument of Poseidon’s
According to Armstrong (2001), “The very word Islam, which means “surrender”, is related to the Arabic salam, or peace”(p. 48). Is Islam a violent religion? This is the issue that has been brought up by the class, and it will be debated towards the end of the semester. This question has been raised by many non-Muslims due to the numerous events that occurred throughout the years such as September 11, some managed to find the right answers while others are still doubting Islam and trying identify and understand how it is practiced and know it’s values in order to know whether it is violent or not.
Instead of providing a means for life to flourish, rivers in Odyssey further hardship and provide passage to death. When Odysseus is faced with a journey to Hades’ house, he must travel a branch of the water of Styx to complete his mission. The River Styx ferries souls of the dead to the Underworld, symbolizing an ending to life and a passage to death. In this situation the River hinders Odysseus’s homecoming as it marks another hazardous journey, emphasized by how the dead react to Odysseus’s presence in the Underworld: “Not even you can ever top this, this bold foray into Hades”, since so few living beings accomplish the feat (Od 11: 493-4). Odysseus’s “bold foray into Hades” includes “[crossing] many rivers, great bodies of water, nightmarish streams”, all various forms of rivers ultimately hampering Odysseus’s nostos (Od 11: 155-6). The abundance of rivers and their impedance on Odysseus’s journey contrasts the notion that rivers encourage purification and beneficial transitions. Odysseus becomes more fatigued when dealing with the delaying rivers, never transformed or enlightened, their purposes being to setback his
Nelson, Jack. Is religion killing us?violence in the Bible and the Quran / Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.. 2003 Print.
Every state, culture, and society in the world has some form of religion. The most popular religions in the world today are Christianity, Buddhism, and the Muslim religions. Members of every religion follow some form of philosophy or ideology that shape their thinking and behaviors. One common thing about the existing religions is the presence of a supreme being. People misinterpret existing religious ideologies serving their personal interests that at times turn out to cause war. Religious ideologies brainwash populations who end up acting violently in different deviant forms (Richardson, 518). Religions use specific ideologies to make people living in a society violent to peaceful members who may fight back in self-defense.
Ullmann, Walter. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. New York City, NY: Routledge, 2003.
Violence. Just mentioning the word conjures up many images of assault, abuse, and even murder. Violence is a broad subject with many categories. Some types of violence are terrorist violence and domestic violence. Violence can arise from many different sources; these sources whether biological, cultural, and social all can evoke violent behavior. All cultures experience some sort of violence, and this paper considers violence as a cultural phenomenon across a range of various settings. Violence plays a part in both Islamic and Indian cultures according to the articles “Understanding Islam” and “Rising Dowry Deaths” by Kenneth Jost and Amanda Hitchcock, respectively. From an anthropological perspective, violence emphasizes concerns of meaning, representation and symbolism.