essay about religion and beliefs

Essay on World Religions And Belief Systems

Students are often asked to write an essay on World Religions And Belief Systems in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on World Religions And Belief Systems

World religions.

There are many different religions in the world, each with its own beliefs and practices. Some of the major religions include Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.

Belief Systems

A belief system is a set of beliefs that a person or group of people holds to be true. Belief systems can be religious or secular. Religious belief systems are based on the teachings of a particular religion, while secular belief systems are not based on any particular religion.

Diversity of Religions

The diversity of religions in the world is a reflection of the different ways that people have tried to understand the meaning of life and the universe. There is no one right way to believe, and people should be free to practice the religion that they feel is right for them.

It is important to be tolerant of people who have different religious beliefs. Tolerance means respecting the beliefs of others, even if you do not agree with them. Tolerance is essential for creating a peaceful and harmonious world.

250 Words Essay on World Religions And Belief Systems

What are world religions.

World religions are belief systems that have a large number of followers all over the world. They offer rituals, ceremonies, and practices to help people connect with the divine or ultimate reality. World religions include Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism.

Christianity:

Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and revolves around the belief in a triune God consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah who came to Earth to save humanity from sin. Christianity emphasizes love, forgiveness, and compassion.

Islam is founded on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and centers around belief in one God, Allah, and his messenger, Muhammad. It highlights the importance of submission to God’s will, known as Islam, and adherence to the Five Pillars of Islam. Muslims strive to live a life of devotion, prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage to Mecca.

Hinduism is a complex and diverse belief system with no single founder. It originated in India and encompasses a variety of traditions, philosophies, and practices. Hinduism places great emphasis on dharma, or righteous living, and the concept of reincarnation, where the soul passes through a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

Buddhism, founded by Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, originated in India and focuses on the pursuit of enlightenment or nirvana. It emphasizes the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path as ways to overcome suffering and achieve liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion, dating back to the Hebrew patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It revolves around the belief in one God, Yahweh or Jehovah, and the sacredness of the Torah, the Hebrew Bible. Judaism emphasizes ethical behavior, ritual observance, and the covenant between God and the Jewish people.

500 Words Essay on World Religions And Belief Systems

World religions are belief systems that have a large number of followers all over the world. They often have a long history, and they have shaped the cultures of the regions where they are practiced. Some of the largest world religions include Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Belief Systems of World Religions

Belief systems of world religions are the sets of beliefs and practices that are followed by the members of that religion. These beliefs and practices can be about things like God or gods, the afterlife, and the meaning of life. They can also include things like rituals, ceremonies, and festivals.

Similarities among World Religions

Even though world religions have different beliefs and practices, they also share some similarities. For example, many religions believe in a higher power, or God. They also often have a sense of community and belonging. Additionally, many religions have a code of ethics that their members are expected to follow.

Differences among World Religions

Of course, there are also many differences among world religions. These differences can be in their beliefs about God, the afterlife, and the meaning of life. They can also be in their rituals, ceremonies, and festivals. These differences can sometimes lead to conflict between different religious groups.

Importance of Understanding World Religions

It is important to understand world religions because they play a major role in the lives of many people around the world. They can help to shape people’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. They can also give people a sense of community and belonging. By understanding world religions, we can better understand the people who practice them and build bridges between different cultures.

World religions are belief systems that have a large number of followers all over the world. They often have a long history, and they have shaped the cultures of the regions where they are practiced. Belief systems of world religions are the sets of beliefs and practices that are followed by the members of that religion. They can be about things like God or gods, the afterlife, and the meaning of life. Even though world religions have different beliefs and practices, they also share some similarities.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Refugee
• Essay on Power Of Truth
• Essay on Young India Boon Or Bane

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Essay on What is Religion for Students and Children

500+ words essay on what is religion.

Religion refers to a belief in a divine entity or deity. Moreover, religion is about the presence of God who is controlling the entire world. Different people have different beliefs. And due to this belief, many different cultures exist.

Further, there are a series of rituals performed by each religion. This is done to please Gods of their particular religion. Religion creates an emotional factor in our country. The Constitution of our country is secular . This means that we have the freedom of following any religion. As our country is the most diverse in religions, religion has two main sub broad categories:

Monotheistic Religion

Monotheistic religions believe in the existence of one God. Some of the monotheistic religions are:

Islam: The people who follow are Muslims . Moreover, Islam means to ‘ surrender’ and the people who follow this religion surrender themselves to ‘Allah’.

Furthermore, the holy book of Islam is ‘ QURAN’, Muslims believe that Allah revealed this book to Muhammad. Muhammad was the last prophet. Above all, Islam has the second most popular religion in the entire world. The most important festivals in this religion are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

Christianity: Christian also believes in the existence of only one God. Moreover, the Christians believe that God sent his only Jesus Christ for our Salvation. The Holy book of Christians is the Bible .

Furthermore, the bible is subdivided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. Most Importantly, Jesus Christ died on the cross to free us from our sins. The people celebrate Easter on the third day. Because Jesus Christ resurrected on the third day of his death.

However, the celebration of Christmas signifies the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Above all Christianity has the most following in the entire world.

Judaism: Judaism also believes in the existence of one God. Who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses and the Hebrew prophets. Furthermore, Abraham is the father of the Jewish Faith. Most Noteworthy the holy book of the Jewish people is Torah.

Above all, some of the festivals that Jewish celebrate are Passover, Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, Hanukkah, etc.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Polytheistic Religion

Polytheistic religions are those that believe in the worship of many gods. One of the most believed polytheistic religion is:

Hinduism: Hinduism has the most popularity in India and South-east Asian sub-continent. Moreover, Hindus believe that our rewards in the present life are the result of our deeds in previous lives. This signifies their belief in Karma. Above all the holy book of Hindus is ‘Geeta’. Also, Hindus celebrate many festivals. Some of the important ones are Holi-The festival of colors and Diwali- the festival of lights.

Last, there is one religion that is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic.

Buddhism: Buddhism religion followers do not believe in the existence of God. However, that does not mean that they are an atheist. Moreover, Buddhism believes that God is not at all the one who controls the masses. Also, Buddhism is much different from many other religions. Above all, Gautam Buddha founded Buddhism.

Some FAQs for You

Q1. How many types of religions are there in the entire world?

A1. There are two types of religion in the entire world. And they are Monotheistic religions and Polytheistic religions.

Q2. What is a Polytheistic religion? Give an example

A2. Polytheistic religion area those that follow and worship any Gods. Hinduism is one of the examples of polytheistic religion. Hindus believe in almost 330 million Gods. Furthermore, they have great faith in all and perform many rituals to please them.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

• Travelling Essay
• Picnic Essay
• Our Country Essay
• My Parents Essay
• Essay on Favourite Personality
• Essay on Memorable Day of My Life
• Essay on Knowledge is Power
• Essay on Gurpurab
• Essay on My Favourite Season
• Essay on Types of Sports

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of religion is the philosophical examination of the themes and concepts involved in religious traditions as well as the broader philosophical task of reflecting on matters of religious significance including the nature of religion itself, alternative concepts of God or ultimate reality, and the religious significance of general features of the cosmos (e.g., the laws of nature, the emergence of consciousness) and of historical events (e.g., the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, the Holocaust). Philosophy of religion also includes the investigation and assessment of worldviews (such as secular naturalism) that are alternatives to religious worldviews. Philosophy of religion involves all the main areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, value theory (including moral theory and applied ethics), philosophy of language, science, history, politics, art, and so on. Section 1 offers an overview of the field and its significance, with subsequent sections covering developments in the field since the mid-twentieth century. These sections address philosophy of religion as practiced primarily (but not exclusively) in departments of philosophy and religious studies that are in the broadly analytic tradition. The entry gives significant attention to theism, but it concludes with highlighting the increasing breadth of the field, as more traditions outside the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have become the focus of important philosophical work.

1. The Field and its Significance

2.1 positivism, 2.2 wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, 3.1 evidentialism, reformed epistemology, and volitional epistemology, 3.2 the epistemology of disagreement, 4. religion and science, 5.1.1 omniscience, 5.1.2 eternity, 5.1.3 the goodness of god, 5.2.1 ontological arguments, 5.2.2 cosmological arguments, 5.2.3 teleological arguments, 5.2.4 problems of evil, 5.2.5 evil and the greater good, 5.2.6 religious experience, 6. religious pluralism, other internet resources, related entries.

Ideally, a guide to the nature and history of philosophy of religion would begin with an analysis or definition of religion. Unfortunately, there is no current consensus on a precise identification of the necessary and sufficient conditions of what counts as a religion. We therefore currently lack a decisive criterion that would enable clear rulings whether some movements should count as religions (e.g., Scientology or Cargo cults of the Pacific islands). But while consensus in precise details is elusive, the following general depiction of what counts as a religion may be helpful:

A religion involves a communal, transmittable body of teachings and prescribed practices about an ultimate, sacred reality or state of being that calls for reverence or awe, a body which guides its practitioners into what it describes as a saving, illuminating or emancipatory relationship to this reality through a personally transformative life of prayer, ritualized meditation, and/or moral practices like repentance and personal regeneration. [This is a slightly modified definition of the one for “Religion” in the Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion , Taliaferro & Marty 2010: 196–197; 2018, 240.]

This definition does not involve some obvious shortcomings such as only counting a tradition as religious if it involves belief in God or gods, as some recognized religions such as Buddhism (in its main forms) does not involve a belief in God or gods. Although controversial, the definition provides some reason for thinking Scientology and the Cargo cults are proto-religious insofar as these movements do not have a robust communal, transmittable body of teachings and meet the other conditions for being a religion. (So, while both examples are not decisively ruled out as religions, it is perhaps understandable that in Germany, Scientology is labeled a “sect”, whereas in France it is classified as “a cult”.) For a discussion of other definitions of religion, see Taliaferro 2009, chapter one, and for a recent, different analysis, see Graham Oppy 2018, chapter three. The topic of defining religion is re-engaged below in the section 4, “Religion and Science” . But rather than devoting more space to definitions at the outset, a pragmatic policy will be adopted: for the purpose of this entry, it will be assumed that those traditions that are widely recognized today as religions are, indeed, religions. It will be assumed, then, that religions include (at least) Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and those traditions that are like them. This way of delimiting a domain is sometimes described as employing a definition by examples (an ostensive definition) or making an appeal to a family resemblance between things. It will also be assumed that Greco-Roman views of gods, rituals, the afterlife, the soul, are broadly “religious” or “religiously significant”. Given the pragmatic, open-ended use of the term “religion” the hope is to avoid beginning our inquiry with a procrustean bed.

Given the above, broad perspective of what counts as religion, the roots of what we call philosophy of religion stretch back to the earliest forms of philosophy. From the outset, philosophers in Asia, the Near and Middle East, North Africa, and Europe reflected on the gods or God, duties to the divine, the origin and nature of the cosmos, an afterlife, the nature of happiness and obligations, whether there are sacred duties to family or rulers, and so on. As with each of what would come to be considered sub-fields of philosophy today (like philosophy of science, philosophy of art), philosophers in the Ancient world addressed religiously significant themes (just as they took up reflections on what we call science and art) in the course of their overall practice of philosophy. While from time to time in the Medieval era, some Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers sought to demarcate philosophy from theology or religion, the evident role of philosophy of religion as a distinct field of philosophy does not seem apparent until the mid-twentieth century. A case can be made, however, that there is some hint of the emergence of philosophy of religion in the seventeenth century philosophical movement Cambridge Platonism. Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Henry More (1614–1687), and other members of this movement were the first philosophers to practice philosophy in English; they introduced in English many of the terms that are frequently employed in philosophy of religion today, including the term “philosophy of religion”, as well as “theism”, “consciousness”,and “materialism”. The Cambridge Platonists provided the first English versions of the cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments, reflections on the relationship of faith and reason, and the case for tolerating different religions. While the Cambridge Platonists might have been the first explicit philosophers of religion, for the most part, their contemporaries and successors addressed religion as part of their overall work. There is reason, therefore, to believe that philosophy of religion only gradually emerged as a distinct sub-field of philosophy in the mid-twentieth century. (For an earlier date, see James Collins’ stress on Hume, Kant and Hegel in The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion , 1967.)

Today, philosophy of religion is one of the most vibrant areas of philosophy. Articles in philosophy of religion appear in virtually all the main philosophical journals, while some journals (such as the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , Religious Studies , Sophia , Faith and Philosophy , the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion , Open Theology , Analytical Theology and others) are dedicated especially to philosophy of religion. Philosophy of religion is in evidence at institutional meetings of philosophers (such as the meetings of the American Philosophical Association and of the Royal Society of Philosophy). There are societies dedicated to the field such as the Society for Philosophy of Religion (USA) and the British Society for Philosophy of Religion and the field is supported by multiple centers such as the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, the Rutgers Center for Philosophy of Religion, the Centre for the Philosophy of Religion at Glasgow University, The John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham, and other sites (such as the University of Roehampton and Nottingham University). Oxford University Press published in 2009 The History of Western Philosophy of Religion in five volumes involving over 100 contributors (Oppy & Trakakis 2009), and in 2021 Wiley Blackwell published the Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion in four volumes, with over 250 contributors from around the world. What accounts for this vibrancy? Consider four possible reasons.

First: The religious nature of the world population. Most social research on religion supports the view that the majority of the world’s population is either part of a religion or influenced by religion (see the Pew Research Center online). To engage in philosophy of religion is therefore to engage in a subject that affects actual people, rather than only tangentially touching on matters of present social concern. Perhaps one of the reasons why philosophy of religion is often the first topic in textbook introductions to philosophy is that this is one way to propose to readers that philosophical study can impact what large numbers of people actually think about life and value. The role of philosophy of religion in engaging real life beliefs (and doubts) about religion is perhaps also evidenced by the current popularity of books for and against theism in the UK and USA. Interest in the question “is religion dangerous?” (the title of a 2006 book by Keith Ward) calls for work in history, sociology, and psychology, as well was philosophy of religion.

One other aspect of religious populations that may motivate philosophy of religion is that philosophy is a tool that may be used when persons compare different religious traditions. Philosophy of religion can play an important role in helping persons understand and evaluate different religious traditions and their alternatives. See, for example, the philosophically oriented survey Religions: a Quick Immersion and Victoria Harrison’s Eastern Philosophy of Religion .

Second: Philosophy of religion as a field may be popular because of the overlapping interests found in both religious and philosophical traditions. Both religious and philosophical thinking raise many of the same, fascinating questions and possibilities about the nature of reality, the limits of reason, the meaning of life, and so on. Are there good reasons for believing in God? What is good and evil? What is the nature and scope of human knowledge? In Hinduism; A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (2018), Shyam Ranganathan argues that in Asian thought philosophy and religion are almost inseparable such that interest in the one supports an interest in the other.

Third, studying the history of philosophy provides ample reasons to have some expertise in philosophy of religion. In the West, the majority of ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers philosophically reflected on matters of religious significance. Among these modern philosophers, it would be impossible to comprehensively engage their work without looking at their philosophical work on religious beliefs: René Descartes (1596–1650), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Anne Conway (1631–1679), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), John Locke (1632–1704), George Berkeley (1685–1753), David Hume (1711–1776), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) (the list is partial). And in the twentieth century, one should make note of the important philosophical work by Continental philosophers on matters of religious significance: Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Albert Camus (1913–1960), Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973), Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929), Martin Buber (1878–1956), Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), Simone Weil (1909–1943) and, more recently Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Michel Foucault (1926–1984), and Luce Irigaray (1930–). Evidence of philosophers taking religious matters seriously can also be found in cases of when thinkers who would not (normally) be classified as philosophers of religion have addressed religion, including A.N. Whitehead (1861–1947), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), G.E. Moore (1873–1958), John Rawls (1921–2002), Bernard Williams (1929–2003), Hilary Putnam (1926–2016), Derek Parfit (1942–2017), Thomas Nagel (1937–), Jürgen Habermas (1929–), and others. Chris Firestone and Nathan Jacobs have done recent work highlighting the immense work on religions by modern philosophers that are sometimes ignored in secular histories of philosophy (see their The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought ).

In Chinese and Indian philosophy there is an even greater challenge than in the West to distinguish important philosophical and religious sources of philosophy of religion. It would be difficult to classify Nagarjuna (150–250 CE) or Adi Shankara (788–820 CE) as exclusively philosophical or religious thinkers. Their work seems as equally important philosophically as it is religiously (see Ranganathan 2018).

Fourth, a comprehensive study of theology or religious studies also provides good reasons to have expertise in philosophy of religion. As just observed, Asian philosophy and religious thought are intertwined and so the questions engaged in philosophy of religion seem relevant: what is space and time? Are there many things or one reality? Might our empirically observable world be an illusion? Could the world be governed by Karma? Is reincarnation possible? In terms of the West, there is reason to think that even the sacred texts of the Abrahamic faith involve strong philosophical elements: In Judaism, Job is perhaps the most explicitly philosophical text in the Hebrew Bible. The wisdom tradition of each Abrahamic faith may reflect broader philosophical ways of thinking; the Christian New Testament seems to include or address Platonic themes (the Logos, the soul and body relationship). Much of Islamic thought includes critical reflection on Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, as well as independent philosophical work.

Let us now turn to the way philosophers have approached the meaning of religious beliefs.

2. The Meaning of Religious Beliefs

Prior to the twentieth century, a substantial amount of philosophical reflection on matters of religious significance (but not all) has been realist. That is, it has often been held that religious beliefs are true or false. Xenophanes and other pre-Socratic thinkers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, the Stoics, Philo, Plotinus differed on their beliefs (or speculation) about the divine, and they and their contemporaries differed about skepticism, but they held (for example) that there either was a divine reality or not. Medieval and modern Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophers differed in terms of their assessment of faith and reason. They also faced important philosophical questions about the authority of revelation claims in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, and the Qur’an. In Asian philosophy of religion, some religions do not include revelation claims, as in Buddhism and Confucianism, but Hindu tradition confronted philosophers with assessing the Vedas and Upanishads. But for the most part, philosophers in the West and East thought there were truths about whether there is a God, the soul, an afterlife, that which is sacred (whether these are known or understood by any human being or not). Realism of some kind is so pervasive that the great historian of philosophy Richard Popkin (1923–2005) once defined philosophy as “the attempt the give an account of what is true and what is important” (Popkin 1999: 1). Important philosophers in the West such as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), among others, challenged classical realist views of truth and metaphysics (ontology or the theory of what is), but the twentieth century saw two, especially powerful movements that challenged realism: logical positivism and philosophy of religion inspired by Wittgenstein.

As a preface to addressing these two movements, let us take note of some of the nuances in philosophical reflection on the realist treatment of religious language. Many theistic philosophers (and their critics) contend that language about God may be used univocally, analogically or equivocally. A term is used univocally about God and humans when it has the same sense. Arguably, the term “to know” is used univocally of God in the claims “God knows you” and “You know London”, even though how God knows you and how you know London differ radically. In terms of the later difference, philosophers sometimes distinguish between what is attributed to some thing and the mode in which some state (such as knowledge) is realized. Terms are used analogously when there is some similarity between what is being attributed, e.g., when it is said that “two human persons love each other” and “God loves the world”, the term “love” may be used analogically when there is some similarity between these loves). Terms are used equivocally when the meaning is different as in the statement “Adam knew Eve” (which in the King James’ Bible meant Adam and Eve had intercourse) and “God knows the world” (while some of the Homeric gods did have intercourse with humans, this was not part of theistic worldviews). Theological work that stresses our ability to form a positive concept of the divine has been called the via positiva or catophatic theology . On the other hand, those who stress the unknowability of God embrace what is called the via negativa or apophatic theology . Maimonides (1135–1204) was a great proponent of the via negativa , favoring the view that we know God principally through what God is not (God is not material, not evil, not ignorant, and so on).

While some (but not all) philosophers of religion in the Continental tradition have aligned themselves with apophatic theology such as Levinas (who was non-theistic) and Jean-Luc Marion (1946–), a substantial amount (but not all) of analytically oriented philosophy of religion have tended to adopt the via positiva One of the challenges of apophatic theology is that it seems to make the philosophy of God remote from religious practices such as prayer, worship, trust in God’s power and goodness, pilgrimages, and religious ethics. According to Karen Armstrong, some of the greatest theologians in the Abrahamic faiths held that God

was not good, divine, powerful, or intelligent in any way that we could understand. We could not even say that God “existed”, because our concept of existence is too limited. Some of the sages preferred to say that God was “Nothing” because God was not another being… To these theologians some of our modern ideas about God would have seemed idolatrous. (Armstrong 2009: x)

A prima facie challenge to this position is that it is hard to believe that religious practitioners could pray or worship or trust in a being which was altogether inscrutable or a being that we cannot in any way understand. For a realist, via positiva philosophy of God that seeks to appreciate the force of apophatic theology, see Mikael Stenmark’s “Competing conceptions of God: the personal God versus the God beyond being” (2015).

Let us now turn to two prominent philosophical movements that challenged a realist philosophy of God.

“Positivism” is a term introduced by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), a French philosopher who championed the natural and social sciences over against theology and the philosophical practice of metaphysics. The term “positivism” was used later (sometimes amplified to Logical Positivism by A.J. Ayer) by a group of philosophers who met in Austria called the Vienna Circle from 1922 to 1938. This group, which included Moritz Schlick and Max Planck, advanced an empirical account of meaning, according to which for a proposition to be meaningful it needed either to be a conceptual or formal statement in mathematics or about analytic definitions (“triangles have three angles”) or about matters that can be empirically verified or falsified. Ostensibly factual claims that do not make any difference in terms of our actual (or possible) empirical experience are void of meaning. A British philosopher, who visited the Vienna Circle, A.J. Ayer popularized this criterion of meaning in his 1936 book, Language, Truth, and Logic . In it, Ayer argued that religious claims as well as their denial were without cognitive content. By his lights, theism, and also atheism and agnosticism, were nonsense, because they were about the reality (or unreality or unknowability) of that which made no difference to our empirical experience. How might one empirically confirm or disconfirm that there is an incorporeal, invisible God or that Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu? Famously, Antony Flew employed this strategy in his likening the God of theism to a belief that there is an undetectable, invisible gardener who could not be heard or smelled or otherwise empirically discovered (Flew 1955). In addition to rejecting traditional religious beliefs as meaningless, Ayer and other logical positivists rejected the meaningfulness of moral statements. By their lights, moral or ethical statements were expressions of persons’ feelings, not about values that have a reality independent of persons’ feelings.

The logical positivist critique of religion is not dead. It can be seen at work in Herman Philipse’s God in the Age of Science; A Critique of Religious Reasons (2012). Still, the criterion of meaning advanced by logical positivism faced a series of objections (for details see Copleston 1960 and Taliaferro 2005b).

Consider five objections that were instrumental in the retreat of logical positivism from its position of dominance.

First, it was charged that logical positivism itself is self-refuting. Is the statement of its standard of meaning (propositions are meaningful if and only if they are about the relations of ideas or about matters that are subject to empirical verification or falsification) itself about the relations of ideas or about matters that are subject to empirical verification or falsification? Arguably not. At best, the positivist criterion of meaning is a recommendation about what to count as meaningful.

Second, it was argued that there are meaningful statements about the world that are not subject to direct or indirect empirical confirmation or disconfirmation. Plausible candidates include statements about the origin of the cosmos or, closer to home, the mental states of other persons or of nonhuman animals (for discussion, see Van Cleve 1999 and Taliaferro 1994).

Third, limiting human experience to what is narrowly understood to be empirical seemed to many philosophers to be arbitrary or capricious. C. D. Broad and others defended a wider understanding of experience to allow for the meaningfulness of moral experience: arguably, one can experience the wrongness of an act as when an innocent person feels herself to be violated.

Fourth, Ayer’s rejection of the meaningfulness of ethics seemed to cut against his epistemology or normative account of beliefs, for he construed empirical knowledge in terms of having the right to certain beliefs. If it is meaningful to refer to the right to beliefs, why is it not meaningful to refer to moral rights such as the right not to be tortured? And if we are countenancing a broader concept of what may be experienced, in the tradition of phenomenology (which involves the analysis of appearances) why rule out, as a matter of principle, the experience of the divine or the sacred?

Fifth, and probably most importantly in terms of the history of ideas, the seminal philosopher of science Carl Hempel (1905–1997) contended that the project of logical positivism was too limited (Hempel 1950). It was insensitive to the broader task of scientific inquiry which is properly conducted not on the tactical scale of scrutinizing particular claims about empirical experience but in terms of a coherent, overall theory or view of the world. According to Hempel, we should be concerned with empirical inquiry but see this as defined by an overall theoretical understanding of reality and the laws of nature. This was not ipso facto a position that favored the meaningfulness of religious belief, but Hempel’s criticism of positivism removed their barrier for overall metaphysical accounts of reality, be these accounts theistic, pantheistic (roughly, God is everything), naturalistic, and so on. Moreover, the positivist critique of what they called metaphysics was attacked as confused as some metaphysics was implied in their claims about empirical experience; see the aptly titled classic The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954) by Gustav Bergmann (1906–1987).

Let us now turn to Wittgenstein (1889–1951) and the philosophy of religion his work inspired.

Wittgenstein’s early work was interpreted by some members of the Vienna Circle as friendly to their empiricism, but they were surprised when he visited the Circle and, rather than Wittgenstein discussing his Tractatus , he read them poetry by Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), a Bengal mystic (see Taliaferro 2005b: chapter eight). In any case, Wittgenstein’s later work, which was not friendly to their empiricism, was especially influential in post-World War II philosophy and theology and will be the focus here.

In the Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953) and in many other works (including the publication of notes taken by his students on his lectures), Wittgenstein opposed what he called the picture theory of meaning. On this view, statements are true or false depending upon whether reality matches the picture expressed by the statements. Wittgenstein came to see this view of meaning as deeply problematic. The meaning of language is, rather, to be found not in referential fidelity but in its use in what Wittgenstein referred to as forms of life . As this position was applied to religious matters, D.Z. Phillips (1966, 1976), B.R. Tilghman (1994), and, more recently, Howard Wettstein (2012), sought to displace traditional metaphysical debate and arguments over theism and its alternatives and to focus instead on the way language about God, the soul, prayer, resurrection, the afterlife, and so on, functions in the life of religious practitioners. For example, Phillips contended that the practice of prayer is best not viewed as humans seeking to influence an all powerful, invisible person, but to achieve solidarity with other persons in light of the fragility of life. Phillips thereby sees himself as following Wittgenstein’s lead by focusing, not on which picture of reality seems most faithful, but on the non-theoretical ways in which religion is practiced.

To ask whether God exists is not to ask a theoretical question. If it is to mean anything at all, it is to wonder about praising and praying; it is to wonder whether there is anything in all that. This is why philosophy cannot answer the question “Does God exist?” with either an affirmative or a negative reply … “There is a God”, though it appears to be in the indicative mood, is an expression of faith. (Phillips 1976: 181; see also Phillips 1970: 16–17)

At least two reasons bolstered this philosophy of religion inspired by Wittgenstein. First, it seemed as though this methodology was more faithful to the practice of philosophy of religion being truly about the actual practice of religious persons themselves. Second, while there has been a revival of philosophical arguments for and against theism and alternative concepts of God (as will be noted in section 5 ), significant numbers of philosophers from the mid-twentieth century onward have concluded that all the traditional arguments and counter-arguments about the metaphysical claims of religion are indecisive. If that is the case, the Wittgenstein-inspired new philosophy of religion had the advantage of shifting ground to what might be a more promising area of agreement.

While this non-realist approach to religion has its defenders today, especially in work by Howard Wettstein, many philosophers have contended that traditional and contemporary religious life rests on making claims about what is truly the case in a realist context. It is hard to imagine why persons would pray to God if they, literally, thought there is no God of any kind. (see Wynn 2020, chapter six)

Interestingly, perhaps inheriting the Wittgenstein stress on practice, some philosophers working on religion today place greater stress on the meaning of religion in life, rather than seeing religious belief as primarily a matter of assessing an hypothesis (see Cottingham 2014).

3. Religious Epistemology

According to the prestigious Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy , religious epistemology is “a branch of philosophy that investigates the epistemic status of propositional attitudes about religious claims” (Audi 2015: 925). Virtually all the extant and current methodologies in epistemology have been employed in assessing religious claims. Some of these methods have been more rationalistic in the sense that they have involved reasoning from ostensibly self-evident truths (e.g., a principle of sufficient reason), while others have been more experiential (e.g., empiricism, phenomenology, the stress on passion and subjectivity, the stress on practice as found in pragmatism). Also, some have sought to be ahistorical (not dependent upon historical revelation claims), while others are profoundly historical (e.g., grounded on revelation either known by faith alone or justified evidentially by an appeal to miracles and/or religious experience.

Over the past twenty years, there has been a growing literature on the nature of religious faith. Among many philosophers in the analytical tradition, faith has often been treated as the propositional attitude belief, e.g., believing that there is or is not a God, and much work devoted to examining when such belief is backed up by evidence and, if so, how much and what kinds of evidence. There has been a famous debate over “the ethics of belief”, determining what kinds of belief should not be entertained or countenanced when the evidence is deemed insufficient, and when matters of religious faith may be justified on pragmatic grounds (e.g., as a wager or venture). Faith has also been philosophically treated as trust, a form of hope, an allegiance to an ideal, commitment, and faithful action with or without belief (for a survey see Abraham & Aquino 2017; for a recent defense of religious faith without belief, see Schellenberg 2017).

The following examines first what is known as evidentialism and reformed epistemology and then a form of what is called volitional epistemology of religion.

Evidentialism is the view that for a person to be justified in some belief, that person must have some awareness of the evidence for the belief. This is usually articulated as a person’s belief being justified given the total evidence available to the person. On this view, the belief in question must not be undermined (or defeated) by other, evident beliefs held by the person. Moreover, evidentialists often contend that the degree of confidence in a belief should be proportional to the evidence. Evidentialism has been defended by representatives of all the different viewpoints in philosophy of religion: theism, atheism, advocates of non-theistic models of God, agnostics. Evidentialists have differed in terms of their accounts of evidence (what weight might be given to phenomenology?) and the relationship between evident beliefs (must beliefs either be foundational or basic or entailed by such foundational beliefs?) Probably the most well known evidentialist in the field of philosophy of religion who advocates for theism is Richard Swinburne (1934–).

Swinburne was (and is) the leading advocate of theistic natural theology since the early 1970s. Swinburne has applied his considerable analytical skills in arguing for the coherence and cogency of theism, and the analysis and defense of specific Christian teachings about the trinity, incarnation, the resurrection of Christ, revelation, and more. Swinburne’s projects in the evidentialist tradition in philosophy of religion are in the great tradition of British philosophy of religion from the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century through Joseph Butler (1692–1752) and William Paley (1743–1805) to twentieth century British philosophers such as A.E. Taylor (1869–1945), F. R. Tennant (1866–1957), William Temple (1881–1944), H.D. Lewis (1910–1992), and A.C. Ewing (1899–1973). The positive philosophical case for theism has been met by work by many powerful philosophers, most recently Ronald Hepburn (1927–2008), J.L. Mackie (1917–1981), Antony Flew (1923–2010), Richard Gale (1932–2015), William Rowe (1931–2015), Michael Martin (1932–2015), Graham Oppy (1960–), J.L. Schellenberg (1959–), and Paul Draper (1957–). (See The Routledge Companion to Theism [Taliaferro, Harrison, & Goetz 2012] for an overview of such work.)

There have been at least two interesting, recent developments in the philosophy of religion in the framework of evidentialism. One has been advanced by John Schellenberg who argues that if the God of Christianity exists, God’s reality would be far more evident than it is. Arguably, in the Christian understanding of values, an evident relationship with God is part of the highest human good, and if God were loving, God would bring about such a good. Because there is evidence that God does not make Godself available to earnest seekers of such a relationship, this is evidence that such a God does not exist. According to this line of reasoning, the absence of evidence of the God of Christianity is evidence of absence (see Schellenberg 2007 and Howard-Snyder & Moser 2001). The argument applies beyond Christian values and theism, and to any concept of God in which God is powerful and good and such that a relationship with such a good God would be fulfilling and good for creatures. It would not work with a concept of God (as we find, for example, in the work of Aristotle) in which God is not lovingly and providentially engaged in the world. This line of reasoning is often referred to in terms of the hiddenness of God.

Another interesting development has been advanced by Sandra Menssen and Thomas Sullivan. In philosophical reflection about God the tendency has been to give priority to what may be called bare theism (assessing the plausibility of there being the God of theism) rather than a more specific concept of God. This priority makes sense insofar as the plausibility of a general thesis (there are mammals on the savanna) will be greater than a more specific thesis (there are 12,796 giraffes on the savanna). But Menssen and Sullivan argue that practicing philosophy of religion from a more particular, especially Christian, context, provides a richer “data base” for reflection.

The all–too–common insistence among philosophers that proper procedure requires establishing the likelihood of God’s existence prior to testing revelatory claims cuts off a huge part of the data base relevant to arguing for theism… For it is difficult to establish God’s existence as likely unless some account can be given of the evils of the world, and the account Christianity has to offer is unimaginably richer than any non-religious account. The Christian account, accessed through scripture, is a story of love: of God’s love for us and of what God has prepared for those who love him… It is a story of the salvific value of suffering: our sufferings are caught up with Christ’s, and are included in the sufferings adequate for the world’s redemption, sufferings Christ has willed to make his own. (Menssen & Sullivan 2017: 37–38)

In terms of the order of inquiry, it may be helpful at times, to consider more specific philosophical positions—for example, it may seem at first glance that materialism is hopeless until one engages the resources of some specific materialist account that involves functionalism—but, arguably, this does not alone offset the logical primacy of the more general thesis (whether this is bare theism or bare materialism). Perhaps the import of the Menssen-Sullivan proposal is that philosophers of religion need to enhance their critical assessment of general positions along with taking seriously more specific accounts about the data on hand (e.g., when it comes to theism, assessing the problem of evil in terms of possible theological positions on redemption as presented in ostensible revelations).

Evidentialism has been challenged on many grounds. Some argue that it is too stringent; we have many evident beliefs that we would be at a loss to successfully justify. Instead of evidentialism, some philosophers adopt a form of reliabilism, according to which a person may be justified in a belief so long as the belief is produced by a reliable means, whether or not the person is aware of evidence that justifies the belief. Two movements in philosophy of religion develop positions that are not in line with the traditional evidential tradition: reformed epistemology and volitional epistemology.

Reformed epistemology has been championed by Alvin Plantinga (1932–) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (1932–), among others. Reformed epistemology is “Reformed” insofar as it draws on the Reformer John Calvin (1509–1564) who claimed that persons are created with a sense of God ( sensus divinitatis ). While this sense of God may not be apparent due to sin, it can reliably prompt persons to believe in God and support a life of Christian faith. While this prompting may play an evidential role in terms of the experience or ostensible perception of God, it can also warrant Christian belief in the absence of evidence or argument (see K. Clark & VanArragon 2011; M. Bergmann 2017; and Plantinga & Bergmann 2016). In the language Plantinga introduced, belief in God may be as properly basic as our ordinary beliefs about other persons and the world. The framework of Reformed epistemology is conditional as it advances the thesis that if there is a God and if God has indeed created us with a sensus divinitatis that reliably leads us to believe (truly) that God exists, then such belief is warranted. There is a sense in which Reformed epistemology is more of a defensive strategy (offering grounds for thinking that religious belief, if true, is warranted) rather than providing a positive reason why persons who do not have (or believe they have) a sensus divinitatis should embrace Christian faith. Plantinga has argued that at least one alternative to Christian faith, secular naturalism, is deeply problematic, if not self-refuting, but this position (if cogent) has been advanced more as a reason not to be a naturalist than as a reason for being a theist. (For a stronger version of the argument that theism better accounts for the normativity of reason than alternatives, see Angus Menuge’s Agents Under Fire , 2004.)

Reformed epistemology is not ipso facto fideism. Fideism explicitly endorses the legitimacy of faith without the support, not just of (propositional) evidence, but also of reason (MacSwain 2013). By contrast, Reformed epistemology offers a metaphysical and epistemological account of warrant according to which belief in God can be warranted even if it is not supported by evidence and it offers an account of properly basic belief according to which basic belief in God is on an epistemic par with our ordinary basic beliefs about the world and other minds which seem to be paradigmatically rational. Nonetheless, while Reformed epistemology is not necessarily fideistic, it shares with fideism the idea that a person may have a justified religious belief in the absence of evidence.

Consider now what is called volitional epistemology in the philosophy of religion. Paul Moser has systematically argued for a profoundly different framework in which he contends that if the God of Christianity exists, this God would not be evident to inquirers who (for example) are curious about whether God exists. By Moser’s lights, the God of Christianity would only become evident in a process that would involve the moral and spiritual transformation of persons (Moser 2017). This process might involve persons receiving (accepting) the revelation of Jesus Christ as redeemer and sanctifier who calls persons to a radical life of loving compassion, even the loving of our enemies. By willfully subjecting oneself to the commanding love of God, a person in this filial relationship with God through Christ may experience a change of character (from self-centeredness to serving others) in which the person’s character (or very being) may come to serve as evidence of the truths of faith.

The terrain covered so far in this entry indicates considerable disagreement over epistemic justification and religious belief. If the experts disagree about such matters, what should non-experts think and do? Or, putting the question to the so-called experts, if you (as a trained inquirer) disagree about the above matters with those whom you regard as equally intelligent and sensitive to evidence, should that fact alone bring you to modify or even abandon the confidence you hold concerning your own beliefs?

Some philosophers propose that in the case of disagreements among epistemic peers, one should seek some kind of account of the disagreement. For example, is there any reason to think that the evidence available to you and your peers differs or is conceived of differently. Perhaps there are ways of explaining, for example, why Buddhists may claim not to observe themselves as substantial selves existing over time whereas a non-Buddhist might claim that self-observation provides grounds for believing that persons are substantial, enduring agents (David Lund 2005). The non-Buddhist might need another reason to prefer her framework over the Buddhist one, but she would at least (perhaps) have found a way of accounting for why equally reasonable persons would come to different conclusions in the face of ostensibly identical evidence.

Assessing the significance of disagreement over religious belief is very different from assessing the significance of disagreement in domains where there are clearer, shared understandings of methodology and evidence. For example, if two equally proficient detectives examine the same evidence that Smith murdered Jones, their disagreement should (other things being equal) lead us to modify confidence that Smith is guilty, for the detectives may be presumed to use the same evidence and methods of investigation. But in assessing the disagreements among philosophers over (for example) the coherence and plausibility of theism, philosophers today often rely on different methodologies (phenomenology, empiricism, conceptual or linguistic analysis, structural theory, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and so on). But what if a person accepts a given religion as reasonable and yet acknowledges that equally reasonable, mature, responsible inquirers adopt a different religion incompatible with her own and they all share a similar philosophical methodology ? This situation is not an abstract thought experiment. In Christian-Muslim dialogue, philosophers often share a common philosophical inheritance from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and a broad range of shared views about the perfection of God/Allah.

One option would be to adopt an epistemological pluralism, according to which persons can be equally well justified in affirming incompatible beliefs. This option would seem to provide some grounds for epistemic humility (Audi 2011; Ward 2002, 2014, 2017). In an appropriately titled essay, “Why religious pluralism is not evil and is in some respects quite good”, (2018) Robert McKim presents reasons why, from a philosophical point of view, it may be good to encourage (and not merely acknowledge) ostensibly equally reasonable worldviews. For an overview of the current state of play in philosophy of religion on the topic of religious disagreement, see “Disagreement and the Epistemology of Theology” (King & Kelly 2017).

At the end of this section, two observations are also worth noting about epistemic disagreements. First, our beliefs and our confidence in the truth of our beliefs may not be under our voluntary control. Perhaps you form a belief of the truth of Buddhism based on what you take to be compelling evidence. Even if you are convinced that equally intelligent persons do not reach a similar conclusion, that alone may not empower you to deny what seems to you to be compelling. Second, if the disagreement between experts gives you reason to abandon a position, then the very principle you are relying on (one should abandon a belief that X if experts disagree about X ) would be undermined, for experts disagree about what one should do when experts disagree. For overviews and explorations of relevant philosophical work in a pluralistic setting, see New Models of Religious Understanding (2018) edited by Fiona Ellis and Renewing Philosophy of Religion (2017) edited by Paul Draper and J.L. Schellenberg. Two other resources are also highly recommended: In God, Knowledge, and the Good , Linda Zagzebski commends the epistemic importance of practicing philosophy in a communal setting and in On Evidence in Philosophy William Lycan offers a seasoned view of how to assess the epistemic credibility of arguments by philosophers.

The relationship between religion and science has been an important topic in twentieth century philosophy of religion and it seems highly important today.

This section begins by considering the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) statement on the relationship between science and religion:

Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist. (NASIM 2008: 12)

This view of science and religion seems promising on many fronts. If the above statement on science and religion is accepted, then it seems to insure there is minimal conflict between two dynamic domains of what the Academies refer to as “human experience”. The National Academies do seem to be correct in implying that the key elements of many religions do not admit of direct scientific investigations nor rest “only on empirical evidence”. Neither God nor Allah nor Brahman (the divine as conceived of in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism) is a physical or material object or process. It seems, then, that the divine or the sacred and many other elements in world religions (meditation, prayer, sin and forgiveness, deliverance from craving) can only be indirectly investigated scientifically. So, a neurologist can produce detailed studies of the brains of monks and nuns when they pray and meditate, and there can be comparative studies of the health of those who practice a religion and those who do not, but it is very hard to conceive of how to scientifically measure God or Allah or Brahman or the Dao, heaven, and so on. Despite the initial plausibility of the Academies stance, however, it may be problematic.

First, a minor (and controversial) critical point in response to the Academies: The statement makes use of the terms “supernatural forces or entities” that “are not part of nature”. The term “supernatural” is not the standard term used to refer only to God or the divine, probably (in part) because in English the term “supernatural” refers not just to God or the divine, but also to poltergeists, ghosts, devils, witches, mediums, oracles, and so on. The later are a panoply of what is commonly thought of as preposterous superstition. (The similarity of the terms supernatural and superstitious may not be an accident.) The standard philosophical term to reference God in the English language, from the seventeenth century onward, is theism (from the Greek theos for god/God). So, rather than the statement refer to “supernatural forces or entities”, a more charitable phrase might refer to how many world religions are theistic or involve some sacred reality that is not directly, empirically measurable.

Moving beyond this minor point about terminology, religious beliefs have traditionally and today been thought of as subject to evidence. Evidence for religious beliefs have included appeal to the contingency of the cosmos and principles of explanation, the ostensibly purposive nature of the cosmos, the emergence of consciousness, and so on. Evidence against religious belief have included appeal to the evident, quantity of evil in the cosmos, the success of the natural sciences, and so on.

One reason, however, for supporting the Academies notion that religion and science do not overlap is the fact that in modern science there has been a bracketing of reference to minds and the mental. That is, the sciences have been concerned with a mind-independent physical world, whereas in religion this is chiefly a domain concerned with mind (feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, and so on), created minds and (in the case of some religions) the mind of God. The science of Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton was carried out with an explicit study of the world without appeal to anything involving what today would be referred to as the psychological, the mind or the mental. So, Newton’s laws of motion about the attraction and repulsion of material objects make no mention of how love or desire or emotional need might be required to explain the motion of two material bodies to embrace romantically. The bracketing of mind from the physical sciences was not a sign of early scientists having any doubts about the existence, power and importance of minds. That is, from Kepler through Newton and on to the early twentieth century, scientists themselves did not doubt the causal significance of minds; they simply did not include minds (their own or the minds of others) among the data of what they were studying. But interestingly, each of the early modern scientists believed that what they were studying was in some fashion made possible by the whole of the natural world (terrestrial and celestial) being created and sustained in existence by a Divine Mind, an all good, necessarily existing Creator. They had an overall or comprehensive worldview according to which science itself was reasonable and made sense. Scientists have to have a kind of faith or trust in their methods and that the cosmos is so ordered that their methods are effective and reliable. The earliest modern scientists thought such faith (in what Einstein refers to as “the rationality and intelligibility of the world” (Cain 2015: 42, quoting a 1929 statement in Einstein 1954 [1973: 262]) was reasonable because of their belief in the existence of God (Cain 2015).

Whether there is sufficient evidence for or against some religious conception of the cosmos will be addressed in section 4 . Let us contrast briefly, however, two very different views on whether contemporary science has undermined religious belief.

According to Steven Pinker, science has shown the beliefs of many religions to be false.

To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged from prebiotic chemicals almost four billion years ago.… We know that the laws governing the physical world (including accidents, disease, and other misfortunes) have no goals that pertain to human well-being. There is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution, or answered prayer—though the discrepancy between the laws of probability and the workings of cognition may explain why people think there is. (Pinker 2013)

Following up on Pinker, it should be noted that it would not be scientifically acceptable today to appeal to miracles or to direct acts of God. Any supposed miracle would (to many, if not all scientists) be a kind of defeat and to welcome an unacceptable mystery. This is why some philosophers of science propose that the sciences are methodologically atheistic . That is, while science itself does not pass judgment on whether God exists (even though some philosophers of science do), appealing to God’s existence forms no part of their scientific theories and investigations.

There is some reason to think that Pinker’s case may be overstated, however, and that it would be more fair to characterize the sciences as methodologically agnostic (simply not taking a view on the matter of whether or not God exists) rather than atheistic (taking a position on the matter). First, Pinker’s examples of what science has shown to be wrong, seem unsubstantial. As Michael Ruse points out:

The arguments that are given for suggesting that science necessitates atheism are not convincing. There is no question that many of the claims of religion are no longer tenable in light of modern science. Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, the sun stopping for Joshua, Jonah and the whale, and much more. But more sophisticated Christians know that already. The thing is that these things are not all there is to religions, and many would say that they are far from the central claims of religion—God existing and being creator and having a special place for humans and so forth. (Ruse 2014: 74–75)

Ruse goes on to note that religions address important concerns that go beyond what is approachable only from the standpoint of the natural sciences.

Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the purpose of it all? And (somewhat more controversially) what are the basic foundations of morality and what is sentience? Science takes the world as given Science sees no ultimate purpose to reality… I would say that as science does not speak to these issues, I see no reason why the religious person should not offer answers. They cannot be scientific answers. They must be religious answers—answers that will involve a God or gods. There is something rather than nothing because a good God created them from love out of nothing. The purpose of it all is to find eternal bliss with the Creator. Morality is a function of God’s will; it is doing what He wants us to do. Sentience is that by which we realize that we are made in God’s image. We humans are not just any old kind of organism. This does not mean that the religious answers are beyond criticism, but they must be answered on philosophical or theological grounds and not simply because they are not scientific. (2014: 76)

The debate over religion and science is ongoing (for promising work, see Stenmark 2001, 2004).

5. Philosophical Reflection on Theism and Its Alternatives

For much of the history of philosophy of religion, there has been stress on the assessment of theism. Non-theistic concepts of the divine have increasingly become part of philosophy of religion (see, for example, Buckareff & Nagasawa 2016; Diller & Kasher 2013; and Harrison 2006, 2012, 2015). Section 6 makes special note of this broadening of horizons. As noted at the outset of this entry, theism still has some claim for special attention given the large world population that is aligned with theistic traditions (the Abrahamic faiths and theistic Hinduism) and the enormity of attention given to the defense and critique of theism in philosophy of religion historically and today.

5.1 Philosophical Reflection on Divine Attributes

Speculation about divine attributes in theistic tradition has often been carried out in accord with what is currently referred to as perfect being theology , according to which God is understood to be maximally excellent or unsurpassable in greatness. This tradition was (famously) developed by Anselm of Canterbury (1033/4–1109). For a contemporary work offering an historic overview of Anselmian theism, see Yujin Nagasawa’s Maximal God; A New Defense of Perfect Being Theism (2017). Divine attributes in this tradition have been identified by philosophers as those attributes that are the greatest compossible set of great-making properties; properties are compossible when they can be instantiated by the same being. Traditionally, the divine attributes have been identified as omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, worthiness of worship, necessary of non-contingent existence, and eternality (existing outside of time or atemporally). Each of these attributes has been subject to nuanced different analysis, as noted below. God has also been traditionally conceived to be incorporeal or immaterial, immutable, impassable, omnipresent. And unlike Judaism and Islam, Christian theists conceive of God as triune (the Godhead is not homogenous but consists of three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth (fully God and fully human).

One of the tools philosophers use in their investigation into divine attributes involve thought experiments. In thought experiments, hypothetical cases are described—cases that may or may not represent the way things are. In these descriptions, terms normally used in one context are employed in expanded settings. Thus, in thinking of God as omniscient, one might begin with a non-controversial case of a person knowing that a proposition is true, taking note of what it means for someone to possess that knowledge and of the ways in which the knowledge is secured. A theistic thought experiment would seek to extend our understanding of knowledge as we think of it in our own case, working toward the conception of a maximum or supreme intellectual excellence befitting the religious believers’ understanding of God. Various degrees of refinement would then be in order, as one speculates not only about the extent of a maximum set of propositions known but also about how these might be known. That is, in attributing omniscience to God, would one thereby claim God knows all truths in a way that is analogous to the way we come to know truths about the world? Too close an analogy would produce a peculiar picture of God relying upon, for example, induction, sensory evidence, or the testimony of others. One move in the philosophy of God has been to assert that the claim “God knows something” employs the word “knows” univocally when read as picking out the thesis that God knows something, while it uses the term in only a remotely analogical sense if read as identifying how God knows (Swinburne 1977).

Using thought experiments often employs an appearance principle. One version of an appearance principle is that a person has a reason for believing that some state of affairs (SOA) is possible if she can conceive, describe or imagine the SOA obtaining and she knows of no independent reasons for believing the SOA is impossible. As stated the principle is advanced as simply offering a reason for believing the SOA to be possible, and it thus may be seen a advancing a prima facie reason. But it might be seen as a secundum facie reason insofar as the person carefully scrutinizes the SOA and its possible defeaters (see Taliaferro & Knuths 2017). Some philosophers are skeptical of appealing to thought experiments (see Van Inwagen 1998; for a defense see Taliaferro 2002, Kwan 2013, and Swinburne 1979; for general treatments see Sorensen 1992 and Gendler & Hawthorne 2002).

Imagine there is a God who knows the future free action of human beings. If God does know you will freely do some act X , then it is true that you will indeed do X . But if you are free, would you not be free to avoid doing X ? Given that it is foreknown you will do X , it appears you would not be free to refrain from the act.

Initially this paradox seems easy to dispel. If God knows about your free action, then God knows that you will freely do something and that you could have refrained from it. God’s foreknowing the act does not make it necessary. Does not the paradox only arise because the proposition, “Necessarily, if God knows X , then X ” is confused with “If God knows X , then necessarily X ?” After all, it is necessarily the case that if someone knows you are reading this entry right now, then it is true that you are reading this entry, but your reading this entry may still be seen as a contingent, not necessary state of affairs. But the problem is not so easily diffused, however, because God’s knowledge, unlike human knowledge, is infallible, and if God infallibly knows that some state of affairs obtains then it cannot be that the state of affairs does not obtain. Think of what is sometimes called the necessity of the past. Once a state of affairs has obtained, it is unalterably or necessarily the case that it did occur . If the future is known precisely and comprehensively, isn’t the future like the past, necessarily or unalterably the case? If the problem is put in first-person terms and one imagines God foreknows you will freely turn to a different entry in this Encyclopedia (moreover, God knows with unsurpassable precision when you will do so, which entry you will select and what you will think about it), then an easy resolution of the paradox seems elusive. To highlight the nature of this problem, imagine God tells you what you will freely do in the next hour. Under such conditions, is it still intelligible to believe you have the ability to do otherwise if it is known by God as well as yourself what you will indeed elect to do? Self-foreknowledge, then, produces an additional related problem because the psychology of choice seems to require prior ignorance about what will be choose.

Various replies to the freedom-foreknowledge debate have been given. Some adopt compatibilism, affirming the compatibility of free will and determinism, and conclude that foreknowledge is no more threatening to freedom than determinism. While some prominent philosophical theists in the past have taken this route (most dramatically Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)), this seems to be the minority position in philosophy of religion today (exceptions include Paul Helm, John Fischer, and Lynne Baker). A second position adheres to the libertarian outlook, which insists that freedom involves a radical, indeterminist exercise of power, and concludes that God cannot know future free action. What prevents such philosophers from denying that God is omniscient is that they contend there are no truths about future free actions, or that while there are truths about the future, God either cannot know those truths (Swinburne) or freely decides not to know them in order to preserve free choice (John Lucas). On the first view, prior to someone’s doing a free action, there is no fact of the matter that he or she will do a given act. This is in keeping with a traditional, but controversial, interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of time and truth. Aristotle may have thought it was neither true nor false prior to a given sea battle whether a given side would win it. Some theists, such as Richard Swinburne, adopt this line today, holding that the future cannot be known. If it cannot be known for metaphysical reasons, then omniscience can be analyzed as knowing all that it is possible to know . That God cannot know future free action is no more of a mark against God’s being omniscient than God’s inability to make square circles is a mark against God’s being omnipotent. Other philosophers deny the original paradox. They insist that God’s foreknowledge is compatible with libertarian freedom and seek to resolve the quandary by claiming that God is not bound in time (God does not so much foreknow the future as God knows what for us is the future from an eternal viewpoint) and by arguing that the unique vantage point of an omniscient God prevents any impingement on freedom. God can simply know the future without this having to be grounded on an established, determinate future. But this only works if there is no necessity of eternity analogous to the necessity of the past. Why think that we have any more control over God’s timeless belief than over God’s past belief? If not, then there is an exactly parallel dilemma of timeless knowledge. For outstanding current analysis of freedom and foreknowledge, see the work of Linda Zagzebski.

Could there be a being that is outside time? In the great monotheistic traditions, God is thought of as without any kind of beginning or end. God will never, indeed, can never, cease to be. Some philosophical theists hold that God’s temporality is very much like ours in the sense that there is a before, during, and an after for God, or a past, present, and future for God. This view is sometimes referred to as the thesis that God is everlasting. Those adopting a more radical stance claim that God is independent of temporality, arguing either that God is not in time at all, or that God is “simultaneously” at or in all times. This is sometimes called the view that God is eternal as opposed to everlasting.

Why adopt the more radical stance? One reason, already noted, is that if God is not temporally bound, there may be a resolution to the earlier problem of reconciling freedom and foreknowledge. As St. Augustine of Hippo put it:

so that of those things which emerge in time, the future, indeed, are not yet, and the present are now, and the past no longer are; but all of these are by Him comprehended in His stable and eternal presence. ( The City of God , XI.21)

If God is outside time, there may also be a secure foundation explaining God’s immutability (changelessness), incorruptibility, and immortality. Furthermore, there may be an opportunity to use God’s standing outside of time to launch an argument that God is the creator of time.

Those affirming God to be unbounded by temporal sequences face several puzzles which I note without trying to settle. If God is somehow at or in all times, is God simultaneously at or in each? If so, there is the following problem. If God is simultaneous with the event of Rome burning in 410 CE, and also simultaneous with your reading this entry, then it seems that Rome must be burning at the same time you are reading this entry. (This problem was advanced by Nelson Pike (1970); Stump and Kretzmann 1981 have replied that the simultaneity involved in God’s eternal knowledge is not transitive). A different problem arises with respect to eternity and omniscience. If God is outside of time, can God know what time it is now? Arguably, there is a fact of the matter that it is now, say, midnight on 1 July 2018. A God outside of time might know that at midnight on 1 July 2018 certain things occur, but could God know when it is now that time? The problem is that the more emphasis one places on the claim that God’s supreme existence is independent of time, the more one seems to jeopardize taking seriously time as it is known. Finally, while the great monotheistic traditions provide a portrait of the Divine as supremely different from the creation, there is also an insistence on God’s proximity or immanence. For some theists, describing God as a person or person-like (God loves, acts, knows) is not to equivocate. But it is not clear that an eternal God could be personal. For recent work on God’s relation to time, see work by Katherine Rogers (2007, 2008).

All known world religions address the nature of good and evil and commend ways of achieving human well-being, whether this be thought of in terms of salvation, liberation, deliverance, enlightenment, tranquility, or an egoless state of Nirvana. Notwithstanding important differences, there is a substantial overlap between many of these conceptions of the good as witnessed by the commending of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) in many religions. Some religions construe the Divine as in some respect beyond our human notions of good and evil. In some forms of Hinduism, for example, Brahman has been extolled as possessing a sort of moral transcendence, and some Christian theologians and philosophers have likewise insisted that God is only a moral agent in a highly qualified sense, if at all (Davies 1993). To call God good is, for them, very different from calling a human being good.

Here are only some of the ways in which philosophers have articulated what it means to call God good. In treating the matter, there has been a tendency either to explain God’s goodness in terms of standards that are not God’s creation and thus, in some measure, independent of God’s will, or in terms of God’s will and the standards God has created. The latter view has been termed theistic voluntarism . A common version of theistic voluntarism is the claim that for something to be good or right simply means that God approves of permits it and for something to be bad or wrong means that God disapproves or forbids it.

Theistic voluntarists face several difficulties: moral language seems intelligible without having to be explained in terms of the Divine will. Indeed, many people make what they take to be objective moral judgments without making any reference to God. If they are using moral language intelligibly, how could it be that the very meaning of such moral language should be analyzed in terms of Divine volitions? New work in the philosophy of language may be of use to theistic voluntarists. According to a causal theory of reference, “water” necessarily designates H 2 O. It is not a contingent fact that water is H 2 O notwithstanding the fact that many people can use the term “water” without knowing its composition. Similarly, could it not be the case that “good” may refer to that which is willed by God even though many people are not aware of (or even deny) the existence of God? Another difficulty for voluntarism lies in accounting for the apparent meaningful content of claims like “God is good”. It appears that in calling God or in particular God’s will “good” the religious believer is saying more than “God wills what God wills”. If so, must not the very notion of goodness have some meaning independent of God’s will? Also at issue is the worry that if voluntarism is accepted, the theist has threatened the normative objectivity of moral judgments. Could God make it the case that moral judgments were turned upside down? For example, could God make cruelty good? Arguably, the moral universe is not so malleable. In reply, some voluntarists have sought to understand the stability of the moral laws in light of God’s immutably fixed, necessary nature.

By understanding God’s goodness in terms of God’s being (as opposed to God’s will alone), one comes close to the non-voluntarist stand. Aquinas and others hold that God is essentially good in virtue of God’s very being. All such positions are non-voluntarist in so far as they do not claim that what it means for something to be good is that God wills it to be so. The goodness of God may be articulated in various ways, either by arguing that God’s perfection requires God being good as an agent or by arguing that God’s goodness can be articulated in terms of other Divine attributes such as those outlined above. For example, because knowledge is in itself good, omniscience is a supreme good. God has also been considered good in so far as God has created and conserves in existence a good cosmos. Debates over the problem of evil (if God is indeed omnipotent and perfectly good, why is there evil?) have poignancy precisely because one side challenges this chief judgment about God’s goodness. (The debate over the problem of evil is taken up in section 5.2.4 .)

The choice between voluntarism and seeing God’s very being as good is rarely strict. Some theists who oppose a full-scale voluntarism allow for partial voluntarist elements. According to one such moderate stance, while God cannot make cruelty good, God can make some actions morally required or morally forbidden which otherwise would be morally neutral. Arguments for this have been based on the thesis that the cosmos and all its contents are God’s creation. According to some theories of property, an agent making something good gains entitlements over the property. The crucial moves in arguments that the cosmos and its contents belong to their Creator have been to guard against the idea that human parents would then “own” their children (they do not, because parents are not radical creators like God), and the idea that Divine ownership would permit anything, thus construing human duties owed to God as the duties of a slave to a master (a view to which not all theists have objected). Theories spelling out why and how the cosmos belongs to God have been prominent in all three monotheistic traditions. Plato defended the notion, as did Aquinas and Locke (see Brody 1974 for a defense).

A new development in theorizing about God’s goodness has been advanced in Zagzebski 2004. Zagzebski contends that being an exemplary virtuous person consists in having good motives. Motives have an internal, affective or emotive structure. An emotion is “an affective perception of the world” (2004: xvi) that “initiates and directs action” (2004: 1). The ultimate grounding of what makes human motives good is that they are in accord with the motives of God. Zagzebski’s theory is perhaps the most ambitious virtue theory in print, offering an account of human virtues in light of theism. Not all theists resonate with her bold claim that God is a person who has emotions, but many allow that (at least in some analogical sense) God may be see as personal and having affective states.

One other effort worth noting to link judgments of good and evil with judgments about God relies upon the ideal observer theory of ethics. According to this theory, moral judgments can be analyzed in terms of how an ideal observer would judge matters. To say an act is right entails a commitment to holding that if there were an ideal observer, it would approve of the act; to claim an act is wrong entails the thesis that if there were an ideal observer, it would disapprove of it. The theory can be found in works by Hume, Adam Smith, R.M. Hare, and R. Firth (see Firth 1952 [1970]). The ideal observer is variously described, but typically is thought of as an impartial omniscient regarding non-moral facts (facts that can be grasped without already knowing the moral status or implications of the fact—for instance, “He did something bad” is a moral fact; “He hit Smith” is not), and as omnipercipient (Firth’s term for adopting a position of universal affective appreciation of the points of view of all involved parties). The theory receives some support from the fact that most moral disputes can be analyzed in terms of different parties challenging each other to be impartial, to get their empirical facts straight, and to be more sensitive—for example, by realizing what it feels like to be disadvantaged. The theory has formidable critics and defenders. If true, it does not follow that there is an ideal observer, but if it is true and moral judgments are coherent, then the idea of an ideal observer is coherent. Given certain conceptions of God in the three great monotheistic traditions, God fits the ideal observer description (and more besides, of course). This need not be unwelcome to atheists. Should an ideal observer theory be cogent, a theist would have some reason for claiming that atheists committed to normative, ethical judgments are also committed to the idea of a God or a God-like being. (For a defense of a theistic form of the ideal observer theory, see Taliaferro 2005a; for criticism see Anderson 2005. For further work on God, goodness, and morality, see Evans 2013 and Hare 2015. For interesting work on the notion of religious authority, see Zagzebski 2012.)

It should be noted that in addition to attention to the classical divine attributes discussed in this section, there has also been philosophical work on divine simplicity, immutability, impassibility, omnipresence, God’s freedom, divine necessity, sovereignty, God’s relationship with abstract objects, Christian teachings about the Trinity, the incarnation, atonement, the sacraments, and more.

5.2 God’s Existence

In some introductory philosophy textbooks and anthologies, the arguments for God’s existence are presented as ostensible proofs which are then shown to be fallible. For example, an argument from the apparent order and purposive nature of the cosmos will be criticized on the grounds that, at best, the argument would establish there is a purposive, designing intelligence at work in the cosmos. This falls far short of establishing that there is a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, and so on. But two comments need to be made: First, that “meager” conclusion alone would be enough to disturb a scientific naturalist who wishes to rule out all such transcendent intelligence. Second, few philosophers today advance a single argument as a proof. Customarily, a design argument might be advanced alongside an argument from religious experience, and the other arguments to be considered below. True to Hempel’s advice (cited earlier) about comprehensive inquiry, it is increasingly common to see philosophies—scientific naturalism or theism—advanced with cumulative arguments, a whole range of considerations, and not with a supposed knock-down, single proof.

This section surveys some of the main theistic arguments.

There is a host of arguments under this title; version of the argument works, then it can be deployed using only the concept of God as maximally excellent and some modal principles of inference, that is, principles concerning possibility and necessity. The argument need not resist all empirical support, however, as shall be indicated. The focus of the argument is the thesis that, if there is a God, then God’s existence is necessary. In other words, God’s existence is not contingent—God is not the sort of being that just happens to exist or not exist. That necessary existence is built into the concept of God can be supported by appealing to the way God is conceived in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. This would involve some a posteriori , empirical research into the way God is thought of in these traditions. Alternatively, a defender of the ontological argument might hope to convince others that the concept of God is the concept of a being that exists necessarily by beginning with the idea of a maximally perfect being. If there were a maximally perfect being, what would it be like? It has been argued that among its array of great-making qualities (omniscience and omnipotence) would be necessary existence. Once fully articulated, it can be argued that a maximally perfect being which existed necessarily could be called “God”. For an interesting, recent treatment of the relationship between the concept of there being a necessarily existing being and there being a God, see Necessary Existence by Alexander Pruss and Joshua Rasmussen (2018: chapters one to three).

The ontological argument goes back to St. Anselm (1033/34–1109), but this section shall explore a current version relying heavily on the principle that if something is possibly necessarily the case, then it is necessarily the case (or, to put it redundantly, it is necessarily necessary). The principle can be illustrated in the case of propositions. That six is the smallest perfect number (that number which is equal to the sum of its divisors including one but not including itself) does not seem to be the sort of thing that might just happen to be true. Rather, either it is necessarily true or necessarily false. If the latter, it is not possible, if the former, it is possible. If one knows that it is possible that six is the smallest perfect number, then one has good reason to believe that. Does one have reason to think it is possible that God exists necessarily? Defenders of the argument answer in the affirmative and infer that God exists. There have been hundreds of objections and replies to this argument. Perhaps the most ambitious objection is that the same sort of reasoning can be used to argue that God cannot exist; for if it is possible that God not exist and necessary existence is part of the meaning of “God”, then it follows that God cannot exist.

Classical, alternative versions of the ontological argument are propounded by Anselm, Spinoza, and Descartes, with current versions by Alvin Plantinga, Charles Hartshorne, Norman Malcolm, and C. Dore; classical critics include Gaunilo and Kant, and current critics are many, including William Rowe, J. Barnes, G. Oppy, and J. L. Mackie. The latest book-length treatments of the ontological argument are two defenses: Rethinking the Ontological Argument by Daniel Dombrowski (2006) and Yujin Nagasawa’s Maximal God; A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism (2017). Not every advocate of perfect being theology embraces the ontological argument. Famously Thomas Aquinas did not accept the ontological argument. Alvin Plantinga, who is one of the philosophers responsible for the revival of interest in the ontological argument, contends that while he, personally, takes the argument to be sound (because he believes that the conclusion that God exists necessarily is true, which entails that the premise, that it is possible that God exists necessarily is true) he does not think the argument has sufficient force to convince an atheist. (Plantinga 1974: 216–217) For a recent new contribution to the ontological argument, see Brian Leftow’s Anselm’s Argument; Divine Necessity .

Arguments in this vein are more firmly planted in empirical, a posteriori reflection than the ontological argument, but some versions employ a priori reasons as well. There are various versions. Some argue that the cosmos had an initial cause outside it, a First Cause in time. Others argue that the cosmos has a necessary, sustaining cause from instant to instant, whether or not the cosmos had a temporal origin. The two versions are not mutually exclusive, for it is possible both that the cosmos had a First Cause and that it has a continuous, sustaining cause.

The cosmological argument relies on the intelligibility of the notion of there being at least one powerful being which is self-existing or whose origin and continued being does not depend on any other being. This could be either the all-out necessity of supreme pre-eminence across all possible worlds used in versions of the ontological argument, or a more local, limited notion of a being that is uncaused in the actual world. If successful, the argument would provide reason for thinking there is at least one such being of extraordinary power responsible for the existence of the cosmos. At best, it may not justify a full picture of the God of religion (a First Cause would be powerful, but not necessarily omnipotent), but it would nonetheless challenge naturalistic alternatives and provide some reason theism. (The later point is analogous to the idea that evidence that there was some life on another planet would not establish that such life is intelligent, but it increases—perhaps only slightly—the hypothesis that there is intelligent life on another planet.)

Both versions of the argument ask us to consider the cosmos in its present state. Is the world as we know it something that necessarily exists? At least with respect to ourselves, the planet, the solar system and the galaxy, it appears not. With respect to these items in the cosmos, it makes sense to ask why they exist rather than not. In relation to scientific accounts of the natural world, such enquiries into causes make abundant sense and are perhaps even essential presuppositions of the natural sciences. Some proponents of the argument contend that we know a priori that if something exists there is a reason for its existence. So, why does the cosmos exist? Arguably, if explanations of the contingent existence of the cosmos (or states of the cosmos) are only in terms of other contingent things (earlier states of the cosmos, say), then a full cosmic explanation will never be attained. However, if there is at least one necessarily (non-contingent) being causally responsible for the cosmos, the cosmos does have an explanation. At this point the two versions of the argument divide.

Arguments to a First Cause in time contend that a continuous temporal regress from one contingent existence to another would never account for the existence of the cosmos, and they conclude that it is more reasonable to accept there was a First Cause than to accept either a regress or the claim that the cosmos just came into being from nothing. Arguments to a sustaining cause of the cosmos claim that explanations of why something exists now cannot be adequate without assuming a present, contemporaneous sustaining cause. The arguments have been based on the denial of all actual infinities or on the acceptance of some infinities (for instance, the coherence of supposing there to be infinitely many stars) combined with the rejection of an infinite regress of explanations solely involving contingent states of affairs. The latter has been described as a vicious regress as opposed to one that is benign. There are plausible examples of vicious infinite regresses that do not generate explanations: for instance, imagine that Tom explains his possession of a book by reporting that he got it from A who got it from B , and so on to infinity. This would not explain how Tom got the book. Alternatively, imagine a mirror with light reflected in it. Would the presence of light be successfully explained if one claimed that the light was a reflection of light from another mirror, and the light in that mirror came from yet another mirror, and so on to infinity? Consider a final case. You come across a word you do not understand; let it be “ongggt”. You ask its meaning and are given another word which is unintelligible to you, and so on, forming an infinite regress. Would you ever know the meaning of the first term? The force of these cases is to show how similar they are to the regress of contingent explanations.

Versions of the argument that reject all actual infinities face the embarrassment of explaining what is to be made of the First Cause, especially since it might have some features that are actually infinite. In reply, Craig and others have contended that they have no objection to potential infinities (although the First Cause will never cease to be, it will never become an actual infinity). They further accept that prior to the creation, the First Cause was not in time, a position relying on the theory that time is relational rather than absolute. The current scientific popularity of the relational view may offer support to defenders of the argument.

It has been objected that both versions of the cosmological argument set out an inflated picture of what explanations are reasonable. Why should the cosmos as a whole need an explanation? If everything in the cosmos can be explained, albeit through infinite, regressive accounts, what is left to explain? One may reply either by denying that infinite regresses actually do satisfactorily explain, or by charging that the failure to seek an explanation for the whole is arbitrary. The question, “Why is there a cosmos?” seems a perfectly intelligible one. If there are accounts for things in the cosmos, why not for the whole? The argument is not built on the fallacy of treating every whole as having all the properties of its parts. But if everything in the cosmos is contingent, it seems just as reasonable to believe that the whole cosmos is contingent as it is to believe that if everything in the cosmos were invisible, the cosmos as a whole would be invisible.

Another objection is that rather than explaining the contingent cosmos, the cosmological argument introduces a mysterious entity of which we can make very little philosophical or scientific sense. How can positing at least one First Cause provide a better account of the cosmos than simply concluding that the cosmos lacks an ultimate account? In the end, the theist seems bound to admit that why the First Cause created at all was a contingent matter. If, on the contrary, the theist has to claim that the First Cause had to do what it did, would not the cosmos be necessary rather than contingent?

Some theists come close to concluding that it was indeed essential that God created the cosmos. If God is supremely good, there had to be some overflowing of goodness in the form of a cosmos (see Stump & Kretzmann 1981, on the ideas of Dionysius the Areopagite; see Rowe 2004 for arguments that God is not free). But theists typically reserve some role for the freedom of God and thus seek to retain the idea that the cosmos is contingent. Defenders of the cosmological argument still contend that its account of the cosmos has a comprehensive simplicity lacking in alternative views. God’s choices may be contingent, but not God’s existence and the Divine choice of creating the cosmos can be understood to be profoundly simple in its supreme, overriding endeavor, namely to create something good. Swinburne has argued that accounting for natural laws in terms of God’s will provides for a simple, overarching framework within which to comprehend the order and purposive character of the cosmos (see also Foster 2004).

Defenders of the cosmological argument include Swinburne, Richard Taylor, Hugo Meynell, Timothy O’Connor, Bruce Reichenbach, Robert Koons, Alexander Pruss, and William Rowe; prominent opponents include Antony Flew, Michael Martin, Howard Sobel, Graham Oppy, Nicholas Everitt, and J. L Mackie. While Rowe had defended the cosmological argument, his reservations about the principle of sufficient reason prevents his accepting the argument as fully satisfying.

These arguments focus on characteristics of the cosmos that seem to reflect the design or intentionality of God or, more modestly, of one or more powerful, intelligent God-like, purposive forces. Part of the argument may be formulated as providing evidence that the cosmos is the sort of reality that would be produced by an intelligent being, and then arguing that positing this source is more reasonable than agnosticism or denying it. As in the case of the cosmological argument, the defender of the teleological argument may want to claim it only provides some reason for thinking there is a God. It may be that some kind of cumulative case for theism would require construing various arguments as mutually reinforcing. If successful in arguing for an intelligent, trans-cosmos cause, the teleological argument may provide some reason for thinking that the First Cause of the cosmological argument (if it is successful) is purposive, while the ontological argument (if it has some probative force) may provides some reason for thinking that it makes sense to posit a being that has Divine attributes and necessarily exists. Behind all of them an argument from religious experience (to be addressed below) may provide some reasons to seek further support for a religious conception of the cosmos and to question the adequacy of naturalism.

One version of the teleological argument will depend on the intelligibility of purposive explanation. In our own human case it appears that intentional, purposive explanations are legitimate and can truly account for the nature and occurrence of events. In thinking about an explanation for the ultimate character of the cosmos, is it more likely for the cosmos to be accounted for in terms of a powerful, intelligent agent or in terms of a naturalistic scheme of final laws with no intelligence behind them? Theists employing the teleological argument draw attention to the order and stability of the cosmos, the emergence of vegetative and animal life, the existence of consciousness, morality, rational agents and the like, in an effort to identify what might plausibly be seen as purposive explicable features of the cosmos. Naturalistic explanations, whether in biology or physics, are then cast as being comparatively local in application when held up against the broader schema of a theistic metaphysics. Darwinian accounts of biological evolution will not necessarily assist us in thinking through why there are either any such laws or any organisms to begin with. Arguments supporting and opposing the teleological argument will then resemble arguments about the cosmological argument, with the negative side contending that there is no need to move beyond a naturalistic account, and the positive side aiming to establish that failing to go beyond naturalism is unreasonable.

In assessing the teleological argument, consider the objection from uniqueness. The cosmos is utterly unique. There is no access to multiple universes, some of which are known to be designed and some are known not to be. Without being able o compare the cosmos to alternative sets of cosmic worlds, the argument fails. Replies to this objection have contended that were we to insist that inferences in unique cases are out of order, then this would rule out otherwise respectable scientific accounts of the origin of the cosmos. Besides, while it is not possible to compare the layout of different cosmic histories, it is in principle possible to envisage worlds that seem chaotic, random, or based on laws that cripple the emergence of life. Now we can envisage an intelligent being creating such worlds, but, through considering their features, we can articulate some marks of purposive design to help judge whether the cosmos is more reasonably believed to be designed rather than not designed. Some critics appeal to the possibility that the cosmos has an infinite history to bolster and re-introduce the uniqueness objection. Given infinite time and chance, it seems likely that something like our world will come into existence, with all its appearance of design. If so, why should we take it to be so shocking that our world has its apparent design, and why should explaining the world require positing one or more intelligent designers? Replies repeat the earlier move of insisting that if the objection were to be decisive, then many seemingly respectable accounts would also have to fall by the wayside. It is often conceded that the teleological argument does not demonstrate that one or more designers are required; it seeks rather to establish that positing such purposive intelligence is reasonable and preferable to naturalism. Recent defenders of the argument include George Schlesinger, Robin Collins, and Richard Swinburne. It is rejected by J. L. Mackie, Michael Martin, Nicholas Everitt, and many others.

One feature of the teleological argument currently receiving increased attention focuses on epistemology. It has been argued by Richard Taylor (1963), Alvin Plantinga (2011 and in Beilby 2002), and others that if we reasonably rely on our cognitive faculties, it is reasonable to believe that these are not brought about by naturalistic forces—forces that are entirely driven by chance or are the outcome of processes not formed by an overriding intelligence. An illustration may help to understand the argument. Imagine Tom coming across what appears to be a sign reporting some information about his current altitude (some rocks in a configuration giving him his current location and precise height above sea-level in meters). If he had reason to believe that this “sign” was totally the result of chance configurations, would he be reasonable to trust it? Some theists argue that it would not be reasonable, and that trusting our cognitive faculties requires us to accept that they were formed by an overarching, good, creative agent. This rekindles Descartes’ point about relying on the goodness of God to ensure that our cognitive faculties are in good working order. Objections to this argument center on naturalistic explanations, especially those friendly to evolution. In evolutionary epistemology, one tries to account for the reliability of cognitive faculties in terms of trial and error leading to survival. A rejoinder by theists is that survival alone is not necessarily linked to true beliefs. It could, in principle, be false beliefs that enhance survival. In fact, some atheists think that believing in God has been crucial to people’s survival, though the belief is radically false. Evolutionary epistemologists reply that the lack of a necessary link between beliefs that promote survival and truth and the fact that some false beliefs or unreliable belief producing mechanisms promote survival nor falls far short of undermining evolutionary epistemology. See Martin (1990), Mackie (1983), and Tooley (see Tooley’s chapters 2, 4, and 6 in Plantinga & Tooley 2008), among others, object to the epistemic teleological argument.

Another recent development in teleological argumentation has involved an argument from fine-tuning.

Fine tuning arguments contend that life would not exist were it not for the fact that multiple physical parameters (e.g., the cosmological constant and the ratio of the mass of the neutron to the mass of the proton) have numerical values that fall within a range of values known to be life-permitting that is very narrow compared to the range of values that are compatible with current physical theory and are known to be life-prohibiting. For example, even minor changes to the nuclear weak force would not have allowed for stars, nor would stars have endured if the ratio of electromagnetism to gravity had been much different. John Leslie observes:

Alterations by less than one part in a billion to the expansion speed early in the Big Bang would have led to runaway expansion, everything quickly becoming so dilute that no stars could have formed, or else to gravitational collapse inside under a second. (Leslie 2007: 76)

Robin Collins and others have argued that theism better accounts for the fine tuning than naturalism (see Collins 2009; for criticism of the argument, see Craig & Smith 1993). For a collection of articles covering both sides of the debate and both biological and cosmological design arguments, see Manson 2003.

A more sustained objection against virtually all versions of the teleological argument takes issue with the assumption that the cosmos is good or that it is the sort of thing that would be brought about by an intelligent, completely benevolent being. This leads us directly to the next central concern of the philosophy of God.

If there is a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and completely good, why is there evil? The problem of evil is the most widely considered objection to theism in both Western and Eastern philosophy. There are two general versions of the problem: the deductive or logical version, which asserts that the existence of any evil at all (regardless of its role in producing good) is incompatible with God’s existence; and the probabilistic version, which asserts that given the quantity and severity of evil that actually exists, it is unlikely that God exists. The deductive problem is currently less commonly debated because many (but not all) philosophers acknowledge that a thoroughly good being might allow or inflict some harm under certain morally compelling conditions (such as causing a child pain when removing a splinter). More intense debate concerns the likelihood (or even possibility) that there is a completely good God given the vast amount of evil in the cosmos. Such evidential arguments from evil may be deductive or inductive arguments but they include some attempt to show that some known fact about evil bears a negative evidence relation to theism (e.g., it lowers its probability or renders it improbable) whether or not it is logically incompatible with theism. Consider human and animal suffering caused by death, predation, birth defects, ravaging diseases, virtually unchecked human wickedness, torture, rape, oppression, and “natural disasters”. Consider how often those who suffer are innocent. Why should there be so much gratuitous, apparently pointless evil?

In the face of the problem of evil, some philosophers and theologians deny that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. John Stuart Mill took this line, and panentheist theologians today also question the traditional treatments of Divine power. According to panentheism, God is immanent in the world, suffering with the oppressed and working to bring good out of evil, although in spite of God’s efforts, evil will invariably mar the created order. Another response is to think of God as being very different from a moral agent. Brian Davies and others have contended that what it means for God to be good is different from what it means for an agent to be morally good (Davies 2006). See also Mark Murphy’s 2017 book God’s Own Ethics; Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil . A different, more substantial strategy is to deny the existence of evil, but it is difficult to reconcile traditional monotheism with moral skepticism. Also, insofar as we believe there to be a God worthy of worship and a fitting object of human love, the appeal to moral skepticism will carry little weight. The idea that evil is a privation or twisting of the good may have some currency in thinking through the problem of evil, but it is difficult to see how it alone could go very far to vindicate belief in God’s goodness. Searing pain and endless suffering seem altogether real even if they are analyzed as being philosophically parasitic on something valuable. The three great monotheistic, Abrahamic traditions, with their ample insistence on the reality of evil, offer little reason to try to defuse the problem of evil by this route. Indeed, classical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so committed to the existence of evil that a reason to reject evil would be a reason to reject these religious traditions. What would be the point of the Judaic teaching about the Exodus (God liberating the people of Israel from slavery), or the Christian teaching about the incarnation (Christ revealing God as love and releasing a Divine power that will, in the end, conquer death), or the Islamic teaching of Mohammed (the holy prophet of Allah, whom is all-just and all-merciful) if slavery, hate, death, and injustice did not exist?

In part, the magnitude of the difficulty one takes the problem of evil to pose for theism will depend upon one’s commitments in other areas of philosophy, especially ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. If in ethics you hold that there should be no preventable suffering for any reason, regardless of the cause or consequence, then the problem of evil will conflict with your acceptance of traditional theism. Moreover, if you hold that any solution to the problem of evil should be evident to all persons, then again traditional theism is in jeopardy, for clearly the “solution” is not evident to all. Debate has largely centered on the legitimacy of adopting some middle position: a theory of values that would preserve a clear assessment of the profound evil in the cosmos as well as some understanding of how this might be compatible with the existence of an all powerful, completely good Creator. Could there be reasons why God would permit cosmic ills? If we do not know what those reasons might be, are we in a position to conclude that there are none or that there could not be any? Exploring different possibilities will be shaped by one’s metaphysics. For example, if you do not believe there is free will, then you will not be moved by any appeal to the positive value of free will and its role in bringing about good as offsetting its role in bringing about evil.

Theistic responses to the problem of evil distinguish between a defense and a theodicy. A defense seeks to establish that rational belief that God exists is still possible (when the defense is employed against the logical version of the problem of evil) and that the existence of evil does not make it improbable that God exists (when used against the probabilistic version). Some have adopted the defense strategy while arguing that we are in a position to have rational belief in the existence of evil and in a completely good God who hates this evil, even though we may be unable to see how these two beliefs are compatible. A theodicy is more ambitious and is typically part of a broader project, arguing that it is reasonable to believe that God exists on the basis of the good as well as the evident evil of the cosmos. In a theodicy, the project is not to account for each and every evil, but to provide an overarching framework within which to understand at least roughly how the evil that occurs is part of some overall good—for instance, the overcoming of evil is itself a great good. In practice, a defense and a theodicy often appeal to similar factors, the first and foremost being what many call the Greater Good Defense.

In the Greater Good Defense, it is contended that evil can be understood as either a necessary accompaniment to bringing about greater goods or an integral part of these goods. Thus, in a version often called the Free Will Defense, it is proposed that free creatures who are able to care for each other and whose welfare depends on each other’s freely chosen action constitute a good. For this good to be realized, it is argued, there must be the bona fide possibility of persons harming each other. The free will defense is sometimes used narrowly only to cover evil that occurs as a result, direct or indirect, of human action. But it has been speculatively extended by those proposing a defense rather than a theodicy to cover other evils which might be brought about by supernatural agents other than God. According to the Greater Good case, evil provides an opportunity to realize great values, such as the virtues of courage and the pursuit of justice. Reichenbach (1982), Tennant (1930), Swinburne (1979), and van Inwagen (2006) have also underscored the good of a stable world of natural laws in which animals and humans learn about the cosmos and develop autonomously, independent of the certainty that God exists. Some atheists accord value to the good of living in a world without God, and these views have been used by theists to back up the claim that God might have had reason to create a cosmos in which Divine existence is not overwhelmingly obvious to us. If God’s existence were overwhelmingly obvious, then motivations to virtue might be clouded by self-interest and by the bare fear of offending an omnipotent being. Further, there may even be some good to acting virtuously even if circumstances guarantee a tragic outcome. John Hick (1966 [1977]) so argued and has developed what he construes to be an Irenaean approach to the problem of evil (named after St. Irenaeus of the second century). On this approach, it is deemed good that humanity develops the life of virtue gradually, evolving to a life of grace, maturity, and love. This contrasts with a theodicy associated with St. Augustine, according to which God made us perfect and then allowed us to fall into perdition, only to be redeemed later by Christ. Hick thinks the Augustinian model fails whereas the Irenaean one is credible.

Some have based an argument from the problem of evil on the charge that this is not the best possible world. If there were a supreme, maximally excellent God, surely God would bring about the best possible creation. Because this is not the best possible creation, there is no supreme, maximally excellent God. Following Adams (1987), many now reply that the whole notion of a best possible world, like the highest possible number, is incoherent. For any world that can be imagined with such and such happiness, goodness, virtue and so on, a higher one can be imagined. If the notion of a best possible world is incoherent, would this count against belief that there could be a supreme, maximally excellent being? It has been argued on the contrary that Divine excellences admit of upper limits or maxima that are not quantifiable in a serial fashion (for example, Divine omnipotence involves being able to do anything logically or metaphysically possible, but does not require actually doing the greatest number of acts or a series of acts of which there can be no more).

Those concerned with the problem of evil clash over the question of how one assesses the likelihood of Divine existence. Someone who reports seeing no point to the existence of evil or no justification for God to allow it seems to imply that if there were a point they would see it. Note the difference between seeing no point and not seeing a point. In the cosmic case, is it clear that if there were a reason justifying the existence of evil, we would see it? William Rowe thinks some plausible understanding of God’s justificatory reason for allowing the evil should be detectable, but that there are cases of evil that are altogether gratuitous. Defenders like William Hasker (1989) and Stephen Wykstra (1984) reply that these cases are not decisive counter-examples to the claim that there is a good God. These philosophers hold that we can recognize evil and grasp our duty to do all in our power to prevent or alleviate it. But we should not take our failure to see what reason God might have for allowing evil to count as grounds for thinking that there is no reason. This later move has led to a position commonly called skeptical theism . Michael Bergmann, Michael Rea, William Alston and others have argued that we have good reason to be skeptical about whether we can assess whether ostensibly gratuitous evils may or may not be permitted by an all-good God (Bergmann 2012a and 2012b, 2001; Bergmann & Rea 2005; for criticism see Almeida & Oppy 2003; Draper 2014, 2013, 1996). Overall, it needs to be noted that from the alleged fact that we would be unlikely to see a reason for God to allow some evil if there were one, it only follows that our failure to see such a reason is not strong evidence against theism.

For an interesting practical application of the traditional problem of evil to the topic of the ethics of procreation, see Marsh 2015. It has been argued that if one does believe that the world is not good, then that can provide a prima facie reason against procreation. Why should one bring children into a world that is not good? Another interesting, recent development in the philosophy of religion literature has been the engagement of philosophers with ostensible evils that God commands in the Bible (see Bergmann, Murray, & Rea 2010). For a fascinating engagement with the problem of evil that employs Biblical narratives, see Eleonore Stumps’ Wandering in Darkness (2010). The treatment of the problem of evil has also extended to important reflection on the suffering of non-human animals (see S. Clark 1987, 1995, 2017; Murray 2008; Meister 2018). Problems raised by evil and suffering are multifarious and are being addressed by contemporary philosophers across the religious and non-religious spectrums. See, for example, The History of Evil edited by Meister and Taliaferro, in six volumes with over 130 contributors from virtually all religious and secular points of view, and the recent The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil edited by Meister and Moser (2017).

Some portraits of an afterlife seem to have little bearing on our response to the magnitude of evil here and now. Does it help to understand why God allows evil if all victims will receive happiness later? But it is difficult to treat the possibility of an afterlife as entirely irrelevant. Is death the annihilation of persons or an event involving a transfiguration to a higher state? If you do not think that it matters whether persons continue to exist after death, then such speculation is of little consequence. But suppose that the afterlife is understood as being morally intertwined with this life, with opportunity for moral and spiritual reformation, transfiguration of the wicked, rejuvenation and occasions for new life, perhaps even reconciliation and communion between oppressors seeking forgiveness and their victims. Then these considerations might help to defend against arguments based on the existence of evil. Insofar as one cannot rule out the possibility of an afterlife morally tied to our life, one cannot rule out the possibility that God brings some good out of cosmic ills. For two recent arguments against a positive theistic appeal to an afterlife, see Sterba 2019 141–156, and Ekstrom 2021;131–155 — compare with Mawson 2016.

The most recent work on the afterlife in philosophy of religion has focused on the compatibility of an individual afterlife with some forms of physicalism. Arguably, a dualist treatment of human persons is more promising. If you are not metaphysically identical with your body, then perhaps the annihilation of your body is not the annihilation of you. Today, a range of philosophers have argued that even if physicalism is true, an afterlife is still possible (Peter van Inwagen, Lynne Baker, Trenton Merricks, Kevin Corcoran). The import of this work for the problem of evil is that the possible redemptive value of an afterlife should not be ruled out (without argument) if one assumes physicalism to be true. (For an extraordinary, rich resource on the relevant literature, see The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology , edited by J. Walls, 2007.)

Perhaps the justification most widely offered for religious belief concerns the occurrence of religious experience or the cumulative weight of testimony of those claiming to have had religious experiences. Putting the latter case in theistic terms, the argument appeals to the fact that many people have testified that they have felt God’s presence. Does such testimony provide evidence that God exists? That it is evidence has been argued by Jerome Gellman, Keith Yandell, William Alston, Caroline Davis, Gary Gutting, Kai-Man Kwan, Richard Swinburne, Charles Taliaferro, and others. That it is not (or that its evidential force is trivial) is argued by Michael Martin, J. L. Mackie, Kai Nielson, Matthew Bagger, John Schellenberg, William Rowe, Graham Oppy, and others. In an effort to stimulate further investigation, consider the following sketch of some of the moves and countermoves in the debate.

Objection: Religious experience cannot be experience of God for perceptual experience is only sensory and if God is non-physical, God cannot be sensed.

Reply: The thesis that perceptual experience is only sensory can be challenged. Yandell marks out some experiences (as when one has “a feeling” someone is present but without having any accompanying sensations) that might provide grounds for questioning a narrow sensory notion of perceptual experience.

Objection: Testimony to have experienced God is only testimony that one thinks one has experienced God; it is only testimony of a conviction, not evidence.

Reply: The literature on religious experience testifies to the existence of experience of some Divine being on the basis of which the subject comes to think the experience is of God. If read charitably, the testimony is not testimony to a conviction, but to experiences that form the grounds for the conviction. (See Bagger 1999 for a vigorous articulation of this objection, and note the reply by Kai-man Kwam 2003).

Objection: Because religious experience is unique, how could one ever determine whether it is reliable? We simply lack the ability to examine the object of religious experience in order to test whether the reported experiences are indeed reliable.

Reply: As we learned from Descartes, all our experiences of external objects face a problem of uniqueness. It is possible in principle that all our senses are mistaken and we do not have the public, embodied life we think we lead. We cannot step out of our own subjectivity to vindicate our ordinary perceptual beliefs any more than in the religious case. (See the debate between William Alston [2004] and Evan Fales [2004]).

Objection: Reports of religious experience differ radically and the testimony of one religious party neutralizes the testimony of others. The testimony of Hindus cancels out the testimony of Christians. The testimony of atheists to experience God’s absence cancels out the testimony of “believers”.

Reply: Several replies might be offered here. Testimony to experience the absence of God might be better understood as testimony not to experience God. Failing to experience God might be justification for believing that there is no God only to the extent that we have reason to believe that if God exists God would be experienced by all. Theists might even appeal to the claim by many atheists that it can be virtuous to live ethically with atheist beliefs. Perhaps if there is a God, God does not think this is altogether bad, and actually desires religious belief to be fashioned under conditions of trust and faith rather than knowledge. The diversity of religious experiences has caused some defenders of the argument from religious experience to mute their conclusion. Thus, Gutting (1982) contends that the argument is not strong enough to fully vindicate a specific religious tradition, but that it is strong enough to overturn an anti-religious naturalism. Other defenders use their specific tradition to deal with ostensibly competing claims based on different sorts of religious experiences. Theists have proposed that more impersonal experiences of the Divine represent only one aspect of God. God is a person or is person-like, but God can also be experienced, for example, as sheer luminous unity. Hindus have claimed the experience of God as personal is only one stage in the overall journey of the soul to truth, the highest truth being that Brahman transcends personhood. (For a discussion of these objections and replies and references, see Taliaferro 1998.)

How one settles the argument will depend on one’s overall convictions in many areas of philosophy. The holistic, interwoven nature of both theistic and atheistic arguments can be readily illustrated. If you diminish the implications of religious experience and have a high standard regarding the burden of proof for any sort of religious outlook, then it is highly likely that the classical arguments for God’s existence will not be persuasive. Moreover, if one thinks that theism can be shown to be intellectually confused from the start, then theistic arguments from religious experience will carry little weight. Testimony to have experienced God will have no more weight than testimony to have experienced a round square, and non-religious explanations of religious experience—like those of Freud (a result of wish-fulfillment), Marx (a reflection of the economic base), or Durkheim (a product of social forces)—will increase their appeal. If, on the other hand, you think the theistic picture is coherent and that the testimony of religious experience provides some evidence for theism, then your assessment of the classical theistic arguments might be more favorable, for they would serve to corroborate and further support what you already have some reason to believe. From such a vantage point, appeal to wish-fulfillment, economics, and social forces might have a role, but the role is to explain why some parties do not have experiences of God and to counter the charge that failure to have such experiences provides evidence that there is no religious reality. (For an excellent collection of recent work on explaining the emergence and continuation of religious experience, see Schloss & Murray (eds.) 2009.)

There is not space to cover the many other arguments for and against the existence of God, but several additional arguments are briefly noted. The argument from miracles starts from specific extraordinary events, arguing that they provide reasons for believing there to be a supernatural agent or, more modestly, reasons for skepticism about the sufficiency of a naturalistic world view. The argument has attracted much philosophical attention, especially since David Hume’s rejection of miracles. The debate has turned mainly on how one defines a miracle, understands the laws of nature, and specifies the principles of evidence that govern the explanation of highly unusual historical occurrences. There is considerable debate over whether Hume’s case against miracles simply begs the question against “believers”. Detailed exposition is impossible in this short entry. Taliaferro has argued elsewhere that Hume’s case against the rationality of belief in miracles is best seen as part of his overall case for a form of naturalism (Taliaferro 2005b).

There are various arguments that are advanced to motivate religious belief. One of the most interesting and popular is a wager argument often associated with Pascal (1623–1662). It is designed to offer practical reasons to cultivate a belief in God. Imagine that you are unsure whether there is or is not a God. You have it within your power to live on either assumption and perhaps, through various practices, to get yourself to believe one or the other. There would be good consequences of believing in God even if your belief were false, and if the belief were true you would receive even greater good. There would also be good consequences of believing that there is no God, but in this case the consequences would not alter if you were correct. If, however, you believe that there is no God and you are wrong, then you would risk losing the many goods which follow from the belief that God exists and from actual Divine existence. On this basis, it may seem reasonable to believe there is a God.

In different forms the argument may be given a rough edge (for example, imagine that if you do not believe in God and there is a God, hell is waiting). It may be put as an appeal to individual self-interest (you will be better off) or more generally (believers whose lives are bound together can realize some of the goods comprising a mature religious life). Objectors worry about whether one ever is able to bring choices down to just such a narrow selection—for example, to choose either theism or naturalism. Some think the argument is too thoroughly egotistic and thus offensive to religion. Many of these objections have generated some plausible replies (Rescher 1985). (For a thoroughgoing exploration of the relevant arguments, see the collection of essays edited by Jeffrey Jordan (1994).)

Recent work on Pascalian wagering has a bearing on work on the nature of faith (is it voluntary or involuntary?), its value (when, if ever, is it a virtue?), and relation to evidence (insofar as faith involves belief, is it possible to have faith without evidence?). For an overview and promising analysis, see Chappell (1996), Swinburne (1979), Schellenberg (2005), and Rota (2016). A promising feature of such new work is that it is often accompanied by a rich understanding of revelation that is not limited to a sacred scripture, but sees a revelatory role in scripture plus the history of its interpretation, the use of creeds, icons, and so on (see the work of William Abraham [1998]).

A burgeoning question in recent years is whether the cognitive science of religion (CSR) has significance for the truth or rationality of religious commitment. According to CSR, belief in supernatural agents appears to be cognitively natural (Barrett 2004, Kelemen 2004, Dennett 2006, De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. 2010) and easy to spread (Boyer 2001). The naturalness of religion thesis has led some, including Alvin Plantinga it seems (2011: 60), to imply that we have scientific evidence for Calvin’s sensus divinitatis . But others have argued that CSR can intensify the problem of divine hiddenness, since diverse religious concepts are cognitively natural and early humans seem to have lacked anything like a theistic concept (Marsh 2013). There are many other questions being investigated about CSR, such as whether it provides a debunking challenge to religion (Murray & Schloss 2009), whether it poses a cultural challenge for religious outlooks like Schellenberg’s Ultimism (Marsh 2014), and whether it challenges human dignity (Audi 2013). Needless to say, at the present time, there is nothing like a clear consensus on whether CSR should be seen as worrisome, welcome, or neither, by religious believers.

For some further work on the framework of assessing the evidence for and against theism (and other religious and secular worldviews) see C. S. Evans 2010, Chandler and Harrison 2012. In the last twenty years there has been increasing attention given to the aesthetic dimension of arguments for and against religiously significant conceptions of ultimate reality and of the meaning of life (see Brown 2004; Wynn 2013; Hedley 2016; Mawson 2016; Taliaferro & Evans 2010, 2013, 2021).

In the midst of the new work on religious traditions, there has been a steady, growing representation of non-monotheistic traditions. An early proponent of this expanded format was Ninian Smart (1927–2001), who, through many publications, scholarly as well as popular, secured philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism as components in the standard canon of English-speaking philosophy of religion.

Smart championed the thesis that there are genuine differences between religious traditions. He therefore resisted seeing some core experience as capturing the essential identity of being religious. Under Smart’s tutelage, there has been considerable growth in cross-cultural philosophy of religion. Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000) also did a great deal to improve the representation of non-Western religions and reflection. See, for example, the Routledge series Investigating Philosophy of Religion with Routledge with volumes already published or forthcoming on Buddhism (Burton 2017), Hinduism (Ranganathan 2018), Daoism, and Confucianism. The five volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion (mentioned earlier) to be published by Wiley Blackwell (projected for 2021) will have ample contributions on the widest spectrum of philosophical treatments of diverse religions to date.

The explanation of philosophy of religion has involved fresh translations of philosophical and religious texts from India, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Exceptional figures from non-Western traditions have an increased role in cross-cultural philosophy of religion and religious dialogue. The late Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935–1991) made salient contributions to enrich Western exposure to Indian philosophy of religion (see Matilal 1882). Among the mid-twentieth-century Asian philosophers, two who stand out for special note are T.R.V. Murti (1955) and S.N. Dasgupta (1922–1955). Both brought high philosophical standards along with the essential philology to educate Western thinkers. As evidence of non-Western productivity in the Anglophone world, see Arvind Sharma 1990 and 1995. There are now extensive treatments of pantheism and student-friendly guides to diverse religious conceptions of the cosmos.

The expanded interest in religious pluralism has led to extensive reflection on the compatibility and possible synthesis of religions. John Hick is the preeminent synthesizer of religious traditions. Hick (1973 a and b)) advanced a complex picture of the afterlife involving components from diverse traditions. Over many publications and many years, Hick has moved from a broadly based theistic view of God to what Hick calls “the Real”, a noumenal sacred reality. Hick claims that different religions provide us with a glimpse or partial access to the Real. In an influential article, “The New Map of the Universe of Faiths” (1973a), Hick raised the possibility that many of the great world religions are revelatory of the Real.

Seen in [an] historical context these movements of faith—the Judaic-Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim—are not essentially rivals. They began at different times and in different places, and each expanded outwards into the surrounding world of primitive natural religion until most of the world was drawn up into one or the other of the great revealed faiths. And once this global pattern had become established it has ever since remained fairly stable… Then in Persia the great prophet Zoroaster appeared; China produced Lao-tzu and then the Buddha lived, the Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion and, probably about the end of this period, the writing of the Bhagavad Gita; and Greece produced Pythagoras and then, ending this golden age, Socrates and Plato. Then after the gap of some three hundred years came Jesus of Nazareth and the emergence of Christianity; and after another gap the prophet Mohammed and the rise of Islam. The suggestion that we must consider is that these were all movements of the divine revelation . (Hick 1989: 136; emphasis added)

Hick sees these traditions, and others as well, as different meeting points in which a person might be in relation to the same reality or the Real:

The great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is taking place. (1989: 240)

Hick uses Kant to develop his central thesis.

Kant distinguishes between noumenon and phenomenon, or between a Ding an sich [the thing itself] and the thing as it appears to human consciousness…. In this strand of Kant’s thought—not the only strand, but the one which I am seeking to press into service in the epistemology of religion—the noumenal world exists independently of our perception of it and the phenomenal world is that same world as it appears to our human consciousness…. I want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports. (1989: 241–242)

One advantage of Hick’s position is that it undermines a rationale for religious conflict. If successful, this approach would offer a way to accommodate diverse communities and undermine what has been a source of grave conflict in the past.

Hick’s work since the early 1980s provided an impetus for not taking what appears to be religious conflict as outright contradictions. He advanced a philosophy of religion that paid careful attention to the historical and social context. By doing so, Hick thought that apparently conflicting descriptions of the sacred could be reconciled as representing different perspectives on the same reality, the Real (see Hick 2004, 2006).

The response to Hick’s proposal has been mixed. Some contend that the very concept of “the Real” is incoherent or not religiously adequate. Indeed, articulating the nature of the Real is no easy task. Hick writes that the Real

cannot be said to be one thing or many, person or thing, substance or process, good or bad, purposive or non-purposive. None of the concrete descriptions that apply within the realm of human experience can apply literally to the unexperienceable ground of that realm…. We cannot even speak of this as a thing or an entity. (1989: 246).

It has been argued that Hick has secured not the equal acceptability of diverse religions but rather their unacceptability. In their classical forms, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity diverge. If, say, the Incarnation of God in Christ did not occur, isn’t Christianity false? In reply, Hick has sought to interpret specific claims about the Incarnation in ways that do not commit Christians to the “literal truth” of God becoming enfleshed. The “truth” of the Incarnation has been interpreted in such terms as these: in Jesus Christ (or in the narratives about Christ) God is disclosed. Or: Jesus Christ was so united with God’s will that his actions were and are the functional display of God’s character. Perhaps as a result of Hick’s challenge, philosophical work on the incarnation and other beliefs and practice specific to religious traditions have received renewed attention (see, for example, Taliaferro and Meister 2009). Hick has been a leading, widely appreciated force in the expansion of philosophy of religion in the late twentieth century.

In addition to the expansion of philosophy of religion to take into account a wider set of religions, the field has also seen an expansion in terms of methodology. Philosophers of religion have re-discovered medieval philosophy—the new translations and commentaries of medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic texts have blossomed. There is now a self-conscious, deliberate effort to combine work on the concepts in religious belief alongside a critical understanding of their social and political roots (the work of Foucault has been influential on this point), feminist philosophy of religion has been especially important in re-thinking what may be called the ethics of methodology and, as this is in some respects the most current debate in the field, it is a fitting point to end this entry by highlighting the work of Pamela Sue Anderson (1955–2017) and others.

Anderson (1997 and 2012) seeks to question respects in which gender enters into traditional conceptions of God and in their moral and political repercussions. She also advances a concept of method which delimits justice and human flourishing. A mark of legitimation of philosophy should be the extent to which it contributes to human welfare. In a sense, this is a venerable thesis in some ancient, specifically Platonic philosophy that envisaged the goal and method of philosophy in terms of virtue and the good. Feminist philosophy today is not exclusively a critical undertaking, critiquing “patriarchy”. For a constructive, subtle treatment of religious contemplation and practice, see Coakley 2002. Another key movement that is developing has come to be called Continental Philosophy of Religion. A major advocate of this new turn is John Caputo. This movement approaches the themes of this entry (the concept of God, pluralism, religious experience, metaphysics and epistemology) in light of Heidegger, Derrida, and other continental philosophers. (For a good representation of this movement, see Caputo 2001 and Crocket, Putt, & Robins 2014.)

• Abraham, William J., 1998, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199250030.001.0001
• Abraham, William J. and Frederick D. Aquino (eds.), 2017, The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology , (Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199662241.001.0001
• Adams, Marilyn McCord, 1999, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Adams, Robert Merrihew, 1987, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology , New York : Oxford University Press.
• Almeida, Michael J. and Graham Oppy, 2003, “Sceptical Theism and Evidential Arguments from Evil”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 81(4): 496–516. doi:10.1080/713659758
• Alston, William P., 2004, “Religious Experience Justifies Religious Belief” in Peterson and VanArragon 2004: 135–145.
• –––, 1991a, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1991b, “The Inductive Argument From Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition”, Philosophical Perspectives , 5: 29–68. doi:10.2307/2214090
• Anderson, Pamela Sue, 1997, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 2005, “What’s Wrong with the God’s Eye Point of View: A Constructive Feminist Critique of the Ideal Observer Theory”, in Harris and Insole 2005: 85–99.
• –––, 2012, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love, and Our Epistemic Locatedness , Burlington: Ashgate.
• Armstrong, Karen, 2009, The Case for God , New York: Anchor Books.
• Audi, Robert, 2011, Rationality and Religious Commitment , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609574.001.0001
• –––, 2013, “The Scientific Study of Religion and the Pillars of Human Dignity”, Monist , 96(3): 462–479. doi:10.5840/monist201396321
• ––– (ed.), 2015, “Religious epistemology”, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy , third edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 925.
• Augustine of Hippo, c. 413–427 CE, The City of God ( De Civitate Dei ; quoted from the Henry Bettenson translation, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
• Ayer, A.J., 1936, Language, Truth and Logic , London: Victor Gollancz
• –––, 1973, The Central Questions of Philosophy , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• Bagger, Matthew C., 1999, Religious Experience, Justification, and History , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511487637
• Barrett, Justin 2004, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? , Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.
• Beaty, Michael (ed.), 1990, Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Beaty, Michael and Charles Taliaferro, 1990, “God and Concept Empiricism”, Southwest Philosophy Review , 6(2): 97–105. doi:10.5840/swphilreview19906222
• Beilby, James (ed.), 2002, Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Bergmann, Gustav, 1954 [1967], The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism , Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Second edition, 1967.
• Bergmann, Michael, 2001, “Skeptical Theism and Rowe’s New Evidential Argument from Evil”, Noûs , 35(2): 278–296. doi:10.1111/0029-4624.00297
• –––, 2012a, “Commonsense Skeptical Theism”, in Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind: New Essays on the Philosophy of Alvin Plantinga , Kelly James Clark and Michael Rea (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 9–30. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766864.003.0002
• –––, 2012b, “Rational Religious Belief without Arguments”, in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology , Louis Pojman and Michael Rea (eds.), Boston: Wadsworth Publishing, pp. 534–49.
• –––, 2015, “Religious Disagreement and Rational Demotion”, in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion , Jonathan Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, volume 6, 21–57. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722335.003.0002
• –––, 2017, “Foundationalism”, in Abraham and Aquino 2017. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199662241.013.8
• Bergmann, Michael and Patrick Kain (eds.), 2014, Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution , Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669776.001.0001
• Bergmann, Michael and Michael Rea, 2005, “In Defence of Sceptical Theism: A Reply to Almeida and Oppy”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 83(2): 241–251. doi:10.1080/00048400500111147
• Bergmann, Michael, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea (eds.), 2010, Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576739.001.0001
• Boyer, Pascal, 2001, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought , New York: Basic Books.
• Brody, Baruch, 1974, “Morality and Religion Reconsidered in Readings in Philosophy of Religion: An Analytical Approach”, B. Brody (ed.), Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 592–603.
• Brower, Jeffrey E., 2008, “Making Sense of Divine Simplicity”, Faith and Philosophy , 25(1): 3–30. doi:10.5840/faithphil20082511
• –––, 2009, “Simplicity and Aseity”, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology , Thomas P. Flint and Michael C. Rea (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199596539.013.0006
• Brown, David, 1987, Continental Philosophy and Modern Theology , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 2004, God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199271984.001.0001
• –––, 2016, God in a Single Vision: Integrating Philosophy and Theology , Christopher R. Brewer and Robert MacSwain (eds.), London: Routledge.
• Bruntrup, Godehard and Ludwig Jaskolla (eds.), 2016, Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359943.001.0001
• Buckareff, Andrei and Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), 2016, Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.001.0001
• Burton, David, 2017, Buddhism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation , (Investigating Philosophy of Religion), London: Routledge.
• Cain, Clifford Chalmers, 2015, “Cosmic Origins and Genesis: A Religious Response”, in Re-Vision: A New Look at the Relationship between Science and Religion , Clifford Chalmers Cain (ed.), Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 35–44.
• Caputo, John D., 2001, The Religious , (Blackwell Readings in Continental Philosophy), Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Chandler, Jake and Victoria S. Harrison (eds.), 2012, Probability in the Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604760.001.0001
• Chappell, Tim, 1996, “Why Is Faith a Virtue?”, Religious Studies , 32(1): 27–36. doi:10.1017/S0034412500024045
• Clack, Beverley and Brian R. Clack, 1998 [2008], The Philosophy of Religion: A Critical Introduction , Malden, MA: Polity Press. Revised and fully expanded second edition, 2008.
• Clark, Kelly James, 2014, Religion and the Sciences of Origins , New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. doi:10.1057/9781137414816
• Clark, Kelly James and Raymond J. VanArragon (eds.), 2011, Evidence and Religious Belief , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199603718.001.0001
• Clark, Stephen R. L., 1987, “Animals, Ecosystems and the Liberal Ethic”, Monist , 70(1): 114–133. doi:10.5840/monist19877016
• –––, 1995, “Ecology and the Transformation of Nature”, Theology in Green , 3: 28–46.
• –––, 2017, “Animals in Religion”, Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies , Linda Kalof (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press, 571–589. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.013.19
• Clayton, John, 2006, Religions, Reasons and Gods: Essays in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511488399
• Coakley, Sarah, 2002, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender , (Challenges in Contemporary Theology), Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
• Collins, James, 1967, The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Collins, Robin, 2009, “The Teleological Argument: An explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe”, in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology , W.L. Craig and J.P. Morelanad (eds.), Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 202–281.
• Copleston, Frederick C., 1960, Contemporary Philosophy: Studies of Logical Positivism and Existentialism , London: Burns & Oates.
• Cottingham, John, 2014, Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane Approach , New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139094627
• Craig, William Lane, 1979, The Kalām Cosmological Argument , New York: Barnes and Noble.
• –––, 1980, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz , New York: Barnes and Noble.
• Craig, William Lane and J. P. Moreland (eds.), 2009, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781444308334
• Craig, William Lane and Quentin Smith, 1993, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263838.001.0001
• Creel, Richard E., 1995, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Crockett, Clayton, B. Keith Putt, and Jeffrey W. Robbins (eds.), 2014, The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Dasgupta, Surendranath, 1922–1955, A History of Indian Philosophy , 5 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Davies, Brian, 1993, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2006, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil , London: Continuum.
• Davis, Caroline Franks, 1989, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198250012.001.0001
• De Cruz, Helen and Johan De Smedt, 2010, “Paley’s iPod: The Cognitive Basis of the Design Argument within Natural Theology”, Zygon , 45(3): 665–684. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.2010.01120.x
• Dennett, Daniel C., 2006, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , New York: Viking.
• Diller, Jeanine and Asa Kasher (eds.), 2013, Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities , Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1
• Dombrowski, Daniel A., 2006, Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511498916
• Dore, Clement, 1984, Theism , Dordrecht: D. Reidel. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-6300-9
• Draper, Paul, 1996, “The Skeptical Theist”, in Howard-Snyder 1996: 175–192.
• –––, 2013, “The Limitations of Pure Skeptical Theism”, Res Philosophica , 90(1): 97–111. doi:10.11612/resphil.2013.90.1.6
• –––, 2014, “Confirmation Theory and the Core of CORNEA”, in Skeptical Theism: New Essays , Trent Dougherty and Justin P. McBrayer (eds.), Oxford University Press, 132–141. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199661183.003.0010
• Draper, Paul and J. L. Schellenberg (eds.), 2017, Renewing Philosophy of Religion: Exploratory Essays , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198738909.001.0001
• Dworkin, Ronald, 2013, Religion without God , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Earman, John, 2000, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195127382.001.0001
• Einstein, Albert, 1954, Ideas and Opinions , New York: Crown Publishers; reprinted London: Souvenir Press, 1973.
• Ekstrom, Laura, 2021, God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ellis, Fiona, 2014, God, Values, and Nature , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714125.001.0001
• –––, 2018, New Models of Religious Understanding , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198796732.001.0001
• Evans, C. Stephen, 1982, Philosophy of Religion: Thinking About Faith , first edition, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• –––, 1996, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/019826397X.001.0001
• –––, 2010, Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217168.001.0001
• –––, 2013, God and Moral Obligation , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696680.001.0001
• Evans, C. Stephen and R. Zachary Manis, 2006, Philosophy of Religion: Thinking about Faith , second edition, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• Everitt, Nicholas, 2004, The Non-Existence of God , London: Routledge.
• Fales, Evan, 2004, “Do Mystics See God?” in Peterson and VanArragon 2004: 145–148.
• Firestone, Cris and Nathan Jacobs (eds.), 2012, The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought , Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Firth, Roderick, 1952 [1970], “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 12(3): 317–345; reprinted in Readings in Ethical Theory , Wilfrid Sellars and John Hospers (eds.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970: 200–221. doi:10.2307/2103988
• Flew, Anthony G., 1955, “Theology and Falsification”, in Flew & MacIntyre 1955: 96–130; originally published 1950 in the first volume of a short lived student journal, University , at Oxford University; reprinted in Mitchell 1971: 1–2.
• –––, 1984, God, Freedom and Immortality , Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
• –––, 2007, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind , Roy Abraham Varghese (ed.), New York: HarperOne.
• Flew, Antony and Alasdair C. MacIntyre (eds.), 1955, New Essays in Philosophical Theology , London: SCM Press.
• Forrest, Peter, 1996, God without the Supernatural: A Defense of Scientific Theism , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Foster, John, 1985, Ayer , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• –––, 2004, The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199250596.001.0001
• Geivett, R. Douglas and Brendan Sweetman (eds.), 1992, Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gellman, Jerome, 1997, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2001, Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry , London: Ashgate.
• Goetz, Stewart, 2008, Freedom, Teleology, and Evil , London: Continuum.
• Goetz, Stewart and Charles Taliaferro, 2008, Naturalism , (Interventions), Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• Gendler, Tamar and John Hawthorne (eds.), 2002, Conceivability and Possibility , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Griffiths, Paul J., 1994, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Gutting, Gary, 1982, Religious Belief and Religious Skepticism , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Hare, John E., 1996, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269571.001.0001
• –––, 2015, God’s Command , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199602018.001.0001
• Harris, Harriet A. and Christopher J. Insole (eds.), 2005, Faith and Philosophical Analysis: The Impact of Analytical Philosophy on the Philosophy of Religion , (Heythrop Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, Religion and Theology), Aldershot, England: Ashgate.
• Harrison, Victoria S., 2006, “Internal Realism and the Problem of Religious Diversity”, Philosophia , 34(3): 287–301. doi:10.1007/s11406-006-9029-5
• –––, 2012, Eastern Philosophy: The Basics , London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2015, “Religious Pluralism”, in The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion , Graham Oppy (ed.), London and New York: Routledge, 257–269.
• –––, 2022. Eastern Philosophy of Religion , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hasker, William, 1989, God, Time, and Knowledge , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1999, The Emergent Self , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Hedley, Douglas, 2016, The Iconic Imagination , London: Bloomsbury.
• Helm, Paul, 1988, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/0198237251.001.0001
• –––, 2000, Faith with Reason , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256631.001.0001
• Hempel, Carl G., 1950 [1959], “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning”, Revue Internationale de Philosophie , 4(11): 41–63; reprinted as “The Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” in Logical Positivism , A.J. Ayer (ed.), Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959: 108–132.
• Hepburn, Ronald W., 1963, “From World to God”, Mind , 72(285): 40–50. doi:10.1093/mind/LXXII.285.40
• Hick, John, 1963 [1990], Philosophy of Religion , fourth edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• ––– (ed.), 1964 [1970], Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion , second edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• –––, 1966 [1977], Evil and the God of Love , London: Macmillan. Second edition, 1977.
• –––, 1971, “Rational Theistic Belief without Proofs”, in his Arguments for the Existence of God , New York: Herder and Herder.
• –––, 1973a, “The New Map of the Universe of Faiths”, in Hick 1973b [1988: 133–147]. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-19049-2_10
• –––, 1973b [1988], God and the Universe of Faiths: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion , London: Macmillan; reprinted 1988.
• –––, 1989, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• –––, 2004, The Fifth Dimension: An Exploration of the Spiritual Realm , Oxford: Oneworld Publications.
• –––, 2006, The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience, and The Transcendent , New York: Palgrave.
• Hick, John and Arthur C. McGill (eds.), 1967, The Many-Faced Argument: Recent Studies on the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God , New York: Macmillan.
• Hill, Daniel J., 2005, Divinity and Maximal Greatness , London: Routledge.
• Howard-Snyder, Daniel (ed.), 1996, The Evidential Argument from Evil , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Paul Moser (eds.), 2001, Divine Hiddenness: New Essays , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511606090
• Hughes, Christopher, 1989, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God: An Investigation in Aquinas’ Philosophical Theology , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Hughes, Gerard J., 1995, The Nature of God , London: Routledge.
• Jantzen, Grace M., 1994, “Feminists, Philosophers, and Mystics”, Hypatia , 9(4): 186–206. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1994.tb00655.x
• Jordan, Jeff (ed.), 1994, Gambling on God: Essays on Pascal’s Wager , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Kelemen, Deborah, 2004, “Are Children ‘Intuitive Theists’? Reasoning About Purpose and Design in Nature”, Psychological Science , 15(5): 295–301. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00672.x
• Kenny, Anthony, 1979, The God of the Philosophers , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Kerr, Fergus, 1986, Theology after Wittgenstein , Oxford: Blackwell.
• King, Nathan L. and Thomas Kelly, 2017, “Disagreement and the Epistemology of Theology”, in Abraham and Aquino 2017. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199662241.013.4
• Kitcher, Philip, 2014, Life after Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Kraay, Klaas J. (ed.), 2015, God and the Multiverse: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives , (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 10), New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
• Kvanvig, Jonathan L., 1986, The Possibility of an All-Knowing God , London: Macmillan.
• Kwan, Kai-man, 2003, “Is the Critical Trust Approach to Religious Experience Incompatible with Religious Particularism?: A Reply to Michael Martin and John Hick”, Faith and Philosophy , 20(2): 152–169. doi:10.5840/faithphil200320229
• –––, 2013, Rainbow of Experience, Critical Trust, and God , London: Continuum.
• Leftow, Brian, 1991, Time and Eternity , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2022, Anselm’s Argument; Divine Necessity , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Leslie, John, 1989, Universes , London: Routledge.
• –––, 2007, Immortality Defended , Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
• Lund, David H., 2005, The Conscious Self: The Immaterial Center of Subjective States , Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
• Lycan, William, 2019, On Evidence in Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• MacDonald, Scott Charles (ed.), 1991, Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Mackie, J.L., 1983, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and Against the Existence of God , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• MacSwain, Robert, 2013, Solved by Sacrifice: Austin Farrer, Fideism, and the Evidence of Faith , (Studies in Philosophical Theology, 51), Leuven: Peeters.
• Malcolm, Norman, 1977, “The Groundlessness of Religious Beliefs”, in Reason and Religion , Stuart C. Brown (ed.), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Manson, Neil, 2003, God and Design: The teleological argument and modern science , London: Routledge.
• Marsh, Jason, 2013, “Darwin and the Problem of Natural Nonbelief”, Monist , 96(3): 349–376. doi:10.5840/monist201396316
• –––, 2014, “Assessing the Third Way”, in The Roots of Religion: Exploring the Cognitive Science of Religion , Roger Trigg and Justin Barrett (eds.), Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 127–148.
• –––, 2015, “Procreative Ethics and the Problem of Evil”, in Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting , Sarah Hannan, Samantha Brennan, and Richard Vernon (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 65–86. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199378111.003.0003
• Martin, Michael, 1990, Atheism: A Philosophical Analysis , Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
• Mawson, T.J., 2016, God and the Meanings of Life: What God Could and Couldn’t Do to Make Our Lives More Meaningful , London: Bloomsbury Academic.
• McKim, Robert, 2018, “Why Religious Pluralism is Not Evil and is in Some Respects Quite Good” in The History of Evil from the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today , (The History of Evil, 6), Jerome Gellman (ed.), London: Routledge, chapter 12.
• Meister, Chad (ed.), 2010, The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195340136.001.0001
• –––, 2018, Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed , second edition, London: Bloomsbury.
• Meister, Chad and Paul Moser (eds.), 2017, The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781107295278
• Angier, Tom P.S. (ed.), The History of Evil in Antiquity: 2000 BCE – 450 CE , (History of Evil, 1)
• Murray, Michael, 2008, Nature Red in tooth and claw , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Pinsent, Andrew (ed.), The History of Evil in the Medieval Age: 450–1450 CE , (History of Evil, 2)
• Robinson, Daniel (ed.), The History of Evil in the Early Modern Age: 1450–1700 CE , (History of Evil, 3)
• Hedley, Douglas (ed.), The History of Evil in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: 1700–1900 CE , (History of Evil, 4)
• Harrison, Victoria S. (ed.), The History of Evil in the Early Twentieth Century: 1900–1950 CE , (History of Evil, 5)
• Gellman, Jerome (ed.), The History of Evil from the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today: 1950–2018 , (History of Evil, 6)
• Menssen, Sandra and Thomas Sullivan, 2007, The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation form a Philosophical Perspective , Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
• –––, 2017, “Revelation and Scripture”, in Abraham and Aquino 2017. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199662241.013.22
• Matilal, B. K., 1982, Logical and Ethical Issues of Religious Belief , Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press.
• Menuge, Angus J.L., 2004, Agents under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Meynell, Hugo A., 1982, The Intelligible Universe: A Cosmological Argument , London: Macmillan.
• Mitchell, Basil (ed.), 1971, The Philosophy of Religion , (Oxford Readings in Philosophy), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1973, The Justification of Religious Belief , London: Macmillan.
• –––, 1994, Faith and Criticism , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198267584.001.0001
• Moreland, James Porter, 2008, Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument , (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, 4), London: Routledge.
• Morris, Thomas V., 1986, The Logic of God Incarnate , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1987a, Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• ––– (ed.), 1987b, The Concept of God , (Oxford Readings in Philosophy), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1991, Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology , Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• Moser, Paul K., 2008, The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511499012
• –––, 2010, The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511817731
• –––, 2017, The God Relationship: The Ethics for Inquiry about the Divine , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108164009
• Murphy, Mark C., 2017, God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198796916.001.0001
• Murray, Michael J., 2008, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199237272.001.0001
• Murti, T.R.V., 1955, Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mādhyamika System , London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Nagasawa, Yujin, 2017, Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198758686.001.0001
• [NASIM] National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, 2008, Science, Evolution, and Creationism , third edition, Washington, DC: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/11876 [ NASIM 2008 quote in this entry is also available online at the National Academy of Sciences ]
• Nielsen, Kai, 1996, Naturalism Without Foundations , Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Press.
• O’Connor, Timothy, 2008, Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency , Oxford: Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781444345490
• O’Hear, Anthony, 2020, Transcendence, Creation, and Incarnation , London: Routledge.
• Oppy, Graham, 1995, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511663840
• –––, 2006, Arguing About Gods , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511498978
• –––, 2018, Naturalism and Religion; A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation , (Investigating Philosophy of Religion), London: Routledge.
• Oppy, Graham Robert and Nick Trakakis (eds.), 2009, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion , 5 volumes, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Padgett, Alan G., 1992, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time , New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Penelhum, Terence, 1983, God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism , Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-7083-0
• –––, 1989, Faith , New York: Macmillan.
• Peterson, Michael L., William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger (eds.), 1991, Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , first edition, New York: Oxford University Press. Fifth edition, 2012.
• ––– (eds.), 1996, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings , first edition, New York: Oxford University Press. Fifth edition, 2014.
• Peterson, Michael L. and Raymond J. VanArragon (eds.), 2004, Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion , (Contemporary Debates in Philosophy), Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Philipse, Herman, 2012, God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199697533.001.0001
• Phillips, D.Z., 1966, the Concept of Prayer , New York: Schocken Books.
• –––, 1976, Religion Without Explanation , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 2001. “Theism Without Theodicy,” in S. Davis (ed.), Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy , Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
• –––, 2004, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God , London: SCM Press.
• –––, 1970, Faith and Philosophical Inquiry , London: Routledge.
• Pike, Nelson, 1970 [2002], God and Timelessness , New York: Schocken Books; reprinted Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002.
• Pinker, Steven, 2013, “Science Is Not Your Enemy”, The New Republic , August 7. URL = < https://newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities >
• Plantinga, Alvin, 1967, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1974, The Nature of Necessity , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198244142.001.0001
• –––, 1980, Does God Have a Nature? Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press.
• –––, 1993, Warrant: the Current Debate , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195078624.001.0001
• –––, 1993, Warrant and Proper Function , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195078640.001.0001
• –––, 2000, Warranted Christian Belief , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195131932.001.0001
• –––, 2011, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812097.001.0001
• Plantinga, Alvin and Michael Bergmann, 2016, “Religion and Epistemology”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Tim Crane (ed.), London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780415249126-K080-2
• Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley, 2008, Knowledge of God , Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
• Popkin, Richard H., 1999, The Pimlico History of Philosophy , London: Pimlico.
• Proudfoot, Wayne, 1976, God and the Self: Three Types of Philosophy of Religion , Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
• –––, 1985, Religious Experience , Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Pruss, Alexander R. and Joshua L. Rasmussen, 2018, Necessary Existence , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198746898.001.0001
• Putnam, Hilary, 1983, Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers , Volume 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ranganathan, Shyam, 2018, Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation , (Investigating Philosophy of Religion), London: Routledge.
• Re Manning, Russell (ed.), 2013, The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199556939.001.0001
• Reichenbach, Bruce R., 1972, The Cosmological Argument: A Reassessment , Springfield, IL: Thomas Press.
• –––, 1982, Evil and a Good God , New York: Fordham University Press.
• Rescher, Nicholas, 1985, Pascal’s Wager: A Study of Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology , Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
• Rhees, Rush, 1969, Without Answers , New York: Schocken Books.
• Rogers, Katherin A., 2007, “Anselmian Eternalism: The Presence of a Timeless God”, Faith and Philosophy , 24(1): 3–27. doi:10.5840/faithphil200724134
• –––, 2008, Anselm on Freedom , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231676.001.0001
• Rota, Michael, 2016, Taking Pascal’s wager , Downers Grove: Intervarsity.
• Rowe, William L., 1975, The Cosmological Argument , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 1978 [1993], Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction , Belmont: Wadsworth. Second Edition, 1993.
• –––, 2004, Can God Be Free? , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rundle, Bede, 2004, Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199270503.001.0001
• Ruse, Michael, 2014, “Atheism and Science”, in The Customization of Science: The Impact of Religious and Political Worldviews on Contemporary Science Steve Fuller, Mikael Stenmark, Ulf Zackariasson (eds), New York: Palgrave, 73–88. doi:10.1057/9781137379610_5
• Schellenberg, J.L., 2005, Prolegomena to Philosophy of Religion , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2007, The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2009, The Will To Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2013, Evolutionary Religion , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673766.001.0001
• –––, 2017, “Religion Without God (And Without Turning East): A New Western Alternative to Traditional Theistic Faith”, World and Word , 37(2): 118–127. [ Schellenberg 2017 available online ]
• Schlesinger, George N., 1977, Religion and Scientific Method , Dordrecht: Reidel. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1235-5
• –––, 1988, New Perspectives on Old-Time Religion , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Schloss, Jeffrey and Michael J. Murray (eds.), 2009, The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion , Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557028.001.0001
• Sessions, William Lad, 1994, The Concept of Faith: A Philosophical Investigation , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Sharma, Arvind, 1990, A Hindu Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion , New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• –––, 1995, Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta: A Comparative Study in Religion and Reason , University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Smart, J.J.C. and J.J. Haldane, 1996, Atheism and Theism , Oxford: Blackwell. Second edition 2003. doi:10.1002/9780470756225
• Smart, Ninian, 1962 [1986], “Religion as a Discipline?”, Higher Education Quarterly , 17(1): 48–53; reprinted in his Concept and Empathy: Essays in the Study of Religion , Donald Wiebe (ed.), New York: New York University Press, 1986. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2273.1962.tb00978.x
• Sobel, Jordan Howard, 2003, Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511497988
• Sorensen, Roy A., 1992, Thought Experiments , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/019512913X.001.0001
• Soskice, Janet Martin, 1985, Metaphor and Religious Language , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Stenmark, Mikael, 2001, Scientism: Science, Ethics, and Religion , Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
• –––, 2004, How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model , Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• –––, 2015, “Competing Conceptions of God: The Personal God versus the God beyond Being”, Religious Studies , 51(2): 205–220. doi:10.1017/S0034412514000304
• Sterba, James, 2019, Is a Good God Logically Possible? New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Stiver, Dan R., 1996, The Philosophy of Religious Language: Sign, Symbol, and Story , Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
• Stump, Eleonore, 2010, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277421.001.0001
• Stump, Eleonore and Norman Kretzmann, 1981, “Eternity”, The Journal of Philosophy , 78(8): 429–458; reprinted in Morris 1987b: pp. 219–52. doi:10.2307/2026047
• Swinburne, Richard, 1977, The Coherence of Theism , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/0198240708.001.0001
• –––, 1979, The Existence of God , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271672.001.0001
• –––, 1981, Faith and Reason , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/0198247257.001.0001
• –––, 1986, The Evolution of the Soul , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/0198236980.001.0001
• –––, 1994, The Christian God , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1996, Is There a God? , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198235446.001.0001
• –––, 1998, Providence and the Problem of Evil , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198237987.001.0001
• Taliaferro, Charles, 1994, Consciousness and the Mind of God , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511520693
• –––, 1998, Contemporary Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 2001, “Sensibility and Possibilia: A Defense of Thought Experiments”, Philosophia Christi , 3(2): 403–421.
• –––, 2002, “Philosophy of Religion”, in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy , Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James (eds.), second edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 453–489. doi:10.1002/9780470996362.ch17
• –––, 2005a, “A God’s Eye Point of View: The Divine Ethic”, in Harris and Insole 2005: 76–84.
• –––, 2005b, Evidence and Faith: Philosophy of Religion Since the Seventeenth Century , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511610370
• –––, 2009, Philosophy of Religion: A Beginner’s Guide , Oxford: Oneworld.
• –––,2021, Religions: A Quick Immersion , New York: Tibidabo Publishing Inc.
• Taliaferro, Charles and Jil Evans (eds.), 2011, Turning Images in Philosophy, Science, and Religion: A New Book of Nature , Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199563340.001.0001
• –––, 2013, The Image in Mind: Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination , London: Continuum.
• –––, 2021, Is God Invisible? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Taliaferro, Charles and Chad Meister (eds.), 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521514330
• Taliaferro, Charles, Paul Draper, and Philip L. Quinn, 2010, A Companion to Philosophy of Religion , second edition, (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy, 9), Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Taliaferro, Charles, Victoria S. Harrison, and Stewart Goetz, 2012, The Routledge Companion to Theism , London: Routledge.
• Taliaferro, Charles and Elliot Knuths, 2017, “Thought Experiments in Philosophy of Religion: The Virtues of Phenomenological Realism and Values”, Open Theology , 3(1): 167–173. doi:10.1515/opth-2017-0013
• Taliaferro, Charles and Elsa J. Marty (eds.), 2010 [2018], A Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion , New York: Continuum. Second edition 2018.
• Taylor, Richard, 1963, Metaphysics , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Tennant, F.R., 1930, Philosophical Theology (Volume II), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tilghman, Benjamin R., 1994, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Timpe, Kevin, 2014, Free Will in Philosophical Theology , London: Bloomsbury.
• Tracy, Thomas F. (ed.), 1994, The God Who Acts: Philosophical and Theological Explorations , University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Trigg, Roger, 1989, Reality at Risk , London: Harvester.
• –––, 1993, Rationality and Science: Can Science Explain Everything? , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Van Cleve, James, 1999, Problems from Kant , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• van Inwagen, Peter, 1983, An Essay on Free Will , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1995, God, Knowledge and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1998, “Modal Epistemology”, Philosophical Studies , 92(1/2): 67–84. doi:10.1023/A:1017159501073
• –––, 2006, The Problem of Evil , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245604.001.0001
• –––, 2017, Thinking about Free Will , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316711101
• Wainwright, William J., 1981, Mysticism: A Study of Its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications , Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
• –––, 1988, Philosophy of Religion , (The Wadsworth Basic Issues in Philosophy Series), first edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Second edition, 1998.
• ––– (ed.), 1996, God, Philosophy, and Academic Culture , Atlanta: Scholars Press
• Walls, Jerry L. (ed.), 2007, The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195170498.001.0001
• Ward, Keith, 1974, The Concept of God , Hoboken: Basil Blackwell.
• –––, 2002, God, a Guide for the Perplexed , London: Oneworld.
• –––, 2014, The Evidence for God: The Case for the Existence of the Spiritual Dimension , London: Darton, Longman & Todd.
• –––, 2017, The Christian Idea of God: A Philosophical Foundation for Faith , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108297431
• –––, 2006, Is Religion Dangerous? Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.
• Westphal, Merold, 1984, God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Wettstein, Howard, 2012, The Significance of Religious Experience , Oxford: Oxford University Press doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199841363.001.0001
• Whitehead, Alfred North, 1929 [1978], Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corrected edition, David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (eds), New York: Free Press, 1978. Gifford lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh during the session 1927–28.
• Wierenga, Edward R., 1989, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Wisdom, J., 1945, “Gods”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 45: 185–206. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/45.1.185
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations ( Philosophische Untersuchungen ), G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell.
• Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 1976, Reason within the Bounds of Religion , Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• –––, 1982, “God Everlasting”, in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion , Steven M. Cahn and David Shatz (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press.
• Wykstra, Stephen J., 1984, “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance’”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 16(2): 73–93. doi:10.1007/BF00136567
• Wynn, Mark R., 2013, Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669981.001.0001
• Wynn, Mark, 2020, Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Yandell, Keith E., 1993, The Epistemology of Religious Experience , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus, 1991, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195107630.001.0001
• –––, 2004, Divine Motivation Theory , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511606823
• –––, 2008, “Omnisubjectivity”, in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion , Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, volume 1, 231–247.
• –––, 2012, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199936472.001.0001

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Essays in Philosophy , a Biannual Journal
• Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life

afterlife | al-Farabi: philosophy of society and religion | Anselm of Canterbury [Anselm of Bec] | Aquinas, Thomas | Cavendish, Margaret Lucas | Christian theology, philosophy and | Conway, Lady Anne | Daoism: religious | divine: illumination | evil: problem of | faith | feminist philosophy, interventions: philosophy of religion | fideism | freedom: divine | free will: divine foreknowledge and | God: and other necessary beings | God: and other ultimates | heaven and hell in Christian thought | Hume, David: on religion | Kant, Immanuel: philosophy of religion | omnipotence | omniscience | ontological arguments | pragmatic arguments and belief in God | process theism | providence, divine | religion: and morality | religion: and political theory | religion: and science | religion: epistemology of | religion: phenomenology of | religious diversity | religious experience | religious language | theology, natural and natural religion

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to John Deck, Cara Stevens, and Thomas Churchill for comments and assistance in preparing an earlier version of this entry. Portions of this entry appeared previously in C. Taliaferro, “Philosophy of Religion”, in N. Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy , 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Copyright © 2023 by Charles Taliaferro < taliafer @ stolaf . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Three Essays on Religion

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  September 1, 1948 to May 31, 1951 ?

Location:  Chester, Pa. ?

Genre:  Essay

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

In the following three essays, King wrestles with the role of religion in modern society. In the first assignment, he calls science and religion “different though converging truths” that both “spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.” King emphasizes an awareness of God’s presence in the second document, noting that religion’s purpose “is not to perpetuate a dogma or a theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.” In the final handwritten essay King acknowledges the life-affirming nature of Christianity, observing that its adherents have consistently “looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.”

"Science and Religion"

There is widespread belief in the minds of many that there is a conflict between science and religion. But there is no fundamental issue between the two. While the conflict has been waged long and furiously, it has been on issues utterly unrelated either to religion or to science. The conflict has been largely one of trespassing, and as soon as religion and science discover their legitimate spheres the conflict ceases.

Religion, of course, has been very slow and loath to surrender its claim to sovereignty in all departments of human life; and science overjoyed with recent victories, has been quick to lay claim to a similar sovereignty. Hence the conflict.

But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. There cannot be. Their respective worlds are different. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science investigates. Religion interprets. One seeks causes, the other ends. Science thinks in terms of history, religion in terms of teleology. One is a survey, the other an outlook.

The conflict was always between superstition disguised as religion and materialism disguised as science, between pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

Religion and science are two hemispheres of human thought. They are different though converging truths. Both science and religion spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.

Science is the response to the human need of knowledge and power. Religion is the response to the human need for hope and certitude. One is an outreaching for mastery, the other for perfection. Both are man-made, and like man himself, are hedged about with limitations. Neither science nor religion, by itself, is sufficient for man. Science is not civilization. Science is organized knowledge; but civilization which is the art of noble and progressive communal living requires much more than knowledge. It needs beauty which is art, and faith and moral aspiration which are religion. It needs artistic and spiritual values along with the intellectual.

Man cannot live by facts alone. What we know is little enough. What we are likely to know will always be little in comparison with what there is to know. But man has a wish-life which must build inverted pyramids upon the apexes of known facts. This is not logical. It is, however, psychological.

Science and religion are not rivals. It is only when one attempts to be the oracle at the others shrine that confusion arises. Whan the scientist from his laboratory, on the basis of alleged scientific knowledge presumes to issue pronouncements on God, on the origin and destiny of life, and on man's place in the scheme of things he is [ passing? ] out worthless checks. When the religionist delivers ultimatums to the scientist on the basis of certain cosomologies embedded in the sacred text then he is a sorry spectacle indeed.

When religion, however, on the strength of its own postulates, speaks to men of God and the moral order of the universe, when it utters its prophetic burden of justice and love and holiness and peace, then its voice is the voice of the eternal spiritual truth, irrefutable and invincible.,

"The Purpose of Religion"

What is the purpose of religion? 1  Is it to perpetuate an idea about God? Is it totally dependent upon revelation? What part does psychological experience play? Is religion synonymous with theology?

Harry Emerson Fosdick says that the most hopeful thing about any system of theology is that it will not last. 2  This statement will shock some. But is the purpose of religion the perpetuation of theological ideas? Religion is not validated by ideas, but by experience.

This automatically raises the question of salvation. Is the basis for salvation in creeds and dogmas or in experience. Catholics would have us believe the former. For them, the church, its creeds, its popes and bishops have recited the essence of religion and that is all there is to it. On the other hand we say that each soul must make its own reconciliation to God; that no creed can take the place of that personal experience. This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said, “There is natural religion which belongs to man by nature. But there is also a revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality.” 3 Relevant religion therefore, comes through revelation from God, on the one hand; and through repentance and acceptance of salvation on the other hand. 4  Dogma as an agent in salvation has no essential place.

This is the secret of our religion. This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems and perplexities of life that they must face. This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God moving through history.

Religion has to be interpreted for each age; stated in terms that that age can understand. But the essential purpose of religion remains the same. It is not to perpetuate a dogma or theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.

[ signed ] M. L. King Jr. 5

"The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry"

Basically Christianity is a value philosophy. It insists that there are eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good. This value content is embodied in the life of Christ. So that Christian philosophy is first and foremost Christocentric. It begins and ends with the assumption that Christ is the revelation of God. 6

We might ask what are some of the specific values that Christianity seeks to conserve? First Christianity speaks of the value of the world. In its conception of the world, it is not negative; it stands over against the asceticisms, world denials, and world flights, for example, of the religions of India, and is world-affirming, life affirming, life creating. Gautama bids us flee from the world, but Jesus would have us use it, because God has made it for our sustenance, our discipline, and our happiness. 7  So that the Christian view of the world can be summed up by saying that it is a place in which God is fitting men and women for the Kingdom of God.

Christianity also insists on the value of persons. All human personality is supremely worthful. This is something of what Schweitzer has called “reverence for life.” 8  Hunan being must always be used as ends; never as means. I realize that there have been times that Christianity has short at this point. There have been periods in Christians history that persons have been dealt with as if they were means rather than ends. But Christianity at its highest and best has always insisted that persons are intrinsically valuable. And so it is the job of the Christian to love every man because God love love. We must not love men merely because of their social or economic position or because of their cultural contribution, but we are to love them because  God  they are of value to God.

Christianity is also concerned about the value of life itself. Christianity is concerned about the good life for every  child,  man,  and  woman and child. This concern for the good life and the value of life is no where better expressed than in the words of Jesus in the gospel of John: “I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” 9  This emphasis has run throughout the Christian tradition. Christianity has always had a concern for the elimination of disease and pestilence. This is seen in the great interest that it has taken in the hospital movement.

Christianity is concerned about increasing value. The whole concept of the kingdom of God on earth expressing a concern for increasing value. We need not go into a dicussion of the nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God, only to say that Christians throughout the ages have held tenaciouly to this concept. They have looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.

In the light of all that we have said about Christianity as a value philosophy, where does the ministry come into the picture? 10

1.  King may have also considered the purpose of religion in a Morehouse paper that is no longer extant, as he began a third Morehouse paper, “Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion” (King, “The Purpose of Education,” September 1946-February 1947, in  Papers  1:122).

2.  “Harry Emerson Fosdick” in  American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits,  ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 114: “The theology of any generation cannot be understood, apart from the conditioning social matrix in which it is formulated. All systems of theology are as transient as the cultures they are patterned from.”

3.  King further developed this theme in his dissertation: “[Tillich] finds a basis for God's transcendence in the conception of God as abyss. There is a basic inconsistency in Tillich's thought at this point. On the one hand he speaks as a religious naturalist making God wholly immanent in nature. On the other hand he speaks as an extreme supernaturalist making God almost comparable to the Barthian ‘wholly other’” (King, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” 15 April 1955, in  Papers  2:535).

4.  Commas were added after the words “religion” and “salvation.”

5.  King folded this assignment lengthwise and signed his name on the verso of the last page.

6.  King also penned a brief outline with this title (King, “The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry,” Outline, September 1948-May 1951). In the outline, King included the reference “see Enc. Of Religion p. 162.” This entry in  An Encyclopedia of Religion,  ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946) contains a definition of Christianity as “Christo-centric” and as consisting “of eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good.” King kept this book in his personal library.

7.  Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563-ca. 483 BCE) was the historical Buddha.

8.  For an example of Schweitzer's use of the phrase “reverence for life,” see Albert Schweitzer, “The Ethics of Reverence for Life,”  Christendom  1 (1936): 225-239.

9.  John 10:10.

10.  In his outline for this paper, King elaborated: “The Ministry provides leadership in helping men to recognize and accept the eternal values in the Xty religion. a. The necessity of a call b. The necessity for disinterested love c. The [ necessity ] for moral uprightness” (King, “Philosophy of Life,” Outline, September 1948-May 1951).

Source:  CSKC-INP, Coretta Scott King Collection, In Private Hands, Sermon file.

©  Copyright Information

• Email Signup

Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

World Religions Overview Essay

The Movement of Religion and Ecology: Emerging Field and Dynamic Force

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Yale University

Originally published in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology

As many United Nations reports attest, we humans are destroying the life-support systems of the Earth at an alarming rate. Ecosystems are being degraded by rapid industrialization and relentless development. The data keeps pouring in that we are altering the climate and toxifying the air, water, and soil of the planet so that the health of humans and other species is at risk. Indeed, the Swedish scientist, Johan Rockstrom, and his colleagues, are examining which planetary boundaries are being exceeded. (Rockstrom and Klum, 2015)

The explosion of population from 3 billion in 1960 to more then 7 billion currently and the subsequent demands on the natural world seem to be on an unsustainable course. The demands include meeting basic human needs of a majority of the world’s people, but also feeding the insatiable desire for goods and comfort spread by the allure of materialism. The first is often called sustainable development; the second is unsustainable consumption. The challenge of rapid economic growth and consumption has brought on destabilizing climate change. This is coming into full focus in alarming ways including increased floods and hurricanes, droughts and famine, rising seas and warming oceans.

Can we turn our course to avert disaster? There are several indications that this may still be possible. On September 25, 2015 after the Pope addressed the UN General Assembly, 195 member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On December 12, 2015 these same members states endorsed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Both of these are important indications of potential reversal. The Climate Agreement emerged from the dedicated work of governments and civil society along with business partners. The leadership of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and many others was indispensable.

One of the inspirations for the Climate Agreement and for the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals was the release of the Papal Encyclical, Laudato Si’ in June 2015. The encyclical encouraged the moral forces of concern for both the environment and people to be joined in “integral ecology”.  “The cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” are now linked as was not fully visible before. (Boff, 1997 and in the encyclical) Many religious and environmental communities are embracing this integrated perspective and will, no doubt, foster it going forward. The question is how can the world religions contribute more effectively to this renewed ethical momentum for change. For example, what will be their long-term response to population growth? As this is addressed in the article by Robert Wyman and Guigui Yao, we will not take it up here. Instead, we will consider some of the challenges and possibilities amid the dream of progress and the lure of consumption.

Challenges: The Dream of Progress and the Religion of Consumption

Consumption appears to have become an ideology or quasi-religion, not only in the West but also around the world. Faith in economic growth drives both producers and consumers. The dream of progress is becoming a distorted one. This convergence of our unlimited demands with an unquestioned faith in economic progress raises questions about the roles of religions in encouraging, discouraging, or ignoring our dominant drive toward appropriately satisfying material needs or inappropriately indulging material desires. Integral ecology supports the former and critiques the latter.

Moreover, a consumerist ideology depends upon and simultaneously contributes to a worldview based on the instrumental rationality of the human. That is, the assumption for decision-making is that all choices are equally clear and measurable. Market based metrics such as price, utility, or efficiency are dominant. This can result in utilitarian views of a forest as so much board feet or simply as a mechanistic complex of ecosystems that provide services to the human.

One long-term effect of this is that the individual human decision-maker is further distanced from nature because nature is reduced to measurable entities for profit or use. From this perspective we humans may be isolated in our perceived uniqueness as something apart from the biological web of life. In this context, humans do not seek identity and meaning in the numinous beauty of the world, nor do they experience themselves as dependent on a complex of life-supporting interactions of air, water, and soil. Rather, this logic sees humans as independent, rational decision-makers who find their meaning and identity in systems of management that now attempt to co-opt the language of conservation and environmental concern. Happiness is derived from simply creating and having more material goods. This perspective reflects a reading of our current geological period as human induced by our growth as a species that is now controlling the planet. This current era is being called the “Anthropocene” because of our effect on the planet in contrast to the prior 12,000 year epoch known as the Holocene.

This human capacity to imagine and implement a utilitarian-based worldview regarding nature has undermined many of the ancient insights of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions. For example, some religions, attracted by the individualistic orientations of market rationalism and short-term benefits of social improvement, seized upon material accumulation as containing divine sanction. Thus, Max Weber identified the rise of Protestantism with an ethos of inspirited work and accumulated capital.

Weber also identified the growing disenchantment from the world of nature with the rise of global capitalism. Karl Marx recognized the “metabolic rift” in which human labor and nature become alienated from cycles of renewal. The earlier mystique of creation was lost. Wonder, beauty, and imagination as ways of knowing were gradually superseded by the analytical reductionism of modernity such that technological and economic entrancement have become key inspirations of progress.

Challenges: Religions Fostering Anthropocentrism

This modern, instrumental view of matter as primarily for human use arises in part from a dualistic Western philosophical view of mind and matter. Adapted into Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious perspectives, this dualism associates mind with the soul as a transcendent spiritual entity given sovereignty and dominion over matter. Mind is often valued primarily for its rationality in contrast to a lifeless world. At the same time we ensure our radical discontinuity from it.

Interestingly, views of the uniqueness of the human bring many traditional religious perspectives into sync with modern instrumental rationalism. In Western religious traditions, for example, the human is seen as an exclusively gifted creature with a transcendent soul that manifests the divine image and likeness. Consequently, this soul should be liberated from the material world. In many contemporary reductionist perspectives (philosophical and scientific) the human with rational mind and technical prowess stands as the pinnacle of evolution. Ironically, religions emphasizing the uniqueness of the human as the image of God meet market-driven applied science and technology precisely at this point of the special nature of the human to justify exploitation of the natural world. Anthropocentrism in various forms, religious, philosophical, scientific, and economic, has led, perhaps inadvertently, to the dominance of humans in this modern period, now called the Anthropocene. (It can be said that certain strands of the South Asian religions have emphasized the importance of humans escaping from nature into transcendent liberation. However, such forms of radical dualism are not central to the East Asian traditions or indigenous traditions.)

From the standpoint of rational analysis, many values embedded in religions, such as a sense of the sacred, the intrinsic value of place, the spiritual dimension of the human, moral concern for nature, and care for future generations, are incommensurate with an objectified monetized worldview as they not quantifiable. Thus, they are often ignored as externalities, or overridden by more pragmatic profit-driven considerations. Contemporary nation-states in league with transnational corporations have seized upon this individualistic, property-based, use-analysis to promote national sovereignty, security, and development exclusively for humans.

Possibilities: Systems Science

Yet, even within the realm of so-called scientific, rational thought, there is not a uniform approach. Resistance to the easy marriage of reductionist science and instrumental rationality comes from what is called systems science and new ecoogy. By this we refer to a movement within empirical, experimental science of exploring the interaction of nature and society as complex dynamic systems. This approach stresses both analysis and synthesis – the empirical act of observation, as well as placement of the focus of study within the context of a larger whole. Systems science resists the temptation to take the micro, empirical, reductive act as the complete description of a thing, but opens analysis to the large interactive web of life to which we belong, from ecosystems to the biosphere. There are numerous examples of this holistic perspective in various branches of ecology. And this includes overcoming the nature-human divide. (Schmitz 2016) Aldo Leopold understood this holistic interconnection well when he wrote: “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” (Leopold, 1966)

Collaboration of Science and Religion

Within this inclusive framework, scientists have been moving for some time beyond simply distanced observations to engaged concern. The Pope’s encyclical, Laudato Si , has elevated the level of visibility and efficacy of this conversation between science and religion as perhaps never before on a global level. Similarly, many other statements from the world religions are linking the wellbeing of people and the planet for a flourishing future. For example, the World Council of Churches has been working for four decades to join humans and nature in their program on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation.

Many scientists such as Thomas Lovejoy, E.O. Wilson, Jane Lubchenco, Peter Raven, and Ursula Goodenough recognize the importance of religious and cultural values when discussing solutions to environmental challenges. Other scientists such as Paul Ehrlich and Donald Kennedy have called for major studies of human behavior and values in relation to environmental issues. ( Science , July 2005) This has morphed into the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere. (mahb.standford.edu). Since 2009 the Ecological Society of America has established an Earth Stewardship Initiative with yearly panels and publications.  Many environmental studies programs are now seeking to incorporate these broader ethical and behavioral approaches into the curriculum.

Possibilities: Extinction and Religious Response

The stakes are high, however, and the path toward limiting ourselves within planetary boundaries is not smooth. Scientists are now reporting that because of the population explosion, our consuming habits, and our market drive for resources, we are living in the midst of a mass extinction period. This period represents the largest loss of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when the Cenozoic period began. In other words, we are shutting down life systems on the planet and causing the end of this large-scale geological era with little awareness of what we are doing or its consequences.

As the cultural historian Thomas Berry observed some years ago, we are making macrophase changes on the planet with microphase wisdom. Indeed, some people worry that these rapid changes have outstripped the capacity of our religions, ethics, and spiritualities to meet the complex challenges we are facing.

The question arises whether the wisdom traditions of the human community, embedded in institutional religions and beyond, can embrace integral ecology at the level needed? Can the religions provide leadership into a synergistic era of human-Earth relations characterized by empathy, regeneration, and resilience? Or are religions themselves the wellspring of those exclusivist perspectives in which human societies disconnect themselves from other groups and from the natural world? Are religions caught in their own meditative promises of transcendent peace and redemptive bliss in paradisal abandon? Or does their drive for exclusive salvation or truth claims cause them to try to overcome or convert the Other?

Authors in this volume are exploring these issues within religious and spiritual communities regarding the appropriate responses of the human to our multiple environmental and social challenges. What forms of symbolic visioning and ethical imagining can call forth a transformation of consciousness and conscience for our Earth community? Can religions and spiritualites provide vision and inspiration for grounding and guiding mutually enhancing human-Earth relations? Have we arrived at a point where we realize that more scientific statistics on environmental problems, more legislation, policy or regulation, and more economic analysis, while necessary, are no longer sufficient for the large-scale social transformations needed? This is where the world religions, despite their limitations, surely have something to contribute.

Such a perspective includes ethics, practices, and spiritualities from the world’s cultures that may or may not be connected with institutional forms of religion. Thus spiritual ecology and nature religions are an important part of the discussions and are represented in this volume. Our own efforts have focused on the world religions and indigenous traditions. Our decade long training in graduate school and our years of living and traveling throughout Asia and the West gave us an early appreciation for religions as dynamic, diverse, living traditions. We are keenly aware of the multiple forms of syncretism and hybridization in the world religions and spiritualties. We have witnessed how they are far from monolithic or impervious to change in our travels to more than 60 countries.

Problems and Promise of Religions

Several qualifications regarding the various roles of religion should thus be noted. First, we do not wish to suggest here that any one religious tradition has a privileged ecological perspective. Rather, multiple interreligious perspectives may be the most helpful in identifying the contributions of the world religions to the flourishing of life.

We also acknowledge that there is frequently a disjunction between principles and practices: ecologically sensitive ideas in religions are not always evident in environmental practices in particular civilizations. Many civilizations have overused their environments, with or without religious sanction.

Finally, we are keenly aware that religions have all too frequently contributed to tensions and conflict among various groups, both historically and at present. Dogmatic rigidity, inflexible claims of truth, and misuse of institutional and communal power by religions have led to tragic consequences in many parts of the globe.

Nonetheless, while religions have often preserved traditional ways, they have also provoked social change. They can be limiting but also liberating in their outlooks. In the twentieth century, for example, religious leaders and theologians helped to give birth to progressive movements such as civil rights for minorities, social justice for the poor, and liberation for women.  Although the world religions have been slow to respond to our current environmental crises, their moral authority and their institutional power may help effect a change in attitudes, practices, and public policies. Now the challenge is a broadening of their ethical perspectives.

Traditionally the religions developed ethics for homicide, suicide, and genocide. Currently they need to respond to biocide, ecocide, and geocide. (Berry, 2009)

Retrieval, Reevaluation, Reconstruction

There is an inevitable disjunction between the examination of historical religious traditions in all of their diversity and complexity and the application of teachings, ethics, or practices to contemporary situations. While religions have always been involved in meeting contemporary challenges over the centuries, it is clear that the global environmental crisis is larger and more complex than anything in recorded human history. Thus, a simple application of traditional ideas to contemporary problems is unlikely to be either possible or adequate. In order to address ecological problems properly, religious and spiritual leaders, laypersons and academics have to be in dialogue with scientists, environmentalists, economists, businesspeople, politicians, and educators. Hence the articles in this volume are from various key sectors.

With these qualifications in mind we can then identify three methodological approaches that appear in the still emerging study of religion and ecology. These are retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction. Retrieval involves the scholarly investigation of scriptural and commentarial sources in order to clarify religious perspectives regarding human-Earth relations. This requires that historical and textual studies uncover resources latent within the tradition. In addition, retrieval can identify ethical codes and ritual customs of the tradition in order to discover how these teachings were put into practice. Traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) is an important part of this for all the world religions, especially indigenous traditions.

With reevaluation, traditional teachings are evaluated with regard to their relevance to contemporary circumstances. Are the ideas, teachings, or ethics present in these traditions appropriate for shaping more ecologically sensitive attitudes and sustainable practices? Reevaluation also questions ideas that may lead to inappropriate environmental practices. For example, are certain religious tendencies reflective of otherworldly or world-denying orientations that are not helpful in relation to pressing ecological issues? It asks as well whether the material world of nature has been devalued by a particular religion and whether a model of ethics focusing solely on human interactions is adequate to address environmental problems.

Finally, reconstruction suggests ways that religious traditions might adapt their teachings to current circumstances in new and creative ways. These may result in new syntheses or in creative modifications of traditional ideas and practices to suit modern modes of expression. This is the most challenging aspect of the emerging field of religion and ecology and requires sensitivity to who is speaking about a tradition in the process of reevaluation and reconstruction. Postcolonial critics have appropriately highlighted the complex issues surrounding the problem of who is representing or interpreting a religious tradition or even what constitutes that tradition. Nonetheless, practitioners and leaders of particular religions are finding grounds for creative dialogue with scholars of religions in these various phases of interpretation.

Religious Ecologies and Religious Cosmologies

As part of the retrieval, reevaluation, and reconstruction of religions we would identify “religious ecologies” and “religious cosmologies” as ways that religions have functioned in the past and can still function at present. Religious ecologies are ways of orienting and grounding whereby humans undertake specific practices of nurturing and transforming self and community in a particular cosmological context that regards nature as inherently valuable. Through cosmological stories humans narrate and experience the larger matrix of mystery in which life arises, unfolds, and flourishes. These are what we call religious cosmologies. These two, namely religious ecologies and religious cosmologies, can be distinguished but not separated. Together they provide a context for navigating life’s challenges and affirming the rich spiritual value of human-Earth relations.

Human communities until the modern period sensed themselves as grounded in and dependent on the natural world. Thus, even when the forces of nature were overwhelming, the regenerative capacity of the natural world opened a way forward. Humans experienced the processes of the natural world as interrelated, both practically and symbolically. These understandings were expressed in traditional environmental knowledge, namely, in hunting and agricultural practices such as the appropriate use of plants, animals, and land. Such knowledge was integrated in symbolic language and practical norms, such as prohibitions, taboos, and limitations on ecosystems’ usage. All this was based in an understanding of nature as the source of nurturance and kinship. The Lakota people still speak of “all my relations” as an expression of this kinship. Such perspectives will need to be incorporated into strategies to solve environmental problems. Humans are part of nature and their cultural and religious values are critical dimensions of the discussion.

Multidisciplinary approaches: Environmental Humanities

We are recognizing, then, that the environmental crisis is multifaceted and requires multidisciplinary approaches. As this book indicates, the insights of scientific modes of analytical and synthetic knowing are indispensable for understanding and responding to our contemporary environmental crisis. So also, we need new technologies such as industrial ecology, green chemistry, and renewable energy. Clearly ecological economics is critical along with green governance and legal policies as articles in this volume illustrate.

In this context it is important to recognize different ways of knowing that are manifest in the humanities, such as artistic expressions, historical perspectives, philosophical inquiry, and religious understandings. These honor emotional intelligence, affective insight, ethical valuing, and spiritual awakening.

Environmental humanities is a growing and diverse area of study within humanistic disciplines. In the last several decades, new academic courses and programs, research journals and monographs, have blossomed. This broad-based inquiry has sparked creative investigation into multiple ways, historically and at present, of understanding and interacting with nature, constructing cultures, developing communities, raising food, and exchanging goods. 

It is helpful to see the field of religion and ecology as part of this larger emergence of environmental humanities. While it can be said that environmental history, literature, and philosophy are some four decades old, the field of religions and ecology began some two decades ago. It was preceded, however, by work among various scholars, particularly Christian theologians. Some eco-feminists theologians, such as Rosemary Ruether and Sallie McFague, Mary Daly, and Ivone Gebara led the way.

The Emerging Field of Religion and Ecology

An effort to identify and to map religiously diverse attitudes and practices toward nature was the focus of a three-year international conference series on world religions and ecology. Organized by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, ten conferences were held at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions from 1996-1998 that resulted in a ten volume book series (1997-2004). Over 800 scholars of religion and environmentalists participated. The director of the Center, Larry Sullivan, gave space and staff for the conferences. He chose to limit their scope to the world religions and indigenous religions rather than “nature religions”, such as wicca or paganism, which the organizers had hoped to include.

Culminating conferences were held in fall 1998 at Harvard and in New York at the United Nations and the American Museum of Natural History where 1000 people attended and Bill Moyers presided. At the UN conference Tucker and Grim founded the Forum on Religion and Ecology, which is now located at Yale. They organized a dozen more conferences and created an electronic newsletter that is now sent to over 12,000 people around the world. In addition, they developed a major website for research, education, and outreach in this area (fore.yale.edu). The conferences, books, website, and newsletter have assisted in the emergence of a new field of study in religion and ecology. Many people have helped in this process including Whitney Bauman and Sam Mickey who are now moving the field toward discussing the need for planetary ethics. A Canadian Forum on Religion and Ecology was established in 2002, a European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment was formed in 2005, and a Forum on Religion and Ecology @ Monash in Australia in 2011.

Courses on this topic are now offered in numerous colleges and universities across North America and in other parts of the world. A Green Seminary Initiative has arisen to help educate seminarians. Within the American Academy of Religion there is a vibrant group focused on scholarship and teaching in this area. A peer-reviewed journal, Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology , is celebrating its 25 th year of publication. Another journal has been publishing since 2007, the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture . A two volume Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature edited by Bron Taylor has helped shape the discussions, as has the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture he founded. Clearly this broad field of study will continue to expand as the environmental crisis grows in complexity and requires increasingly creative interdisciplinary responses.

The work in religion and ecology rests in an intersection between the academic field within education and the dynamic force within society. This is why we see our work not so much as activist, but rather as “engaged scholarship” for the flourishing of our shared planetary life. This is part of a broader integration taking place to link concerns for both people and the planet. This has been fostered in part by the twenty-volume Ecology and Justice Series from Orbis Books and with the work of John Cobb, Larry Rasmussen, Dieter Hessel, Heather Eaton, Cynthia Moe-Loebeda, and others. The Papal Encyclical is now highlighting this linkage of eco-justice as indispensable for an integral ecology.

The Dynamic Force of Religious Environmentalism

All of these religious traditions, then, are groping to find the languages, symbols, rituals, and ethics for sustaining both ecosystems and humans. Clearly there are obstacles to religions moving into their ecological, eco-justice, and planetary phases. The religions are themselves challenged by their own bilingual languages, namely, their languages of transcendence, enlightenment, and salvation; and their languages of immanence, sacredness of Earth, and respect for nature. Yet, as the field of religion and ecology has developed within academia, so has the force of religious environmentalism emerged around the planet. Roger Gottlieb documents this in his book A Greener Faith . (Gottlieb 2006) The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew held international symposia on “Religion, Science and the Environment” focused on water issues (1995-2009) that we attended. He has made influential statements on this issue for 20 years. The Parliament of World Religions has included panels on this topic since 1998 and most expansively in 2015. Since 1995 the UK based Alliance of Religion and Conservation (ARC), led by Martin Palmer, has been doing significant work with religious communities around under the patronage of Prince Philip.

These efforts are recovering a sense of place, which is especially clear in the environmental resilience and regeneration practices of indigenous peoples. It is also evident in valuing the sacred pilgrimage places in the Abrahamic traditions (Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca) both historically and now ecologically. So also East Asia and South Asia attention to sacred mountains, caves, and other pilgrimage sites stands in marked contrast to massive pollution.

In many settings around the world religious practitioners are drawing together religious ways of respecting place, land, and life with understanding of environmental science and the needs of local communities. There have been official letters by Catholic Bishops in the Philippines and in Alberta, Canada alarmed by the oppressive social conditions and ecological disasters caused by extractive industries. Catholic nuns and laity in North America, Australia, England, and Ireland sponsor educational programs and conservation plans drawing on the eco-spiritual vision of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. Also inspired by Berry and Swimme, Paul Winter’s Solstice celebrations and Earth Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York Winter have been taking place for three decades.

Even in the industrial growth that grips China, there are calls from many in politics, academia, and NGOs to draw on Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist perspectives for environmental change. In 2008 we met with Pan Yue, the Deputy Minister of the Environment, who has studied these traditions and sees them as critical to Chinese environmental ethics. In India, Hinduism is faced with the challenge of clean up of sacred rivers, such as the Ganges and the Yamuna. To this end in 2010 with Hindu scholars, David Haberman and Christopher Chapple, we organized a conference of scientists and religious leaders in Delhi and Vrindavan to address the pollution of the Yamuna.

Many religious groups are focused on climate change and energy issues. For example, InterFaith Power and Light and GreenFaith are encouraging religious communities to reduce their carbon footprint. Earth Ministry in Seattle is leading protests against oil pipelines and terminals. The Evangelical Environmental Network and other denominations are emphasizing climate change as a moral issue that is disproportionately affecting the poor. In Canada and the US the Indigenous Environmental Network is speaking out regarding damage caused by resource extraction, pipelines, and dumping on First Peoples’ Reserves and beyond. All of the religions now have statements on climate change as a moral issue and they were strongly represented in the People’s Climate March in September 2015. Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published the first collection of articles on religion and climate change from two conferences we organized there. (Tucker & Grim, 2001)

Striking examples of religion and ecology have occurred in the Islamic world. In June 2001 and May 2005 the Islamic Republic of Iran led by President Khatami and the United Nations Environment Programme sponsored conferences in Tehran that we attended. They were focused on Islamic principles and practices for environmental protection. The Iranian Constitution identifies Islamic values for ecology and threatens legal sanctions. One of the earliest spokespersons for religion and ecology is the Iranian scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Fazlun Khalid in the UK founded the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science. In Indonesia in 2014 a fatwa was issued declaring that killing an endangered species is prohibited.

These examples illustrate ways in which an emerging alliance of religion and ecology is occurring around the planet. These traditional values within the religions now cause them to awaken to environmental crises in ways that are strikingly different from science or policy. But they may find interdisciplinary ground for dialogue in concerns for eco-justice, sustainability, and cultural motivations for transformation. The difficulty, of course, is that the religions are often preoccupied with narrow sectarian interests. However, many people, including the Pope, are calling on the religions to go beyond these interests and become a moral leaven for change.

Renewal Through Laudato Si’

Pope Francis is highlighting an integral ecology that brings together concern for humans and the Earth. He makes it clear that the environment can no longer be seen as only an issue for scientific experts, or environmental groups, or government agencies alone. Rather, he invites all people, programs and institutions to realize these are complicated environmental and social problems that require integrated solutions beyond a “technocratic paradigm” that values an easy fix. Within this integrated framework, he urges bold new solutions.

In this context Francis suggests that ecology, economics, and equity are intertwined. Healthy ecosystems depend on a just economy that results in equity. Endangering ecosystems with an exploitative economic system is causing immense human suffering and inequity. In particular, the poor and most vulnerable are threatened by climate change, although they are not the major cause of the climate problem. He acknowledges the need for believers and non-believers alike to help renew the vitality of Earth’s ecosystems and expand systemic efforts for equity.

In short, he is calling for “ecological conversion” from within all the world religions. He is making visible an emerging worldwide phenomenon of the force of religious environmentalism on the ground, as well as the field of religion and ecology in academia developing new ecotheologies and ecojustice ethics. This diverse movement is evoking a change of mind and heart, consciousness and conscience. Its expression will be seen more fully in the years to come.

The challenge of the contemporary call for ecological renewal cannot be ignored by the religions. Nor can it be answered simply from out of doctrine, dogma, scripture, devotion, ritual, belief, or prayer. It cannot be addressed by any of these well-trod paths of religious expression alone. Yet, like so much of our human cultures and institutions the religions are necessary for our way forward yet not sufficient in themselves for the transformation needed.  The roles of the religions cannot be exported from outside their horizons.  Thus, the individual religions must explain and transform themselves if they are willing to enter into this period of environmental engagement that is upon us. If the religions can participate in this creativity they may again empower humans to embrace values that sustain life and contribute to a vibrant Earth community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berry, Thomas. 2009. The Sacred Universe: Earth Spirituality and Religion in the 21st Century (New York: Columbia University Press).

Boff, Leonardo. 1997. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).

Gottlieb, Roger. 2006. A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planetary Future . (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Grim, John and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. 2014. Ecology and Religion. (Washington, DC: Island Press).

Leopold, Aldo. 1966. A Sand County Almanac . (Oxford University Press).

Rockstrom, Johan and Mattias Klum. 2015. Big World, Small Planet: Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries . (New Haven: Yale University Press)

Schmitz, Oswald. 2016. The New Ecology: Science for a Sustainable World. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Taylor, Bron, ed. 2008. Encyclopedia of Religion, Nature, and Culture. (London: Bloomsbury).

Tucker, Mary Evelyn. 2004. Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter their Ecological Phase . (Chicago: Open Court).

Tucker, Mary Evelyn and John Grim, eds. 2001 Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change? Daedalus Vol. 130, No.4.

Header photo: ARC procession to UN Faith in Future Meeting, Bristol, UK

Religion - Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

A research on religion.

On the surface, the book of Ruth appears to be the story of a young girl who thought she had it all, and then one day, had nothing, but then once again, is saved by Prince Charming. Every girl's dream right? But when we dig a little deeper, it becomes evident that this book is more than just a love story between a man and a woman, but a picture of redemption. Ruth the Moabite marries, loses her husband, and […]

My Personal Attitude to Religion

Growing up in a family who saw religion as not only priority, but a way of life is something I will always cherish. Ever since I can remember, my family and I had the same routine Sunday, after Sunday, after Sunday. Even though my parents were constantly busy with their jobs, I was always running around to attend my different sporting events while my brother and sister were vigorously training to improve their sound on the instruments they played in […]

Biblical Interpretation Paper

For my biblical interpretation paper, I chose to focus on the story of Jesus and the women at the well (John 4:7). In this story, Jesus finds himself passing through the town of Sychar. Jesus had been travelling long and far and stopped at some land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob had a well on this land, and Jesus, tired from his long journey, sat down by the well. A Samaritan woman came to the well […]

We will write an essay sample crafted to your needs.

Representation of Religion in Asian Buddha Statues

Artistic concepts are broad. Art may be interpreted either literally or symbolically depending on a person's insights. It goes a long way in the depiction of reality or imaginary insinuation, be it a person or a place. However, the study of artistic features gives more profound meaning and relates each work of art to the subjects under study for example religion. Eliade Mircea once said that the Buddha's iconography had been changed to spiritual existence from human nature[1]. Considering the […]

Existence in the Buddhist Religion

Existence consists of three characteristics: suffering, impermanence, and the concept of no-self. Ideas of these three characteristics make up much of the Buddhist religion. The three characteristics of existence constitute much of the Buddhist world view, from views toward pain to ideas about rebirth. Suffering, or dukkha, is a central focus in the Dhammapada. Suffering can be caused by physical pain, from pleasure changing to pain, or from the perpetual state of change that all things exist in. The Buddha […]

The Bible and the Power of the Mind

The Bible often talks about the power of the mind and the thoughts that come from it. Moses, Paul and Samuel talk about the powerfulness of the mind; Solomon, Matthew and Moses talk about how it can be deceived really easily; and David, Luke and Paul talk about God's blessings that come with opening your minds to Christ. Minds and thoughts are powerful and worthy of protection; one's thoughts are able to change their reality and the circumstances they live […]

The Religion of Buddhism

Siddhartha Gautama was numerous things. He was a ruler, an educator, the Buddha and later a divine being. He showed the religion of Buddhism. Moreover, he even affected Indian history until the end of time. Buddhism has spread to numerous nations including Thailand and Mongolia. The Buddha was conceived in sixth Century BCE. He was fundamentally secured up a castle for a large portion of his initial life in light of the fact that a prescience told that his family […]

Humanity Religions

Introduction Christianity is one of the widely practised religion in the world, and one of the oldest religious practices. The religious groups that practice Christianity under strict guidelines from the bible are known as Christians. Coming in at number one as the current world statistics show is Islam. Another world-renowned religion is Islam and is considered the most widely practised religion in the world. These old practices were considered part of humanity because they gave guidelines on morals on how […]

The Different Types of Punishments that were Used in the Bible

The death penalty has been, and continues to be an ongoing, controversial debate in today's society. In fact, capital punishment was extremely prevalent, especially during the time of Christ. In the Bible, mainly the Old Testament, capital punishment was ultimately the primary consequence to any crime that was committed. This may come as a surprise for some when in today's world, God is commonly known to be all powerful and forgiving. "For if you forgive other people when they sin […]

The Relationship between Religion and Politics in the United States

The relationship between religion and politics continues to be an important topic in modern American society. In a radical act, the Constitution not only guaranteed religious freedom; it also stated that the United States would not have a national church and would not have religious tests for national office[1]. However, in American political life, some factors enhance the role of religion in a way that is not observed in other developed countries. In the article "How Politics Affects Religion: Partisanship, […]

Role of Religion in Marco Polo’s Travels

"The state and foundations of western civilization were breaking at the seams during the 13th century. The primary indicator of this was the destruction of Constantinople by crusaders because of its orthodox roots in 1204. In addition, western culture was facing its own obstacles since the Great Schism wreaked havoc on the power struggle between church and state. Through his travel memoir, Marco Polo highlighted the Mongol’s model of religious unity that was lacking in affluent western societies, and gave […]

Extroversion Vs Introversions Within the Bible

McCrae and Costa's model presents five factors of personality. When inspecting this model of personality, it is very fascinating to line up some of the characters within the Bible and how they fit into one of the factors. Looking at the component of extroversion the individual that fits best in scripture is the Apostle Paul, and the person who I would consider to be the opposite is Moses. It is very interesting how these two can be so distinct on […]

Religion Impact on Many Civilizations

Throughout the course of human history, many civilizations have risen to prominence as well as having collapsed into nothingness. One commonality that each civilization has had, regardless of the respective outcome, was the impact that religion had on them. Democracies such as Greece, empires and kingdoms like Rome and Egypt, and even the many great dynasties of China all had religious beliefs in some form or another that greatly impacted their ways of life. Religion played an essential role in […]

Religion in the Scarlet Letter

Everyone has sinned at some point in their lives and it has ruined relationships. Sinning however can be redeemable but it takes hard work and dedication in order to achieve that goal. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne we follow Hester Prynne our female protagonist and her journey along the aftermath of sin and the change it brings in each character along the way. In seventeenth century Boston, the protagonist Hester Prynne does a horrible thing and […]

The Difference between a Cult and Religion

Images of strange symbols, massacres, and dark woods may come to mind when you hear the word “cult” - a term that has grown to have a lot of negative connotations in our society. It would be strange to even try to compare what we know as a cult to mainstream religions, a conventional part of our everyday lives. But in reality, the two terms are polysemous, there are many possible meanings and depending on the way they are being […]

Homosexuality in Religion

When considering religion, you'd never come to assume that any faith is okay with homosexuality. homosexuality is something that is not a preferred topic that is talked about in church. Some churches can perhaps come upon that topic very briefly however can never have a full series like they do with a series concerning family, your walk with Christ, prayer,etc.. homosexuality is a great topic because the percentage of the LGBQT population rises within the U.S. in this essay you […]

Mind According to Bible

The word,"mind" is used in a variety of ways throughout the Bible. God tells believers and unbelievers alike what to do with their minds. These are some of the things God says to do with their minds. God calls everyone to listen to and remember what He says. One example of this is in Deuteronomy 11:18, New International Version, "Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on […]

Religion’s Role in Gender Equality

In today’s society and looking back, gender equality is something that the human race, in general, has struggled with since the beginning of our existence. Modern society likes to blame certain groups more for the gender inequalities we are facing than others. More often than not the finger pointing ends up turning to religion. In the Western World individuals often accuse Muslims of oppressing women, when Christianity, historically speaking has not been leading the way in gender equality. That being […]

Religion and the Renaissance

Religion is not easy to define. Many people have their own definitions of religion based on how they perform their religious beliefs. Religion can be a specific underlying set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or faith community. In the dictionaries religion is defined as “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.” The Florence Cathedral depicts religion through the artifacts inside that have a religious […]

Religion as a Means to Bring People Together

Throughout the book, we see various religions, working for the good and bad of several empires and peoples. While often serving as a means of unification or an arm of government, it also has a tendency to marginalize other people groups living within a region. When state mandated, religion can cause social and political unrest from the hierarchy of certain religious positions such as bishops. Religion can often cause divisions even within itself, resulting in all the more fragmentation. In […]

The Love/Hate Relationship between Religion and the LBGTQIA Community

Abstract This research will analyze the ever complicated relationship between members who identify as Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transsexual, Queer, Intersex and Asexual and various religious groups. The LGBTQIA acceptance movement is quite new to say the least, and there are still many barriers keeping them from reaching total acceptance. It is highly doubtable that any demographic will ever be completely accepted by another, however the lengths that many religious groups go to shun those who identify as anything other than […]

Religious Discrimination Throughout Cultures and the Workplace

Religious discrimination refers to the treating of an individual unfairly because of his or her religious beliefs (Kerner). P. Smith (2017) defines religious discrimination as the adverse treatment of an individual who is either an employee or any other person considering the religious beliefs of the person rather than the merit of the employee. Additionally, religious discrimination can refer to the unjust, or the prejudicial treatment of a group of people or just an individual because of his or chosen […]

Sexuality and Gender Within the Religions of Judaism and Christianity

In my term paper, I will be writing about sexuality and gender within the religions of Judaism and Christianity. I chose this topic because in recent years, it has become a topic of controversy. Christianity is largest religion; therefore, many people believe they know what Christians advocate on such topics. As for Judaism, I never really had knowledge of gender/sexuality in this religion because of ignorance. There was never really an interest for other religions on my part, but after […]

Mexican Culture – Religion, Family, Language, and Mexican Arts

"In this article, everything is important to the Mexican culture such as religion, family, language, and Mexican arts. Most of Mexico is dependent on church. About 82% of Mexicans consider themselves as catholic. Unlike other countries, parents are treated with respect. The largest event that a Mexican family celebrate is the quinceanera. A quinceanera is the celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday and is followed by a party. Mexican arts usually consist of clay pottery and colorful baskets. The style […]

Religion in Renaissance and Elizabethan Age

"The Renaissance also known as the age of “Rebirth” began in the 14th century. As the Renaissance occurred so did the Elizabethan era, also known as the Golden Age in English history, which began in the 16th century. The highly advanced drama during the time lead to dramas inspiring other and proposing several different readings such as the Holy Scriptures, pamphlets, and literary criticism to some of the first English novels. The sudden darkening change of literature connected to the […]

Feminism and Islam Religion

Throughout the Muslim world, a popular front of feminist belief is growing among women who are looking forward to reclaim Islam and the Quran for themselves. For ten years, many women trusted that they had to choose between their Muslim personality, their identity, and also their belief in gender egalitarianism. It was beyond the bounds of possibility of their choice that, the person that involved betraying either their faith or their feminist knowledge. About few years ago, a global movement […]

Importance of Bible

The mind should be very important to everyone, for it is the gateway for either good or bad to enter through. What enters the mind lurks in the mind. God wants what is paramount for everyone, and for believers to stay true. God wants what is paramount for everyone. Luke 21:14 says, "But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves." (Luke 21:14 NIV) This passage means do not worry what one will say to […]

All Religion View LGBTQ Life Styles Negatively

The Relationship between religion and LGBTQ community is different from time and place, and different religions. Countless religions in the world view LGBTQ negatively. This Negativity can range from explicitly forbidding to discouraging same sex sexual practices, and sexual reassignment, but liberals and progressive voices actively push social acceptance of the LGBTQ Identities. Most of the LGBTQ have been raised in many different organized religions many cherish their community’s faith but many are being forced to leave those communities’ behind […]

Comparative Religion Life of Buddha

Buddha which means enlightened one or the awakened is the titled conferred to Siddhartha Gautama. It is believed that he lived in Nepal between the sixth and fourth centuries. During that time, he tried different teachings but could not find any that was acceptable to him. One night while in meditation, he found the answers he was seeking thereby achieving awareness. This is what made him become Buddha. His life serves as the foundation of the Buddhist religion. Enlightenment, personal […]

Reformation was Mostly about Religion

I would say that the Reformation was mostly about religion. The majority of the documents shown to us pertained to the religious problems with the Church officials. Document 7 is a painting that depicts the bad things the church officials are doing. They are shown indulging in wealth and glory. Some men are also depicted with concubines and illegitimate children. In document 11, John Calvin writes “Nothing therefore can be more absurd than the fiction, that the power of judging […]

Related topic

Additional example essays.

• Christianity in the Byzantine Empire
• Servant Leadership in Diverse Contexts
• Symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthrone’s “Young Goodman Brown”
• Basketball - Leading the Team to Glory
• Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• Negative Impact of Process Philosophy
• Personal Philosophy of Leadership
• The Importance of Professional Bearing in the Military
• "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
• Gender Roles in the Great Gatsby
• Socioautobiography Choices and Experiences Growing up

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples

Essay Samples on Religion

Composing your student essay about religion, it’s essential to research your subject first and avoid controversial subjects. The trick is to provide a clear structure that will focus on theological aspects of things. When you strive to compare different religions, do not write in a biased tone and work on your compare-and-contrast essay. The body parts of your religion essay must start with a good topic sentence as you address a particular concept or the roots of some religious notions. It’s always good if you can find reliable sources to support the facts. If you are not sure about some source or an idea that must be explored, you can either talk to an academic advisor or focus on a good religion essay example that we have prepared for you. These will help you get a basic idea of how such essays must be written. See the introduction part in every essay sample provided and don’t forget to stay respectful as you work on the differences and similarities. Check your grading rubric requirements twice. Regarding a good thesis statement, religious essays should only pose assumptions or compose specific claims that are supported with another sentence to avoid misreading or confusion.

Why Is Freedom of Religion Important

Freedom of religion stands as one of the fundamental pillars of a democratic and pluralistic society. It safeguards an individual's right to practice their chosen faith without fear of discrimination or persecution. This essay delves into the resons why freedom of religion is important, exploring...

• Religious Tolerance

Who is God in Your Life: Personal Beliefs and Spiritual Connections

The concept of God holds profound significance across cultures and belief systems, shaping individuals' values, perspectives, and sense of purpose. So who is God in your life? This essay delves into the diverse ways people perceive God in their lives, whether through religious traditions, personal...

• Religious Beliefs

Should Religion Be Taught in Schools

Should religion be taught in schools? This question is a topic that evokes discussions about cultural diversity, freedom of religion, and the role of education in shaping students' worldviews. Advocates argue that including religion in the curriculum can foster understanding, promote tolerance, and provide students...

How Does Religion Affect Your Life

How does religion affect your life? Religion is a deeply personal and influential aspect of human experience, shaping beliefs, values, behaviors, and perspectives. The impact of religion extends beyond mere rituals; it permeates various dimensions of life. This essay explores the intricate ways in which...

How Are Religion and Culture Connected in Various Ways

The intricate relationship between religion and culture is a subject of immense significance, shaping the values, behaviors, and traditions of societies worldwide. While religion and culture are distinct concepts, they are profoundly interconnected, often influencing and informing one another. This essay delves into how religion...

• Culture and Communication

Stressed out with your paper?

Consider using writing assistance:

• 100% unique papers
• 3 hrs deadline option

Buddhism and Hinduism: Exploring Similarities and Differences

Buddhism and Hinduism, two of the world's most ancient and complex religions, share both commonalities and distinctions that have shaped the spiritual and cultural landscapes of Asia. This essay delves into Buddhism and Hinduism and the core similarities and differences between these two belief systems,...

Death is a Passage Beyond Life

Introduction In virtually every culture and religion around the world, death is not regarded as an end, but as a passage to a different form of existence. This belief, deeply rooted in human history and psyche, has shaped rituals, philosophies, and the way we perceive...

Why Should We Respect Our Parents: Exploring Islamic Arguments

What islam says about why should we respect our parents? In this essay I want to emphasize that Allah is telling us to treat our parents kindly and to make effort in pleasing them. He says that our mother most deserves our respect and service,...

• Parent-Child Relationship

Respect Your Parents and Take Care of Your Children: Ephesians 6:1-9

I chose the following passage Ephesians 6:1-9. The main reason that I chose this passage was because the other passages had already been taken. Now after researching this passage I discovered that there was more than meets the eye and I want to learn how...

The Importance of Respect and Obedience to Our Parents in Islam

DedicationI dedicate this research to God Almighty my creator, my strong pillar, my source of inspiration, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. He has been the source of my strength throughout this research and on His wings only have I soared. I also dedicate this work to...

Respect for Life: the Issue of Death Penalty in Catholic Teachings

An essential principle of a human rights is that each and every human being has an innate dignity that must be respected. Respect for one's human dignity is the original human right from which other human being had as a gift from our almighty God....

• Catholic Church
• Death Penalty

What Does Respect Mean to You: Christian Explanation

A few days ago a friend of mine asked 'what does respect mean to you?' Later this question inspired me to write this essay about the meaning of respect from christian believer's point of view.   Paradise is something that many people think they can...

• Biblical Worldview
• Christian Worldview

Implementing the Four Noble Truths in Everyday Life

Introduction One of the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism set forth by Buddha himself are the Four Noble Truths. These contain the very essence of the Buddha's pragmatic teachings. The Buddha is known to attain enlightenment only after the realization of these four truths during his...

Euthanasia and the Catholic Church in Australia

An ethical issue is a problem or dilemma that involves a person having to decide whether or not it is morally right or wrong. Euthanasia is a clear example of an ethical issue currently present in Australia. Euthanasia is a process whereby a person who...

• Assisted Suicide

Islamic Traditions and Practices: A Focus on Asian Muslims

Asia is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Muslim population accounts for approximately 62% of the total population of Asia. Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority countries of Asia. As Muslims have different cultures, values, and histories, their...

The Divine Love: Understanding God's Love for Humanity

There is a multitude of attributes of God, what He is and that any human being can also become. Among these countless attributes or characteristics, we have love. A 'simple' characteristic present in some way in the life of all humanity, from the rich to...

• Image of God

Comparison of Islamic Religious Texts: the Quran and Hadith

The Quran is the most important text in the Islamic faith, believed to be the word of God communicated to the prophet Muhammad who spoke to his followers, and what he said was written down in the Quran years after his death. The Hadith is...

• Religious texts

The Virtue and Significance of the Quran: Exploring its Divine Revelation, Recitation, and Impact on the Muslim Community

The Quran is defined as the miraculous word of God, devoted to its recitation, the house of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by revelation by Jibril, peace be upon him, and transmitted to us in frequency. It should be noted that the Quran came down in...

Human Experience of Illness and the Key Role of the Environment

The key goal of the healthcare facility is to offer a environment where the sick will be at ease and to enable their body to regenerate. There are three principles for a healthy environment: seen, unseen, and storied environments. These ideas give us a deeper...

The Trustworthiness of the Bible: Exploration of Its Foundations

The Bible, a collection of sacred texts revered by millions around the world, has endured for centuries as a source of moral guidance, spiritual enlightenment, and historical insight. Its trustworthiness stems from a multifaceted examination of its historical, literary, and spiritual foundations, which collectively affirm...

• Personal Experience

Exploring of the Five Meanings of Science of the Quran

Sciences of the Quran are each science that is intended to serve the Holy Quran and attempt to investigate its privileged insights and uncover its puzzles, for example, the exploration in the Quranic disclosure and Quranic contents, the gathering and grouping of the Quran, the...

Exploring Invaluable Role of Jesus Christ for the World

Jesus Christ is one of the most well known historical figures that could be considered heroic and relatively important to the development of Western Civilization. The existence of Jesus and the eternal legacy he left after he sacrificed himself was one that dramatically influenced the...

• Historical Figures
• Influence of Christianity
• Jesus Christ

Is Jesus a Myth: One of the World’s Most Controversial Figures

It would be hard to find a person in history that has been met with so much controversy than Jesus of Nazareth. According to those who wrote the New Testament, Jesus is God, who was born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life, was...

• World History

Why Jesus Is a Hero: an Example of Love and Forgiveness

Is Jesus a hero or not? The meaning of a hero is someone who shows bravery, courage, determination, justice and more. A hero doesn’t need to save the world for people to say that is what a hero is, like Jesus, he reached out to...

• Influential Person

The Life and Achievemnts of Muhammad - a Founder of Islam

I chose Muhammad because he did a lot from the day he was born till the day he died. One of the many things that Muhammad did was when Muhammad founded Islam and made it the way it is now. Muhammad was born in Mecca,...

Unveiling Jesus as the Heroic Figure of True Faith and Love

A hero is someone who gives themselves, often putting their own life at great risk, for the greater good of others . A hero shows courage and is determined and dedicated to helping others in need by showing selflessness and sacrifice for the good of...

Jesus as the Greatest Hero: Being Gifted With Godlike DNA

A hero is a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. Jesus shown these quality’s in different bible readings. Jesus was not only a hero that did miracles to heal people, he was a hero that sacrificed his own life...

Personal Reflections: Three Lessons I Have Learnt From Hosea's Story

David was chosen to be king at a young age when he was only a shepherd, but wasn’t the king until he was 30 years old, David had been working for king Saul and throughout that time he had been taken to court by king...

The Menace of Terrorism Around the World: Emerging Threats and Issues

The menace of terrorism has been increasing over the years though there have been several efforts to counter it. The evils of terrorism have become widespread, and the world has become too familiar to them. There has been a lot of debate on the definition...

• Religious Conflict
• Social Problems

Understanding Islam: Beliefs, Practices, and History

What is Islam? What do they believe in? Who are they? Well continue reading and you will find out a lot about this religion. Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion teaching that there is only one God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God....

• Five Pillars of Islam

The Unique World of Buddhism: Its Origins, Beliefs, and Practices

The World is today is unique, religion being a huge part of that uniqueness. The religions shaped many of the well- known religions today. There are a lot of well-known religions today adapted some of practices of many older religions that today depending on the...

Submission to Allah: The Core Concept of Islam

The concept at the core of Islam is the intention that a Muslim follows the will of Allah as closely as possible in hopes that each moment of each day is to be lived in an attitude of complete submission to Him. Allah’s greatest revelation,...

The Increased Violence in New Terrorism: What Is Going On

The 1990s recalls a series of extremist acts that ushered a new and more violent form of terrorism. Propelled by religious motivations, decentralized organization, and technological advancement, the new terrorism distinguished itself from old terrorism with its inclination to indiscriminate killing and mass casualties. Rapoport’s...

The Sacred Mystery of Plants in Eastern Religion Cultures

Sacred plants are specific plants those are usually devoted to gods and goddess. The human relation with sacred plant stands basically on religion which is considered with Hindu, Buddhist and Jain culture. During the ancient period, the worship of sacred plants is most of the...

Understanding Islam: The Complete Submission to the Will of God

Religion is often a fundamental part of one’s identity. The word religion originates from a Latin word meaning “to tie or bind together.” As new and modern religions continue to develop, religion defines as “an organized system of beliefs and rituals centring on a spiritual...

Difference Between Islam and Christianity: Perspectives on Racism

Islam and Christianity are two of the largest religions in the world, with billions of followers combined. While there are significant difference between islam and christianity in this essay we will also analyse similarities between islam and christianity. For this paper we have interviewed several...

Postulates and Principles of Islamic Moral Economic System

In this paper we will take a short review of main principles and postulates, its subsequent objectives of the Islamic moral economic system.  Tawhid or the Unity of God is the fundamental principle of IME. It refers to the human beings being equal before the...

• Economic systems

Muhammad and the Birth of Islam: Unraveling the History and Teachings

Chapter 10 of Islam of “Living Religions” by Mary Fisher talks about how Islam is viewed by society and how Islam came about. Reading this chapter from the point of view of the author who is not Muslim made me feel like she was with...

• History of Islam

The Journey to Nirvana: The Teachings and Beliefs of Buddhism

Buddhism is among the world's biggest religions, with origins in India dating back 2,500 years. Buddhists think that human existence is full of misery, believing the way to obtain happiness, or nirvana, is via meditation, spiritual and physical effort, and moral behavior. Buddhists believe life...

Gautama and the Middle Way: The Birth of Buddhism

Although we think of Buddhism as being created by Buddha, Gautama a young prince, was the creator and he is now referred to as Buddha, also known as the enlightened one. Since Gautama was a prince that meant that his father was a king and...

The Intersection of Religion and Abortion: A Comparative Analysis

Abortion has been a hot topic for several years. People are very opinionated about the case and there's an ethical side to the subject. The abortion debate asks whether it may be morally right to terminate a pregnancy before normal childbirth. Some people believe that...

• Abortion Debate

Buddhism in Asia: A Cultural and Historical Perspective

The story of the life of Gautama Buddha According to the legend the person now commonly known as the Buddha was a prince named Siddhartha Gautama. His father, Suddhodana Gautama, was the ruler of the Shakya clan. Siddhartha’s birth was attended by many unusual events....

• Zen Buddhism

From India to China: The Spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road

Introduction The silk road spread religions, philosophies, education, goods, and people. The people who embarked for a journey on the silk road were monks from India. India, during the iron age, between the fourth and sixth centuries, began urbanization and in this process, the influence...

Exploring Buddhism at a Traditional Mon Buddhist Dharma Session

Introduction Sunday, February 16th at two-thirty, I visited the Mon Buddhist Monastery Community in Akron Ohio. This was a traditional Mon Buddhist Dharma session. I was very pleased by the turnout of the session and was able to grasp a better understanding of the Buddhism...

The Rise and Spread of Islam: History and Impact

Introduction Islam is probably the most youthful religion and has the biggest followers in the world and is predominant in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (Hopfe and Woodward 330). Islam is a significant religion in the world and has in excess of billion followers...

The Dichotomy of Annihilationism and Non-Annihilationism in Buddhism

Introduction Buddhism can be split into two distinct schools of thought: annihilationism and eternal rebirth. The argument that the state of nirvana is achieved through the blowing out of what fuels one’s self is the one generally accepted by most Buddhists and scholars. The minority...

Islam: The Role of Gender, Storytelling, and Conflict

Introduction: The emergence of the Muslim minority in Western nations has spurred discussion over which Muslim behaviors should be accepted, with many people considering certain customs a rejection. In Western countries, societies based on the Islamic belief system have wrestled with gender roles, the importance...

The Ethical Code of Islam: A Comprehensive Overview

Introduction: In Islam, there is a strict ethical code that must be followed in order to abide by Allah. This code is highlighted in the Koran and is practiced through traditions, actions, clothing, and food consumption. Furthermore, every Muslim is expected to adhere to the...

Religion and Abortion: Understanding the Pro-Life Movement

Introduction  Death sentences, guns, religion, and abortion are among the top debated subjects in conversations. These topics are discussed frequently, especially if it’s a hot topic for a political debate. There are supporters and opponents on these subjects due to their strong points of view....

Organ Donation and Brain Death from Buddhist's Perspectives 

Modern scientific and technological developments have contributed to mass production. There have arisen many issues which affect human health both physical and mental are related, regarding to ethical criteria in physical medicine. This paper will discuss brain death and organ transplantation from Buddhists perspectives. There...

• Organ Donation
• Organ Transplant

Hinduism and Buddhism as Most Popular Religions in India

Located in northern India that flows from the Himalayan Mountains to the Bay of Bengal lies the Ganges River. Known as a sacred entity, many Hindus bathe in its waters to cleanse past sins and to facilitate Moksha, liberation of reincarnation; thus, many faithful customs,...

Faith and Reason Are Compatible: Suspension of Disbelief 

Art is a platform that dares reality. It stretches the limits of reality and tends to over step these boundaries all to serve the purpose of the piece of art. This is where the suspension of disbelief comes in. One must set aside their typical...

The Baptism Experience: Passing God's Love Through Baptism

One simple act creates an endless ripple where people passes it on and pays it forward. This is due to the interconnected nature of human beings – when we are happy, we influence the people around us to have a positive outlook in life. And...

The Idea That Faith and Reason Are Compatible in Religious Texts

There are four fundamental claims of the Catholic intellectual tradition and the one I choose is, the dignity of the human being inviolable and the commitment to justice for the common good is necessary. These four fundamental claims are very important in the catholic religion...

The Baptism Experience in the Life of Children in the Medieval Ages

Of all the misconceptions of the Medieval Ages, some of the most prevalent include the life of a child during this era. During this time it is believed that many children were shown no recognition and they were treated as though they were adults as...

• Middle Ages

Hinduism and Buddhism: The Values and Purposes of Both Religions

Today there are many different religions in the world. In Asia, Buddhism and Hinduism are popular beliefs in general. Hinduism is the religion of Antigua known and very rich in literally hundreds of divinities, rituals and symbolic beliefs. Believes is that was founded around 1500...

Nacirema Culture and Buddhism Religious Practices

Religion is a topic that provokes or brings about different thoughts and ideas between people. We all have our own beliefs and traditions that make each one of our religions stand out. It is what makes us who we are. Myths and rituals are a...

The Freedom Of Religion And Why Is The First Amendment Important

First Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of...

• American Constitution
• First Amendment

Belief In God: Relationships Between Science and Religion

The conflict between science and spirituality (religion) usually refers to an assumed conflict between science and belief in God. For the purpose of this talk “religion” refers to the monotheistic religion which is the belief in the existence of a good, personal and transcendent creator....

• Science Vs. Religion
• Spirituality

Why Do You Believe In God

Well, God can do all of these and even more. Sometimes, situations can make anyone forget or doubt God's abilities irrespective of how strong you have been in faith. Remember, no one is ever ready for hard situations to hit them, it just happens, but...

• Kingdom of God

Peter`s The Great Reforms: A Knot Between Church And State

Christians all over the world have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. Although the situation became better with time, it was still not ideal in the 18th century. Peter the Great, the first emperor of Russia, introduced the Most Holy Synod, and it changed the...

• Russian Empire

The Nature Of Confucianism and Daoism, And The Gender Roles

The story of Cui Ying Ying was composed during the late Tang dynasty and is regarded as famous romantic prose. The story explores cultural dynamics during the Tang period and displays the contrasting views of Chinese philosophy in the era. To truly comprehend the symbolism...

• Confucianism
• Gender Roles

"Paradise Lost" By John Milton: Book Review

In this review, I hope to put forward two different approaches to interpreting Milton’s Paradise Lost. I will be exploring Archie Burnett’s article ‘Sense Variously Drawn Own’ published in 2003 which examines the relation between Lineation, syntax, and meaning in Milton’s Paradise Lost. I will...

• Adam and Eve
• Paradise Lost

"Does Science Threaten Religion?" By Gerber and Macionis: A Review

The article “Controversy and Debate: Does Science Threaten Religion?” has demonstrated the changing relationship between science and religion, from apparent contradictions in the past to recognizing and accepting each other in the present (Gerber & Macionis, 2018, pp. 553). The author has incorporated a structural-functional...

The History Of The Emergence And Spread Of Christianity And Islam

Christianity is one of the most spread religions in the world. It centers its belief in the public life of Jesus Christ. The term Christianity is a derivation of the followers of Christ. Therefore, Jesus is the pioneer of this faith. Christians base their teaching...

• Spread of Christianity

The Second Coming By Yeats: Powerful Warning To Society

In a world full of hostility and loss of faith surrounded by war and technological developments, the modernist era of literature developments, the modernists era of literature arose. The sinking of the Titanic symbolized the falling of the Great Britain empire and newly invented standardized...

• The Second Coming
• William Butler Yeats

Acceptance Concepts Through the Bible Topics

I believe that God creates all of us to be good genuinely and kindhearted. God believes that we are most beautiful & unique the way he created us. So, bullies should stop their intimidating behaviors towards others, they don’t need to be so, they should...

Humble, Mainwairing and Pompous Pride

This is probably something that none of you know about me and that is I am a massive Dads Army fan, I have all the available episodes and movies on DVD. It’s been great to watch the lost episodes on Gold this week, now I...

Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Picture of Human Nature

This essay will explore Apuleius’ Metamorphoses with special regard to what picture of human nature and society it presents and whether or not the gods offer the prospect of salvation. Dealing with the tale of Lucius whose overly curious nature results in him being turned...

• Human Nature
• Metamorphoses

The Shinto Religion and the Root of Japanese Culture

Shintōism is frequently portrayed in art from all over the world, especially in Japan. The Shintō religion is at the root of Japanese culture and history and therefore has a profound impact on its popular culture today, from manga and anime to film to video...

• Personal Beliefs

Biblical Archaeology: How the Study of God Is Look Like

Archaeology is defined as the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, and other such remains, especially those that have been excavated. (Dictionary, Archaeology) Archaeology is used throughout history and in many ways. Biblical Archaeology...

• Archaeology

The Development of Islamic Art

Islamic art is created not only for the Muslim faith, but it consists of artworks such as textiles, architecture, paintings and drawings that were produced in the regions that were once ruled by Muslim empires. Artists from various disciplines take part in collaborative projects and...

• Islamic Art

Unforgiveness Steals Away Your Joy, Peace, and Happiness

Forgiveness is one of the topics most Christians don't like to talk about especially if they were truly hurt by someone close to their heart. Sometimes, we feel it is better to carry the burden of hatred rather than forgive those that have wronged us....

• Forgiveness

Role of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their own unique cultural identities. Migration is a key process that makes significant contribution to the growth of urbanism. Often immigrants belonging to particular region, language, religion ,tribe etc tend to...

• Art and Religion
• Religious Pluralism

Political Correctness and Occidental International Law

The uniformity of European political thought canon as asserted by postcolonialists has created a ‘residual sense that the Christian faith is an expression of white Western privilege ’. This deficit in postcolonial theory, to account for Grotius and theorists who argued for the separation of...

• Political Correctness

The Portrayal of the Culture of Death and Afterlife in Art

Throughout history, different cultures dealt with the concept of death and afterlife according to their beliefs, and developed different perspectives about what happens after the body dies. These ideas were often reflected in their art, literature, and their lifestyle as well. Most cultures produce art...

The Tattoo of Cherry Blossom Bracelets in China

The armband tattoos were a popular excitement 10 to 15 years ago. Today, however, it is gradually becoming a hot trend again. These types of tattoos are appealing because they are easy to show and can be quickly hidden in the sleeve. What do bracelet...

• Chinese Culture
• Christianity

Amazon's Upload is All About the Digital Afterlife

Take Black Mirror's dystopian tech analysis, The Good Place's thoughtful investigation of the afterlife, and the workplace pranks of The Office, squeeze them together, and you have Amazon’s Upload. It takes place in a world that could simply be 10 years from now. You can...

Hagia Sophia and Eastern Roman Empire

Hagia Sophia is the great rich remain and an important monument for the Eastern Roman Empire commonly known as the Byzantine Empire. It remain the Centre for Orthodox Church for nearly a thousand years. The current version was built in the year 532. This iconic...

• Ancient Rome
• Byzantine Empire
• Hagia Sophia

Life After Death for the One Whose Heart Is Light

Built in the 27th century BC for the burial of Pharaoh Djoser by his vizier; architect and later known as the God of Medicine, Imhotep. Pyramids were built for religious purposes and the Egyptian civilization were one of the first to believe in an afterlife....

Insurance Regarding the Existence of an Individual’s Afterlife

Under the rational choice model, decisions individuals make are based on perfect information. This implies that people do not undergo any risks or uncertainties when making a choice. However, religious choices of individuals cannot be based on perfect information, for there are no verified sources...

Johann Christoph Blumhardt and Christology

Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) was a Lutheran pastor in Württemberg. He was known among the Lutheran Pietists who built the relation between Southwest Germany [then] with the Basel University of Switzerland mission Society. Certain authors consider this relationship as fostering the trans-Atlantic faith healing movement....

• Christology
• Martin Luther King

Finding What Is The Biblical Purpose Of Govenrment

One day a man was walking down the streets of his city, headed to the capitol, and then he saw a car wreck right in front of him. His first instinct is to go help, so he rushes over and sees the scene. Now with...

• Role of Government

The Creation Myth And Human Evolution: The Everlasting Debate

Every generation of people, young and old as well, come to ask questions about the origin of the universe: Where did it come from? When did it start? or How did it come into existence? Scientists, philosophers or religious believers have all tried to explain...

• Creation Myth
• Human Evolution

Considering Religious Beliefs And Freedom Of Expression

Whether you believe in something or not, the idea of religion has probably crossed your mind. Some people see it as a way to make sense of the world around us and some see it as way of life. the idea that a higher power,...

The Foundational Beliefs Of The Biblical Worldview

To build a biblical framework, or foundational beliefs about God, His character, His world, and His plan one must go to Scripture, for these are His words. Here answers are found to life’s questions; why are we here, good and evil, our purpose, and where...

The Truths About Real Life In The Biblical Worldview

Introduction Every person has a worldview that is either biblical or secular (humanistic). A person’s worldview is the lens through which they view the world. It dictates the decisions they make, the way they treat themselves and others, and their ideas of life after death....

The Perception Of The World In The Christian Worldview

A worldview, this is easy to say its self-explanatory, but it’s much more than that. A worldview can be defined as, “a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world” (Google Dictionary). Another idea is, how a Christian worldview is defined. A Christian Worldview...

The Correlation Between Christian Worldview And Criminal Justice System

Abstract This criminal justice research paper will discuss how people in law enforcement have demonstrated and or expressed their integration of Christen Worldviews into the field of criminal justice. It will show how their Christian beliefs are the driving force behind their ethical and moral...

The Age Of The Earth: Creation Vs. Evolution

There are four great questions of life that everyone asks. The questions are; Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? And where am I going when I die? These questions are answered completely different depending on if you are an...

The Impact Of Religion On Defining What Is Value Of Life

What might most people on this earth value? You guessed it right, it’s Life! Life brings a lot of meaning and purpose that is I feel is an ideal answer to the society and lets just face it, what could someone value other than life?...

• Meaning of Life

Exploration Of Buddhism And Hinduism: Similarities And Differences

Nearly, all people chose at least one religion which is suitable for their thoughts and believes. Due to that fact, people of the same religion come together usually. For instance, there are islamic countries in one community which is called Muslim countries or Ummah. Moreover,...

Buddhism And Hinduism: The Similarities And Differences Of Views

There are three ways to achieve moksha which is when a person’s atman (individual soul) is released from the eternal cycle of reincarnation. Reincarnation is a core idea of Hinduism as according to Upanishad (the third and final Vedic scripture) literature the atman would go...

The Similarities And Differences Between Worldviews Of Hinduism And Buddhism

I will start with the greeting of each religion since it gives a good first impression about you if you greet them in their own way. “Namaste” is the common greeting or salutation in Hinduism, it is usually said with body gestures where they bend...

A Biblical Worldview: The Values Of A Devoted Christian

There comes a point in everyone's life that they must start making decisions on their own, it is at this point they choose what lenses they will use to drive their decisions. For Christians that lense is the Bible and the Holy Spirit is the...

Christian Worldview: Faith And Forgiveness As A Basis

Throughout history, different point of views arose and changed the way people looked at the past of the world. One specific viewpoint is the Christian’s worldview. Christians sin just like everyone else and they recognize that, just like how they recognize the faith of God....

The Biblical Worldview On The Human Trafficking

Choices to commit a crime, fight against crime, or generate justice for criminal acts are all motivated by our worldview. Incorporating a Christian worldview into the Criminal Justice approach allows you to view behavior and response through the lens of God's expectations. This perspective creates...

• Human Trafficking

The Christian Worldview: Philosophy And Values

Today's culture has multiple worldviews. Many individuals prefer to select various religions views but mostly keep to one central worldview. A worldview is the gathering of values that form our everyday work and define our overall vision of existence. Looking seriously at my beliefs, my...

The Effect Of Prophet Muhammad On The Quick Spread Of Islam

This paper will deeply investigate the following interesting question on Islam and it’s spread. What effect did the spread of Islam by Prophet Muhammad in Mecca have on the already religious Saudi Arabian society? In order to compose this paper with reliable facts, mostly primary...

Understanding the Power of a Biblical Worldview in Psychology

A biblical worldview is a transformative lens through which we view the world, based on the teachings of the Bible. It impacts our perspectives on various situations, facts, and aspects of life. This worldview has profound implications for psychology, influencing even the smallest details, such...

Best topics on Religion

1. Why Is Freedom of Religion Important

2. Who is God in Your Life: Personal Beliefs and Spiritual Connections

3. Should Religion Be Taught in Schools

4. How Does Religion Affect Your Life

5. How Are Religion and Culture Connected in Various Ways

6. Buddhism and Hinduism: Exploring Similarities and Differences

7. Death is a Passage Beyond Life

8. Why Should We Respect Our Parents: Exploring Islamic Arguments

9. Respect Your Parents and Take Care of Your Children: Ephesians 6:1-9

10. The Importance of Respect and Obedience to Our Parents in Islam

11. Respect for Life: the Issue of Death Penalty in Catholic Teachings

12. What Does Respect Mean to You: Christian Explanation

13. Implementing the Four Noble Truths in Everyday Life

14. Euthanasia and the Catholic Church in Australia

15. Islamic Traditions and Practices: A Focus on Asian Muslims

• Seven Deadly Sins

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

13.1 What Is Religion?

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Distinguish between religion, spirituality, and worldview.
• Describe the connections between witchcraft, sorcery, and magic.
• Identify differences between deities and spirits.
• Identify shamanism.
• Describe the institutionalization of religion in state societies.

Defining Religion, Spirituality, and Worldview

An anthropological inquiry into religion can easily become muddled and hazy because religion encompasses intangible things such as values, ideas, beliefs, and norms. It can be helpful to establish some shared signposts. Two researchers whose work has focused on religion offer definitions that point to diverse poles of thought about the subject. Frequently, anthropologists bookend their understanding of religion by citing these well-known definitions.

French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) utilized an anthropological approach to religion in his study of totemism among Indigenous Australian peoples in the early 20th century. In his work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), he argues that social scientists should begin with what he calls “simple religions” in their attempts to understand the structure and function of belief systems in general. His definition of religion takes an empirical approach and identifies key elements of a religion: “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” (47). This definition breaks down religion into the components of beliefs, practices, and a social organization—what a shared group of people believe and do.

The other signpost used within anthropology to make sense of religion was crafted by American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) in his work The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). Geertz’s definition takes a very different approach: “A religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (90). Geertz’s definition, which is complex and holistic and addresses intangibles such as emotions and feelings, presents religion as a different paradigm , or overall model, for how we see systems of belief. Geertz views religion as an impetus to view and act upon the world in a certain manner. While still acknowledging that religion is a shared endeavor, Geertz focuses on religion’s role as a potent cultural symbol. Elusive, ambiguous, and hard to define, religion in Geertz’s conception is primarily a feeling that motivates and unites groups of people with shared beliefs. In the next section, we will examine the meanings of symbols and how they function within cultures, which will deepen your understanding of Geertz’s definition. For Geertz, religion is intensely symbolic.

When anthropologists study religion, it can be helpful to consider both of these definitions because religion includes such varied human constructs and experiences as social structures, sets of beliefs, a feeling of awe, and an aura of mystery. While different religious groups and practices sometimes extend beyond what can be covered by a simple definition, we can broadly define religion as a shared system of beliefs and practices regarding the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena. And yet as soon as we ascribe a meaning to religion, we must distinguish some related concepts, such as spirituality and worldview.

Over the last few years, a growing number of Americans have been choosing to define themselves as spiritual rather than religious. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that 27 percent of Americans identify as “spiritual but not religious,” which is 8 percentage points higher than it was in 2012 (Lipka and Gecewicz 2017). There are different factors that can distinguish religion and spirituality, and individuals will define and use these terms in specific ways; however, in general, while religion usually refers to shared affiliation with a particular structure or organization, spirituality normally refers to loosely structured beliefs and feelings about relationships between the natural and supernatural worlds. Spirituality can be very adaptable to changing circumstances and is often built upon an individual’s perception of the surrounding environment.

Many Americans with religious affiliation also use the term spirituality and distinguish it from their religion. Pew found in 2017 that 48 percent of respondents said they were both religious and spiritual. Pew also found that 27 percent of people say religion is very important to them (Lipka and Gecewicz 2017).

Another trend pertaining to religion in the United States is the growth of those defining themselves as nones , or people with no religious affiliation. In a 2014 survey of 35,000 Americans from 50 states, Pew found that nearly a quarter of Americans assigned themselves to this category (Pew Research Center 2015). The percentage of adults assigning themselves to the “none” category had grown substantially, from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014; among millennials, the percentage of nones was even higher, at 35 percent (Lipka 2015). In a follow-up survey, participants were asked to identity their major reasons for choosing to be nonaffiliated; the most common responses pointed to the growing politicization of American churches and a more critical and questioning stance toward the institutional structure of all religions (Pew Research Center 2018). It is important, however, to point out that nones are not the same as agnostics or atheists. Nones may hold traditional and/or nontraditional religious beliefs outside of membership in a religious institution. Agnosticism is the belief that God or the divine is unknowable and therefore skepticism of belief is appropriate, and atheism is a stance that denies the existence of a god or collection of gods. Nones, agnostics, and atheists can hold spiritual beliefs, however. When anthropologists study religion, it is very important for them to define the terms they are using because these terms can have different meanings when used outside of academic studies. In addition, the meaning of terms may change. As the social and political landscape in a society changes, it affects all social institutions, including religion.

Even those who consider themselves neither spiritual nor religious hold secular, or nonreligious, beliefs that structure how they view themselves and the world they live in. The term worldview refers to a person’s outlook or orientation; it is a learned perspective, which has both individual and collective components, on the nature of life itself. Individuals frequently conflate and intermingle their religious and spiritual beliefs and their worldviews as they experience change within their lives. When studying religion, anthropologists need to remain aware of these various dimensions of belief. The word religion is not always adequate to identify an individual’s belief systems.

Like all social institutions, religion evolves within and across time and cultures—even across early human species! Adapting to changes in population size and the reality of people’s daily lives, religions and religious/spiritual practices reflect life on the ground . Interestingly, though, while some institutions (such as economics) tend to change radically from one era to another, often because of technological changes, religion tends to be more viscous , meaning it tends to change at a much slower pace and mix together various beliefs and practices. While religion can be a factor in promoting rapid social change, it more commonly changes slowly and retains older features while adding new ones. In effect, religion contains within it many of its earlier iterations and can thus be quite complex.

Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic

People in Western cultures too often think of religion as a belief system associated with a church, temple, or mosque, but religion is much more diverse. In the 1960s, anthropologists typically used an evolutionary model for religion that associated less structured religious systems with simple societies and more complex forms of religion with more complex political systems. Anthropologists noticed that as populations grew, all forms of organization—political, economic, social, and religious—became more complex as well. For example, with the emergence of tribal societies, religion expanded to become not only a system of healing and connection with both animate and inanimate things in the environment but also a mechanism for addressing desire and conflict. Witchcraft and sorcery, both forms of magic, are more visible in larger-scale, more complex societies.

The terms witchcraft and sorcery are variously defined across disciplines and from one researcher to another, yet there is some agreement about common elements associated with each. Witchcraft involves the use of intangible (not material) means to cause a change in circumstances to another person. It is normally associated with practices such as incantations, spells, blessings, and other types of formulaic language that, when pronounced, causes a transformation. Sorcery is similar to witchcraft but involves the use of material elements to cause a change in circumstances to another person. It is normally associated with such practices as magical bundles, love potions, and any specific action that uses another person’s personal leavings (such as their hair, nails, or even excreta). While some scholars argue that witchcraft and sorcery are “dark,” negative, antisocial actions that seek to punish others, ethnographic research is filled with examples of more ambiguous or even positive uses as well. Cultural anthropologist Alma Gottlieb , who did fieldwork among the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire in Africa, describes how the king that the Beng choose as their leader must always be a witch himself, not because of his ability to harm others but because his mystical powers allow him to protect the Beng people that he rules (2008). His knowledge and abilities allow him to be a capable ruler.

Some scholars argue that witchcraft and sorcery may be later developments in religion and not part of the earliest rituals because they can be used to express social conflict. What is the relationship between conflict, religion, and political organization? Consider what you learned in Social Inequalities . As a society’s population rises, individuals within that society have less familiarity and personal experience with each other and must instead rely on family reputation or rank as the basis for establishing trust. Also, as social diversity increases, people find themselves interacting with those who have different behaviors and beliefs from their own. Frequently, we trust those who are most like ourselves, and diversity can create a sense of mistrust. This sense of not knowing or understanding the people one lives, works, and trades with creates social stress and forces people to put themselves into what can feel like risky situations when interacting with one another. In such a setting, witchcraft and sorcery provide a feeling of security and control over other people. Historically, as populations increased and sociocultural institutions became larger and more complex, religion evolved to provide mechanisms such as witchcraft and sorcery that helped individuals establish a sense of social control over their lives.

Magic is essential to both witchcraft and sorcery, and the principles of magic are part of every religion. The anthropological study of magic is considered to have begun in the late 19th century with the 1890 publication of The Golden Bough , by Scottish social anthropologist Sir James G. Frazer . This work, published in several volumes, details the rituals and beliefs of a diverse range of societies, all collected by Frazer from the accounts of missionaries and travelers. Frazer was an armchair anthropologist, meaning that he did not practice fieldwork. In his work, he provided one of the earliest definitions of magic, describing it as “a spurious system of natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct” (Frazer [1922] 1925, 11). A more precise and neutral definition depicts magic as a supposed system of natural law whose practice causes a transformation to occur. In the natural world—the world of our senses and the things we hear, see, smell, taste, and touch—we operate with evidence of observable cause and effect. Magic is a system in which the actions or causes are not always empirical. Speaking a spell or other magical formula does not provide observable (empirical) effects. For practitioners of magic, however, this abstract cause and effect is just as consequential and just as true.

Frazer refers to magic as “sympathetic magic” because it is based on the idea of sympathy, or common feeling, and he argued that there are two principles of sympathetic magic: the law of similarity and the law of contagion. The law of similarity is the belief that a magician can create a desired change by imitating that change. This is associated with actions or charms that mimic or look like the effects one desires, such as the use of an effigy that looks like another person or even the Venus figurine associated with the Upper Paleolithic period, whose voluptuous female body parts may have been used as part of a fertility ritual. By taking actions on the stand-in figure, the magician is able to cause an effect on the person believed to be represented by this figure. The law of contagion is the belief that things that have once been in contact with each other remain connected always, such as a piece of jewelry owned by someone you love, a locket of hair or baby tooth kept as a keepsake, or personal leavings to be used in acts of sorcery.

This classification of magic broadens our understanding of how magic can be used and how common it is across all religions. Prayers and special mortuary artifacts ( grave goods ) indicate that the concept of magic is an innately human practice and not associated solely with tribal societies. In most cultures and across religious traditions, people bury or cremate loved ones with meaningful clothing, jewelry, or even a photo. These practices and sentimental acts are magical bonds and connections among acts, artifacts, and people. Even prayers and shamanic journeying (a form of metaphysical travel) to spirits and deities, practiced in almost all religious traditions, are magical contracts within people’s belief systems that strengthen practitioners’ faith. Instead of seeing magic as something outside of religion that diminishes seriousness, anthropologists see magic as a profound human act of faith.

Supernatural Forces and Beings

As stated earlier, religion typically regards the interaction of natural and supernatural phenomena. Put simply, a supernatural force is a figure or energy that does not follow natural law. In other words, it is nonempirical and cannot be measured or observed by normal means. Religious practices rely on contact and interaction with a wide range of supernatural forces of varying degrees of complexity and specificity.

In many religious traditions, there are both supernatural deities, or gods who are named and have the ability to change human fortunes, and spirits, who are less powerful and not always identified by name. Spirit or spirits can be diffuse and perceived as a field of energy or an unnamed force.

Practitioners of witchcraft and sorcery manipulate a supposed supernatural force that is often referred to by the term mana , first identified in Polynesia among the Maori of New Zealand ( mana is a Maori word). Anthropologists see a similar supposed sacred energy field in many different religious traditions and now use this word to refer to that energy force. Mana is an impersonal (unnamed and unidentified) force that can adhere for varying periods of time to people or animate and inanimate objects to make them sacred. One example is in the biblical story that appears in Mark 5:25–30, in which a woman suffering an illness simply touches Jesus’s cloak and is healed. Jesus asks, “Who touched my clothes?” because he recognizes that some of this force has passed from him to the woman who was ill in order to heal her. Many Christians see the person of Jesus as sacred and holy from the time of his baptism by the Holy Spirit. Christian baptism in many traditions is meant as a duplication or repetition of Christ’s baptism.

There are also named and known supernatural deities. A deity is a god or goddess. Most often conceived as humanlike, gods (male) and goddesses (female) are typically named beings with individual personalities and interests. Monotheistic religions focus on a single named god or goddess, and polytheistic religions are built around a pantheon, or group, of gods and/or goddesses, each usually specializing in a specific sort of behavior or action. And there are spirits , which tend to be associated with very specific (and narrower) activities, such as earth spirits or guardian spirits (or angels). Some spirits emanate from or are connected directly to humans, such as ghosts and ancestor spirits , which may be attached to specific individuals, families, or places. In some patrilineal societies, ancestor spirits require a great deal of sacrifice from the living. This veneration of the dead can consume large quantities of resources. In the Philippines, the practice of venerating the ancestor spirits involves elaborate house shrines, altars, and food offerings. In central Madagascar, the Merino people practice a regular “turning of the bones,” called famidihana . Every five to seven years, a family will disinter some of their deceased family members and replace their burial clothing with new, expensive silk garments as a form of remembrance and to honor all of their ancestors. In both of these cases, ancestor spirits are believed to continue to have an effect on their living relatives, and failure to carry out these rituals is believed to put the living at risk of harm from the dead.

Religious Specialists

Religious groups typically have some type of leadership, whether formal or informal. Some religious leaders occupy a specific role or status within a larger organization, representing the rules and regulations of the institution, including norms of behavior. In anthropology, these individuals are called priests , even though they may have other titles within their religious groups. Anthropology defines priests as full-time practitioners, meaning they occupy a religious rank at all times, whether or not they are officiating at rituals or ceremonies, and they have leadership over groups of people. They serve as mediators or guides between individuals or groups of people and the deity or deities. In religion-specific terms, anthropological priests may be called by various names, including titles such as priest, pastor, preacher, teacher, imam (Islam), and rabbi (Judaism).

Another category of specialists is prophets . These individuals are associated with religious change and transformation, calling for a renewal of beliefs or a restructuring of the status quo. Their leadership is usually temporary or indirect, and sometimes the prophet is on the margins of a larger religious organization. German sociologist Max Weber (1947) identified prophets as having charisma , a personality trait that conveys authority:

Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader. (358–359)

A third type of specialist is shamans . Shamans are part-time religious specialists who work with clients to address very specific and individual needs by making direct contact with deities or supernatural forces. While priests will officiate at recurring ritual events, a shaman, much like a medical psychologist, addresses each individual need. One exception to this is the shaman’s role in subsistence, usually hunting. In societies where the shaman is responsible for “calling up the animals” so that hunters will have success, the ritual may be calendrical , or occurring on a cyclical basis. While shamans are medical and religious specialists within shamanic societies, there are other religions that practice forms of shamanism as part of their own belief systems. Sometimes, these shamanic practitioners will be known by terms such as pastor or preacher , or even layperson . And some religious specialists serve as both part-time priests and part-time shamans, occupying more than one role as needed within a group of practitioners. You will read more about shamanism in the next section.

One early form of religion is shamanism , a practice of divination and healing that involves soul travel, also called shamanic journeying, to connect natural and supernatural realms in nonlinear time. Associated initially with small-scale societies, shamanic practices are now known to be embedded in many of the world’s religions. In some cultures, shamans are part-time specialists, usually drawn into the practice by a “calling” and trained in the necessary skills and rituals though an apprenticeship. In other cultures, all individuals are believed to be capable of shamanic journeying if properly trained. By journeying—an act frequently initiated by dance, trance, drumbeat, song, or hallucinogenic substances—the shaman is able to consult with a spiritual world populated by supernatural figures and deceased ancestors. The term itself, šamán , meaning “one who knows,” is an Evenki word, originating among the Evenk people of northern Siberia. Shamanism, found all over the world, was first studied by anthropologists in Siberia.

While shamanism is a healing practice, it conforms to the anthropological definition of religion as a shared set of beliefs and practices pertaining to the natural and supernatural. Cultures and societies that publicly affirm shamanism as a predominant and generally accepted practice often are referred to as shamanic cultures . Shamanism and shamanic activity, however, are found within most religions. The world’s two dominant mainstream religions both contain a type of shamanistic practice: the laying on of hands in Christianity, in which a mystical healing and blessing is passed from one person to another, and the mystical Islamic practice of Sufism, in which the practitioner, called a dervish, dances by whirling faster and faster in order to reach a trance state of communing with the divine. There are numerous other shared religious beliefs and practices among different religions besides shamanism. Given the physical and social evolution of our species, it is likely that we all share aspects of a fundamental religious orientation and that religious changes are added on to, rather than used to replace, earlier practices such as shamanism.

Indigenous shamanism continues to be a significant force for healing and prophecy today and is the predominant religious mode in small-scale, subsistence-based societies, such as bands of gatherers and hunters. Shamanism is valued by hunters as an intuitive way to locate wild animals, often depicted as “getting into the mind of the animal.” Shamanism is also valued as a means of healing, allowing individuals to discern and address sources of physical and social illness that may be affecting their health. One of the best-studied shamanic healing practices is that of the !Kung San in Central Africa. When individuals in that society suffer physical or socioemotional distress, they practice n/um tchai , a medicine dance, to draw up spiritual forces within themselves that can be used for shamanic self-healing (Marshall [1969] 2009).

Shamanistic practices remain an important part of the culture of modern Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic, particularly their practices pertaining to whale hunting. Although these traditional hunts were prohibited for a time, Inuit people were able to legally resume them in 1994. In a recent study of Inuit whaling communities in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, cultural anthropologists Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten (2013) found that although hunting technology has changed—whaling spears now include a grenade that, when aimed properly, allows for a quick and more humane death—many shamanistic beliefs and social practices pertaining to the hunt endure. The sharing of maktak or muktuk (whale skin and blubber) with elders is believed to lift their spirits and prolong their lives by connecting them to their ancestors and memories of their youth, the communal sharing of whale meat connects families to each other, and the relationship between hunter and hunted mystically sustains the populations of both. Inuit hunters believe that the whale “gives itself” to the hunter in order to establish this relationship, and when the hunter and community gratefully and humbly consume the catch, this ties the whales to the people and preserves them both. While Laugrand and Oosten found that most Inuit communities practice modern-day Christianity, the shamanistic values of their ancestors continue to play a major role in their understanding of both the whale hunt and what it means to be Inuit today. Their practice and understanding of religion incorporate both the church and their ancestral beliefs.

Above all, shamanism reflects the principles and practice of mutuality and balance, the belief that all living things are connected to each other and can have an effect on each other. This is a value that reverberates through almost all other religious systems as well. Concepts such as stewardship (caring for and nurturing resources), charity (providing for the needs of others), and justice (concern and respect for others and their rights) are all valued in shamanism.

The Institutionalization of Religion

Shamanism is classified as animism , a worldview in which spiritual agency is assigned to all things, including natural elements such as rocks and trees. Sometimes associated with the idea of dual souls—a day soul and a night soul, the latter of which can wander in dreams—and sometimes with unnamed and disembodied spirits believed to be associated with living and nonliving things, animism was at first understood by anthropologists as a primitive step toward more complex religions. In his work Primitive Culture (1871), British anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor , considered the first academic anthropologist, identified animism as a proto-religion, an evolutionary beginning point for all religions. As population densities increased and societies developed more complex forms of social organization, religion mirrored many of these changes.

With the advent of state societies, religion became institutionalized. As population densities increased and urban areas emerged, the structure and function of religion shifted into a bureaucracy, known as a state religion . State religions are formal institutions with full-time administrators (e.g., priests, pastors, rabbis, imams), a set doctrine of beliefs and regulations, and a policy of growth by seeking new practitioners through conversion. While state religions continued to exhibit characteristics of earlier forms, they were now structured as organizations with a hierarchy, including functionaries at different levels with different specializations. Religion was now administered as well as practiced. Similar to the use of mercenaries as paid soldiers in a state army, bureaucratic religions include paid positions that may not require subscribing to the belief system itself. Examples of early state religions include the pantheons of Egypt and Greece. Today, the most common state religions are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Rather than part-time shamans, tribal and state religions are often headed by full-time religious leaders who administer higher levels within the religious bureaucracy. With institutionalization, religion began to develop formalized doctrines , or sets of specific and usually rigid principles or teachings, that would be applied through the codification of a formal system of laws. And, unlike earlier religious forms, state religions are usually defined not by birthright but by conversion. Using proselytization , a recruitment practice in which members actively seek converts to the group, state religions are powerful institutions in society. They bring diverse groups of people together and establish common value systems.

There are two common arrangements between political states and state religions. In some instances, such as contemporary Iran, the religious institution and the state are one, and religious leaders head the political structure. In other societies, there is an explicit separation between religion and state. The separation has been handled differently across nation-states. In some states, the political government supports a state religion (or several) as the official religion(s). In some of these cases, the religious institution will play a role in political decision-making from local to national levels. In other state societies with a separation between religion and state, religious institutions will receive favors, such as subsidies, from state governments. This may include tax or military exemptions and privileged access to resources. It is this latter arrangement that we see in the United States, where institutions such as the Department of Defense and the IRS keep lists of officially recognized religions with political and tax-exempt status.

Among the approximately 200 sovereign nation-states worldwide, there are many variations in the relationship between state and religion, including societies that have political religions, where the state or state rulers are considered divine and holy. In North Korea today, people practice an official policy of juche , which means self-reliance and independence. A highly nationalist policy, it has religious overtones, including reverence and obeisance to the state leader (Kim Jong Un) and unquestioning allegiance to the North Korean state. An extreme form of nationalism, juche functions as a political religion with the government and leader seen as deity and divine. Unlike in a theocracy, where the religious structure has political power, in North Korea, the political structure is the practiced religion.

Historically, relationships between religious institution and state have been extremely complex, with power arrangements shifting and changing over time. Today, Christian fundamentalism is playing an increasingly political role in U.S. society. Since its bureaucratization, religion has had a political role in almost every nation-state. In many state societies, religious institutions serve as charity organizations to meet the basic needs of many citizens, as educational institutions offering both mainstream and alternative pedagogies, and as community organizations to help mobilize groups of people for specific actions. Although some states—such as Cuba, China, Cambodia, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union—have declared atheism as their official policy during certain historical periods, religion has never fully disappeared in any of them. Religious groups, however, may face varying levels of oppression within state societies. The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim ethnic group of some 10 million people in northwestern China. Since 2017, when Chinese president Xi Jinping issued an order that all religions in China should be Chinese in their orientation, the Uighurs have faced mounting levels of oppression, including discrimination in state services. There have been recent accusations of mass sterilizations and genocide by the Chinese government against this ethnic minority (see BBC News 2021). During periods of state oppression, religion tends to break up into smaller units practiced at a local or even household level.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This book may not be used in the training of large language models or otherwise be ingested into large language models or generative AI offerings without OpenStax's permission.

Want to cite, share, or modify this book? This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution License and you must attribute OpenStax.

Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-anthropology/pages/1-introduction

• Authors: Jennifer Hasty, David G. Lewis, Marjorie M. Snipes
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Introduction to Anthropology
• Publication date: Feb 23, 2022
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-anthropology/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-anthropology/pages/13-1-what-is-religion

© Dec 20, 2023 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

10 Comparative Religion

Chapter 10 audio be accessed on Soundcloud . Instructor resources are available on Canvas Commons .  

Chapter 10 Learning Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you’ll be able to:

• Compare and contrast the beliefs of the world’s major religions.
• Connect modern religious beliefs with historical and political changes throughout human history.
• Distinguish the terms “religion” and “cult” and critique widespread uses of the “cult” concept.

10.1 Cross-cultural Examination of Religion

A tool that anthropologists use to closely examine cultural adaptations, cultural evolution, and the migration of culture, is the cross-cultural approach.  The cross-cultural approach  compares more than one cultural belief, tradition, or practice in order to identify differences and similarities that exist across groups. As we have seen in this course, anthropologists place no more importance on the major religions of the world today than we do on the ones practiced by small or isolated or even ancient groups. Because we set out to document and understand religious variation among humans, it only makes sense that we would want to examine the full range of that variation, not just a few of the most widespread examples. However, we also recognize that there is some value to singling out the major world religions in order to identify traits they have in common while similarly recognizing the major differences that arose due to environmental factors, historical events, etc. The following chapter will compare and contrast the beliefs, myths, and traditions of the world’s major religions in an attempt to offer a holistic picture of the world’s dominating belief systems.

Throughout this chapter it’s important to be able to separate your own, particularly religious beliefs from the chapter content and to look at religions objectively. Do not apply your own, culturally-specific idea of ultimate “truth” to the other religious belief systems that we will examine here; strive to think like an anthropologist and employ cultural relativism.

10.2 Religions Change Over Time

In “The Essentials of Hinduism,” Swami Bhaskarananda writes,

“Any ancient religion can be compared to the attic of an old home. Unless the attic is regularly cleaned, it gathers dust and cobwebs and eventually becomes unusable. Similarly, if a religion cannot be updated or cleaned from time to time, it loses its usefulness and cannot relate anymore to changed times and people.”

Here, Swami Bhaskarananda is making an important point: religions must adapt to changing times, environments, political events, and social contexts in order to remain relevant in the minds of adherents. This is precisely what we will examine together throughout this chapter. In the case of each major world religion, we will examine the cultural events that shaped the religion as we know it today and we will identify the cultural context that allows the religion to maintain relevance.

Remember that anthropologists embrace two prevailing theoretical approaches towards the development of world religions over time:

• The evolutionary approach  argues that world religions evolved over time to meet culturally different needs and historical changing needs. The evolutionary approach comes initially from Edward Burnett Tylor, who argued that religions evolve in a linear manner in one inevitable direction. Of course, we know that religions don’t actually evolve in a  linear  manner, but religions do change and adapt over time.
• The other major approach is the  diffusionist approach . Diffusionists argue that religions spread, or diffuse, across the globe because people spread them. We do so by sharing our beliefs and practices with others, who sometimes adopt those beliefs and practices as their own. We also bring our beliefs and practices with us when we move to new places. Today, diffusion is always happening, and with globalization and mass migration, world religions are spreading more than ever. With technology, we are able to share our religious and spiritual world views more than ever. The diffusionist approach is often criticized because it over-simplifies the way that religions spread. In its extreme form, diffusionism implies that spiritual innovation never happens. Rather, one or two civilizations came up with religious ideas and spread these ideas to everyone else. However, innovation does happen.

Both approaches are true to an extent; religion is ever-changing and is always diffusing across the globe.

10.3 The First Religion 

Students often ask, “Who were the first humans to have religion?” But, in fact, religion may predate humanity as we know it. How do we know this? Human ancestors are called hominins. Two species, dating back 500,000-30,000 years ago show evidence of intentional burial.

Homo heidelbergensis buried their dead in manually- dug pits with symbolic items such as a pink handaxe that would shatter if used. Neanderthals also buried their dead in specific body positions with symbolic artwork and grave goods. Since these hominins had brains the size of ours (or in some cases, even larger) and the capacity for language and dreams, it is proposed that they also could have had the first ideas of spiritualism or an afterlife.  This leads anthropologists to ask: was this burial ritual an early form of religion?

This practice may signify a form of appreciation of their loved ones, or perhaps it reflects an idea that the dead might need items in the afterlife. As you already understand, burial rituals (death rituals) are central to religion and symbolic gestures are a key component of culture. In this way, the argument can be made that religion existed on Earth before the evolution of modern humans.

Exercise 10A

For more on the fascinating burial practices of our human ancestors, read “ Who First Buried the Dead? ” by Paige Madison.

Then, see if you can answer the following questions:

• Why is it important to understand how human ancestors treated the dead? What does this say about our evolution?
• What signs do archeologists look for when determining how the dead were treated?

10.4 Animism 

In Chapter 3, we learned that Sir Edward Burnett Tylor used the term “animism” to describe what he viewed as a fundamental attribute of all religious belief systems.  Tylor adapted the term from the latin word anima, meaning spirit. Broadly speaking, his animism concept refers to a belief in “souls and other spiritual beings” (Tylor 1889). However, we may actually be able to add a little more detail to that rather broad definition.

To animists, people are more than just our bodies: more than bone, muscle, bacteria, and organic tissue. And to be clear, contemporary scientific perspectives define an individual human being in exactly this way; we are a collection of physical structures connected together to produce our consciousness and to store the information, memories, physical tendencies, tastes, and instincts that make us each who we are. For animists, however, there is a supernatural, immaterial (non-physical) thing that defines each of us.

And just as importantly, for animists, it’s not necessarily just humans who possess souls or spirits. Animals, plants and other parts of our environment like rocks, trees, lakes, pieces of art, cars, and places might also contain souls or spirits, in which case they are treated not as inanimate things, but as persons. Another way to say this is that animists see personhood – the condition of being a person – as something that certain non-human organisms and objects can also have.

To be an animist, then, is to live in a world where not only humans, but other things like animals, trees, rivers, and mountains are also conscious of their surroundings. In this worldview, anything with a soul or spirit can also possess a consciousness, opinions, desires, and even the ability to act according to its own will.

In her discussion of animism in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Katherine Swancutt (2019) provides an example of animist beliefs among Yup’ik groups in the Russian Far East and Alaska:

“Yup’ik residents of the Bering Sea coast consider that the ocean has eyes, sees everything, and does not like it when persons fail to follow the traditional abstinence practice of avoiding the waterfront after a birth, death, illness, miscarriage, or first menstruation (Fienup-Riordan & Carmack 2011, 269). Since the ocean brings disasters on people when it is upset, Yup’ik consider that it is best to wait until early spring before visiting it after one of these events. Spring is the season when grebes arrive and defecate in the water; it is also when ringed seals come and their blood soaks the ocean as predators attack. According to Yup’ik hunters, these events make ‘the makuat [ocean’s eyes] close and become blind’ so that the hunters can safely approach the waterfront again (Fienup-Riordan & Carmack 2011, 270).”

It is clear from this example that there are important implications of animist beliefs. Yup’ik people do believe that the Bering Sea has a soul, but this also means they view it as able to perceive when they break certain rules. Moreover, it dislikes when people do so, and it has the ability to act if it is offended.

Importantly, animism is not one specific religion. Rather, the term refers to an attribute that many religious traditions share. That being said, animism will manifest in unique ways   within the diverse  belief systems studied by anthropologists. Ethnographic study has revealed that groups may not agree on exactly what types of entities  possess souls or on the specific details of what a soul entails , where it originates , and what it can do within the spirit realm or in reality.

Exercise 10B

You can practice cuneiform in the kitchen. View The Getty’s page on cuneiform cookies for step-by-step instructions.

10.6 Hinduism

Hinduism is the only major world religion with no known founder and with no single holy text (Matthews 2007). Unlike Catholicism which has a singular authority (the Vatican) Hinduism is not defined by one ruling organization that defines the religion. In this way, Hinduism is considered to be a particularly adaptable religion whereby different regions of India will recognize, celebrate, and worship the divine in regionally specific ways. Hinduism is the most ancient major religion of the world and is the third largest, today. 

Hindus believe in reincarnation (the idea that a soul is reborn into a new life after death) and in samsara (the cycle of life, death, and rebirth). During the cycle of life, karma determines a person’s next incarnation (this can be a human life or animal life). One’s actions and decisions in their current and even previous lives determines how one will be reborn in the next life. The goal of Hinduism is to free oneself from the cycle of death and rebirth in order to be free from the suffering of life; this goal is called “ moksha.”  

In Hinduism, religious followers strive to behave in an ethical way throughout their lifetimes and each individual follows the dharma , or ultimate cosmic truth. In this religion, different types of people have different types of responsibilities that they must meet in order to be in line with the dharma. 

While Hinduism has many religious texts to refer to, the first emerged in 1500 BCE and is called the Rig Veda. The Rig Veda is one of the four traditions of Vedas and consists of mantras and myths about devas (gods). It provides information on  ritual procedure by outlining hymns to praise the divine (Sarma 2008). 

Another commonly referenced story of Hinduism is called the “ Bhagavad Gita ”. The “Bhagavad Gita”, is part of the epic Mahabharata and is told as a discourse between prince Arjuna and god Krishna. The story takes place during a war between the Pandava brothers and Kaurava brothers. It begins with Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers, dropping his weapon and refusing to fight with his blood relatives (Sarma 2008).

As Arjuna approaches the conflict in his chariot, a major Hindu God, Krishna, appears to him disguised as the charioteer  and explains the dharma to Arjuna , presenting the argument to engage in battle. While Arjuna expresses that he does not want to kill or hurt anyone, Krishna explains that the balance of the universe requires his action so that it can remain  aligned. Krishna goes on to comfort Arjuna by assuring him that all souls live on after death, and that everyone’s fate is the result of their karma. Ultimately, the “Bhagavad Gita” is a spiritual dialogue and a conversation between the divine and humanity. Throughout the epic, Krishna tells Arjuna that humans were created to help the gods and that human life is eternal. This is why Krishna tells Arjuna to go to war in order to serve the divine.This story is also told as a lesson to the devotee for the need to uphold the societal structures, despite the personal reservations one may have, since these structures are part of the dharma .

Hindus believe in multiple gods and goddesses and these gods and goddesses can appear in different forms. Since Hindus believe that the divine is not limited to one form, Hinduism has been able to show a particular tolerance to other religious deities including the Buddha from Buddhism and Jesus from Christianity. 

10.7 Ancient Egypt’s Brief Monotheism

The Ancient Egyptians were ruled by pharaohs who were viewed as divine, and therefore served as both political and religious leaders. Ancient Egyptian religion was, traditionally, polytheistic, meaning that they believed in multiple divine beings. However, the most interesting case to examine anthropologically is the case of the pharaoh  Akhenaten  (also known as Amenhotep IV) who temporarily forced Ancient Egypt to become monotheisticduring his reign. And, interestingly enough, some anthropologists and archeologists point to this historical occurrence as the beginning of permanent monotheism in other major world religions.

Akhenaten became a pharaoh at a young age after his father died. Before his death, Akhenaten’s father led his people in polytheistic worship but held the sun god,  Aten , as his patron (favorite) deity. This sun god is also known as “ Re”  and was found in the Old Kingdom in cults that worshipped Amen-Re, long before Akhenaten rose to power. After Akhenaten ascended into his role as pharaoh, he outlawed the worship of any deities that were not Aten. Akhenaten destroyed temples and fired priests who served any deity that was not Aten. This is an early example of large-scale monotheism in the Ancient world. This revolution was not met with support from most of Akhenaten’s subjects, since it radically affected peasants’ and everyday people’s culture, religion, customs and wealth. Akhenaten  was regarded as a heretic after his death, and under the pharaoh Tutankhamun polytheism and the traditional religious practices were restored.

Interestingly enough, Akhenaten’s monotheism may have had an influence upon the monotheism of modern Judaism (and, subsequently, modern Christianity and Islam).  Moses , a central Biblical figure (important today to the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) is believed to have lived in Egypt during or shortly after the reign of Akhenaten. As is true with many religious figures, we are not sure if Moses historically existed as one man or if he was written as a compilation reflecting many who lived at the same time. In either case, the ideologies that were developed during this time were influenced by Egyptian events.

It’s believed that Moses established the 10 Commandments (a set of rules defining ethics and worship in the Abhrahamic religions). It’s interesting to note that the first commandment tells followers that there is only one god. As the first commandment, this monotheistic statement largely defined the structure and values of the Abrahamic religions moving forward. The fact that one of the commandments states that “thou shall worship no other gods before me” points to a shift from polytheism to monotheism, suggesting that Moses and the ancient Hebrews accepted polyteistic traditions before this rule was put into place. Scholars have found connections between Egyptian wisdom instructions and the biblical books of Proverbs (from the Instruction of Ptah-hotep), Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Psalms, and Job. For example, there are strong parallels between the Hymn to the Aten and the Psalm 104 in the Bible.

Primary Reading: Psalm 104

He set the earth on its foundations;

it can never be moved.

6 You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;

the waters stood above the mountains.

7 But at your rebuke the waters fled,

at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;

8 they flowed over the mountains,

they went down into the valleys,

to the place you assigned for them.

9 You set a boundary they cannot cross;

never again will they cover the earth.

10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines;

it flows between the mountains.

11 They give water to all the beasts of the field;

the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

12 The birds of the sky nest by the waters;

they sing among the branches.

13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;

the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.

14 He makes grass grow for the cattle,

and plants for people to cultivate—

bringing forth food from the earth:

15 wine that gladdens human hearts,

oil to make their faces shine,

and bread that sustains their hearts.

16 The trees of the Lord are well watered,

the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.

17 There the birds make their nests;

the stork has its home in the junipers.

18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats;

the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

Primary Reading: Hymn to the Aten

How manifold it is, what thou hast made!

They are hidden from the face (of man).

O sole god, like whom there is no other!

Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,

Whilst thou wert alone: All men, cattle, and wild beasts,

Whatever is on Earth, going upon (its) feet,

And what is on high, flying with its wings.

The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,

Thou settest every man in his place,

Thou suppliest their necessities:

Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.

Their tongues are separate in speech,

And their natures as well;

Their skins are distinguished,

As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.

Thou makest a Nile in the underworld,

Thou bringest forth as thou desirest

To maintain the people (of Egypt)

According as thou madest them for thyself,

The lord of all of them, wearying (himself) with them,

The lord of every land, rising for them,

The Aton of the day, great of majesty. [7]

10.8 The Influence of Zoroastrianism

Ancient Persian civilization traded extensively with Ancient Hindu civilizations and, as a result, the two cultures influenced each other to adopt certain practices from the other. Interestingly enough, the philosophies of Ancient Persian society similarly spread across the globe to heavily influence the Abrahamic religions, as well. 

In Ancient Persia, around 2000 BCE, a prophet named Zoroaster is believed to have been born. The stories surrounding Zoroaster tell us that he was highly critical of inequality in his society and that he advocated for a more egalitarian society (Cole 2012, 50).

Today, Zoroastrianism is a religion that is still practiced; the largest percentage of Zoroastrians live in Iran while the second largest group live and practice in Los Angeles, California. Members of the religion describe the faith as monotheistic because they only worship one divine being: a perfectly good and all-knowing god. However, Zoroastrianism also believes in a very powerful, evil being who is in battle with the all-good divine being. Anthropologists and scholars of religion call this phenomenon dualism : a religious tradition that believes in two opposing forces, often cosmic and eternal (Oxtoby 2002). 

Zoroastrianism was the first religion to establish the idea of an all-good god and an all-evil being with which the all-good being is at war with. This worldview establishes the idea that human beings are engaged in a cosmic battle between good and evil and that human beings have the responsibility to choose sides. 

Religious scholars largely agree that the concept of “Satan” evolved from this Zoroastrian concept (Oxtoby 2002). Biblical texts do not initially mention a devil figure and the idea of a purely evil being who is external from God. Instead, this idea first emerged during a period when Ancient Persian civilizations were influencing Hebrew and Judaic Biblical writings (Cole 2012, 51-3). 

Interestingly, Zoroastrians believe in the concept of “dharma” similar to the Hindu idea. At the same time, Zoroastrianism calls for morality through action, which is uniquely different from Hinduism.

10.9 Buddhism

It’s believed that the story of the Buddha begins in the year 560 BCE in a region that is now called Nepal, a region that was part of an ancient Hindu society at the time. A figure called Queen Maya was believed to have had a dream of a white elephant informing her that she was pregnant. Upon calling a diviner to interpret the dream, the diviner told her that she would have a son who would either become a great spiritual leader or a great king. As the child’s father was already a King, the couple expressed a preference for their child to become a great king. In response, the diviner told the couple that they needed to shield their son from all suffering in order to prevent him from taking the path of spiritual leadership. 

Queen Maya gave birth to her son Siddhartha, and shortly after giving birth she died. The king and Siddhartha’s adoptive mother raised him to be completely shielded from all types of suffering throughout his young life until, one day, the young boy asked to leave the palace and see the world. His parents allowed him to briefly leave the palace; during this time he witnessed 4 sights: 

• Siddhartha saw a sick person who was suffering. Before this moment, Siddhartha did not know about illness. 
• Siddhartha then saw an old person and was shocked because he had never before realized that people grow weaker as they age. 
• Then, Siddhartha saw a dead body and was horrified because he had not previously been made aware of death. 
• Finally, amidst all of this shock and suffering, Siddhartha witnessed a monk peacefully meditating. Siddhartha resolved to enter a journey of spirituality like this monk in order to find a solution to stop the suffering of people. 

So, the story goes, that Siddhartha left the palace and studied a variety of spiritual movements. He first lived the ascetic life as a beggar (a strict life with no pleasures or indulgence) and did not reach enlightenment. He then lived a life of extreme indulgence but also could not reach enlightenment. Finally, Siddhartha sat below a Bodhi tree and realized that neither full sacrifice nor full indulgence is the key to enlightenment. Rather, Siddhartha realized “ The Middle Way ” is the path to becoming free from suffering. In this moment, Siddhartha became The Buddha , the Enlightened one. Over the course of centuries, followers of the Buddha developed core beliefs for how to achieve Enlightenment along the Middle Way.

The core beliefs of Buddhism include the Four Noble Truths , which are:

• All of life is suffering
• We suffer because we desire and cling to ideas, people, things, etc.
• Only by extinguishing desire can we stop suffering
• There are eight ways to end desire, called The Eightfold Path  

The Eightfold Path encourages: 

• Right understanding
• Right thought
• Right speech 
• Right action
• Right livelihood
• Right effort
• Right mindfulness 
• Right concentration

Please note that The Buddha, if he existed as the story is told, never wrote anything down. He similarly never claimed to be a God or divine being. The Buddha’s religion, Buddhism, is closely related to Hinduism as Siddhartha was born and raised in the Hindu tradition. Prince Siddhartha was a member of the Kshatriya caste and until leaving the palace he fulfilled his duties according to the Brahmanic custom by being a devout student, then marrying a neighboring princess and having a son (Matthews 2007).

10.10 Christianity

Roughly 560 years after the Buddha is believed to have been born in India, a new religious figure named Jesus is believed to have been born in the year 4 CE in Bethlehem (a city in modern-day Palestine). It’s interesting to note that the stories surrounding both Jesus and Buddha originated along the Silk Road (a trade route that connects all of Eurasia and played a role in the spread of culture and ideas across cultures).

The story of Jesus tells us that he was born and raised in Palestine under occupation by the Roman Empire. Roman-ruled-Palestine was a territorial society where people often suffered under strict military rule and were stratified into strict class groups. As many suffered under Roman oppression, Jesus advocated for a more egalitarian society and was executed for undermining the powerful Roman rule. 

One of the radical ideas developed during this time was that humans could have a personal relationship with God, and they no longer had to go through temples to reach God. This belief is a defining characteristic of Christianity and was innovated during the time of Jesus. Similarly, believers of this era established the central Christian value of forgiveness: the idea that Jesus died to forgive humanity of their sins and that, therefore, humans should emulate the divine and forgive one another.

In Christianity, the firm belief in maintaining monotheism necessitates that God and Jesus must be the same entity, thus allowing Christians to continue to worship Jesus while still only honoring one divine being.

Exercise 10C

For a deeper historical understanding of the culture that developed Christianity, read Bart Erhman’s interview that addresses: “ If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One? ”

• How did the legacy of Jesus change throughout human history? What does this tell us about changing cultural needs?
• What political and cultural events impacted the evolution of this religion?

10.11 Weber and the Protestant Work Ethic

Religion impacts many facets of a culture and society.  Since Anthropology employs a holistic approach to understanding culture, this approach can be used to examine the way that Christianity has impacted other elements of modern Western culture. German Sociologist and economist Max Weber (1864 – 1920) argued in 1904 that Protestantism (a mainstream form of Christianity) and capitalism are such uniquely compatible worldviews that each augmented the other’s influence upon Euro-American civilization and led to the establishment of each as the dominating characteristics of much of the “western” world (Weber 2001). These arguments are outlined in his work, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and we refer to the idea as the Protestant Work Ethic .  

Before we can work through Weber’s arguments, we need to briefly clarify the different sects of Christianity. While the terms “ Catholic ” and “ Christian ” are often colloquially used to refer to different religions, Catholics are, actually, a form of Christianity. And, typically, when people use the term “Christian” in a colloquial sense in the United States, they are usually referring to “ Protestants .” Christianity is a major world religion that has three major subgroups: Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox. While Christianity has undergone a variety of transformations throughout history, it’s arguable that the greatest transformation followed Martin Luther ’s 1517 “Ninety-Five Theses.” Luther composed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to critique the Catholic Church (the only official form of Christianity at the time). While the Catholic Church has changed a great deal since 1517, Luther’s public criticisms at the time centered around: 

• The practice of buying divine forgiveness by giving money to the church 
• The church’s celibacy requirements 
• The worshiping of saints as near-gods
• The powerful position held by the Pope 

As a result of Luther’s popularized demand for change, the 16th century subsequently witnessed a massive Protestant Reformation whereby new sects of Christianity emerged in opposition to Papal authority and the misguided beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church. The Protestant Reformation directly influenced the continual fracturing of Protestant Christian sects that still exist today, such as: Evangelical Christianity, Baptists, Lutherans, Quakers, Methodists, Anglicans, Non-Denominational Christians, Pentecostal, etc.

In Weber’s view, religious life before the Protestant Reformation saw poverty as a moral value. This is true in most religious traditions; Seeking wealth is frequently seen as a form of greed. Since most religions including Christianity discourage greed along a similar system of moral values, greed is viewed as sinful. 

But, as Weber explains, the Protestant Reformation to a certain extent democratized how one can experience and connect with God, glorifying all forms of labor as a “calling” from God. In other words, before the Protestant Reformation, only those working in religious roles (priests) were viewed as doing “God’s work” but when Christianity started to view faith as more accessible to all types of people, anyone who worked hard was viewed as utilizing their gifts and talents given from God. As a result, making money was increasingly viewed as receiving God’s favor. The logic was: if you make a lot of money, then it must be because God favors your hard work. 

This worldview became compatible with capitalism which is centered around the idea that, through market competition, the best ideas will always succeed. Capitalism tells workers that hard work will always be rewarded with wealth. Protestant Capitalism therefore asserted that accumulated wealth is a sign of how hardworking a person is, as well as how favored by God they are.

In Weber’s view, the cultural transformations within Christianity and the establishment of capitalism as the dominant economic system took a strong hold over Euro-American societies because they were compatible in their common idea that hard work leads to wealth and that wealth is a reflection of goodness. This becomes an incentive for Protestants to work as much as possible to earn as much capital as possible, proving their moral success and God’s favor for them.

Sociologist and philosopher Karl Marx argued that religion, as an ideology, maintains this system of inequality. It is here that Marx’s ideas are compatible with the arguments of Max Weber. As you already know, Weber argued that Protestantism and capitalism are two compatible ideologies because both view working-for-profit to be an inherent, moral value. In Marx’s view, those without wealth or power continue to work for low wages because they have internalized the idea that any type of work is, itself, an inherent moral value. Within a religious, capitalist culture, people work to benefit the rich because they believe that we will be rewarded in the afterlife.  To summarize, Weber’s argument follows the following steps: 

• Religious devotion usually leads people to reject worldly affairs (wealth, possessions).
• Hard work was now viewed as “sacred”, a divine calling by God for people to fulfill their purpose.
• Work was also now a dutiful service to society, and anyone not working was not obeying God’s will for them.
• This new attitude allowed a desire for wealth.
• Pre-capitalist workers were unwilling to work more hours after reaching their desired income.
• Capitalist workers are willing to work more hours if they are paid a high wage
• In Weber’s view, this was not a uniquely “Western” trend – but the two cultural forces are so compatible that both Protestantism and capitalism flourish. The two established themselves as the dominating forces in both the United States and in Europe. 

Christianity is a diverse religion with an enormous global following and there is no singular way to define that religion, much like all other faiths which cannot be simplified. We can, however, point to the rising popularity of “ prosperity preachers ” in Christian spheres to illustrate Weber’s points. Prosperity preachers are religious leaders who are, typically, wealthy and who believe that God makes good and pious people wealthy and successful. Within this religious worldview, sick or poor people can overcome their disease and poverty by increasing their faith and that, in exchange, their god will reward them financially and heal them. In some of these movements, followers are told that, if they donate money to the preacher or to the church, then they will be rewarded with more wealth.

10.12 Islam

In Islam, followers believe that God sends signs to humanity intended to remind us of our obligations to live a good and pious life. In this religious tradition, God commanded a series of prophets starting with Abraham to help guide humanity in a righteous path. It is believed that since we continuously forget our obligations to each other, the planet, and to God, God continued to command multiple people to help get humanity back on the right track. 

Islam in Arabic means “to submit” to God and Muslims are “those who submit” to God. Followers of Islam, believe that Adam was the first prophet, followed by Noah, and later Abraham who submitted to the One God and engaged in a covenental relationship with Him to lead his people towards God. Abraham was followed by many other prophets including Moses (a shared prophet among Jewish people) and Jesus (a shared figure among Christians). In addition, Muslims also believe that God’s final prophet named Muhammad gave humanity a clear and final set of guiding principles intended to glorify God (Ayoub 2002). 

Muhammad was born in the year 571 CE in Saudi Arabia. It’s believed that he was an illiterate man who entered a cave to pray and that, suddenly, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him to “recite!” Over the subsequent 23 years, Muhammad wrote the words of the Qur’an, the holy text of Islam. It’s believed that, because Muhammad wrote the Qur’an in Arabic, that reading the text in Arabic is akin to literally reading the word of God (this is unlike most other world religious texts which have been translated into multiple languages over time). 

There are 5 pillars of Islam: 

• Faith, the monotheistic idea that there is no God but one God and that Muhammad is God’s favored and final prophet. 
• Prayer, which requires followers to pray 3 or 5 times a day depending on whether one is Sunni or Shia.
• Alms-giving, where all Muslims donate a portion of their income to charity.
• Fasting, when Muslims do not eat or drink from sun up to sun down during the month of Ramadan.
• Pilgrimage, where Muslims are required to visit the holy site of Mecca once in their lives, which is called the Hajj.

As is commonly discussed, it’s forbidden to depict Muhammad in the Muslim tradition. This rule is held in Islamic culture as an attempt to prevent the idolization or mischaracterization of their holy person. Similarly, drawing or making statues of Jesus, Mary, or Moses, etc. are also forbidden and considered to be idolatry in the Muslim tradition.

10.13 “Cults”

Although this chapter mainly focuses on religious groups who present themselves as inheritors of ancient traditions and have followers numbering in the millions, we should also stop to consider a type of religion that tends to be smaller and younger. The groups in question – those known in public discourse as “cults”– are of considerable importance for how we think about religious variation today. 

10.14 What’s in a name? 

Like the terms “religion” or “culture,” “ cult ” is a difficult concept to pin down. You may feel that you simply know one when you see it, but we will need a better definition than that to have a productive discussion. After all, it seems unlikely that every other student in your class understands the term in exactly the same way as you. Because a “cult” is such a difficult thing to define, it can be difficult to distinguish these groups from “conventional” religions. Groups identified as religions or cults both use rituals, sacred spaces, and symbols to create a strong sense of common identity and shared belief among their members. Both also involve beliefs in the supernatural (although they do not always acknowledge the supernatural nature of their beliefs).

One factor that separates “cults” from “religions” is how people perceive them within cultural settings where they exist (Melton 2004). Consider the term religion ; everyone within a particular society might not share the beliefs and practices of religions practiced within their cultural surroundings, but they likely don’t view the groups they call “religions” to be transgressive, dangerous, or threatening to the social order. In contrast, if your peers and family see that you are joining a group they consider a cult, they are likely to be worried, sad, confused, or even angry about your decision. They may even determine that you have been forced to join the so-called cult by means of manipulation and threats. 

This is not dissimilar from the “witchcraft accusation” as described in Chapter 5: the term “cult” can be used as an accusation intended to discredit the spiritual movement/beliefs of a group. That being said, anthropologists, psychologists, and all social scientists do recognize that some religious movements are harmful or abusive. The distinction between a genuinely dangerous spiritual movement and an unpopular spiritual movement is an important distinction to make when analyzing modern religious trends. 

While cultural insiders understand “religions” to be harmless and non-threatening, they usually view the groups they label as “cults” to be “abnormal” within their cultural surroundings. The term “cult” has taken on a negative connotation in the public eye for describing extremist religious sects that often separate themselves from the rest of society, sometimes with harmful or deadly consequences.

Exercise 10D

A cultural movement called “Cargo Cults” offers anthropology students an opportunity to practice cultural relativism. Read Cargo Cults to better understand the worldview associated with this religion.

Then, see if you can answer the following question:

How are symbols used in the European culture referenced in the reading? How are these symbols repurposed in this New Religious Movement?

10.15 Cargo Cults

While not a major world religion, Cargo Cults are another wonderful example to include in our chapter on comparative religion. As a more modern movement, Cargo Cults reflect the migration of people and how competing cultural interpretations can exist alongside one another.

The word “cargo” has Latin origins and refers to items being loaded onto a ship. In our own culturally-specific context, we define the word “cargo” to mean, “the goods or merchandise conveyed in a ship, airplane, or vehicle.” In other words, “cargo” is anything that we import or export with the intention of buying and selling.

In one community of Papua New Guinea, the European word “cargo” has evolved to carry another layer of local meaning that reflects many issues attached to the colonial encounter; it combines the local beliefs with the culture of more-powerful outsiders. In this local language, the term “cargo” refers to “trade goods” or anything brought over to Papua New Guinea by the people coming into their region from abroad (Stein and Stein 2017, 237). In other words, they use the word “cargo” to refer to the myriad of things that outsiders ship into their region including: money, weapons, clothing, technology, religious paraphernalia, etc.

Before the era of colonialism, the people of this region approached relationships as reciprocal. By trading goods and services equally between people, social relationships were maintained. Before colonialism, striving to make a profit off of others was not an acceptable practice. Anthropologists refer to this as balanced reciprocity and these societies largely maintain social ties through equal exchanges of goods or services. In this society, a traditional trade route exists called The Kula Ring. Within the Kula Ring, the people equally share time with a collection of sacred items that rotate between different communities. No group keeps the sacred items and all are expected to continue trading the items forward.

With the arrival of European colonial governments and missionaries, the people of this region started to witness a high volume of cargo arriving on ships and, later, on planes (Stein 2017). The wealth disparity between the local people and arriving Europeans was glaring and caused some locals to start to interpret the wealth gap using their own, culturally-specific terms (Stein 2017). This is a fascinating case to examine because, although the subsequent religion – called Cargo Cults – is often perceived as superstitious and absurd to the Western mind, their interpretations are actually exceptionally astute and correct. If we can examine the issues at hand using their own, culturally-specific context, we can actually understand more about ourselves.

Members of the Cargo Cult religion believe that Europeans accumulated a high volume of manufactured goods through ritual. The local people of Papua New Guinea watched the colonial officers dress in elaborate European clothing that served no apparent function, march about the island in striking uniformity, conduct meetings in a prescribed manner, and participate in other practices that are specific to the European culture. For example, a necktie is a fashion item that otherwise serves no function which caused the local people to struggle to understand why a person would wear a necktie. In response to this cultural clash, the religious belief of Cargo Cults emerged and believed that, if the natives of Papua New Guinea started to engage in the same rituals practices as the Europeans, they would start to accumulate as much wealth and “cargo” as the Europeans had.

The religion evolved to explain the wealth disparity and to explain the bizarre behavior of the outsiders. The native people saw the European behaviors as supernatural rituals that allowed them to access cargo magically. As a result, followers of the Cargo Cult religion started to develop rituals that copied the European behaviors. They march in lines with wooden “guns” over their shoulders, they stand at attention and raise “flags” up flag poles. On another occasion, they would place bark that resembles bullets in a sacred room and take hallucinogens in order to make actual bullets appear. In other words, they take these symbolic, culturally-specific practices and re-enact them within a different cultural context.

Another example focuses on fashion. Cargo Cult members design and wear their own form of necktie and understand neckties to be powerful amulets that allow access to cargo, wealth, and technology. We can practice cultural relativism and explore the mundane imponderabilia to understand how this makes sense. In their culture, only people wearing neckties had access to cargo and the European colonizers were actively seeking to convert the native people into a European way of life. So, the native people would give in to the European’s pressure to act more European and would start to dress like them.

Consider this: In our culture, a necktie symbolizes professionalism (among other things). This symbol is traditionally reserved for one gender (although more genders are increasingly wearing neckties, too). If a person who we expect to wear a tie failed to wear a tie to a job interview, then we likely wouldn’t think that person was fit for the job they interviewed for. As a result, that person wouldn’t gain the income of the new job and wouldn’t have access to wealth or to the technology and items that they hoped to purchase. Members of the Cargo Cult are not wrong in connecting European rituals – such as wearing a tie – to success. This is because the European culture has dominated wealth and global culture since the beginning of colonialism.

This new religion developed a new myth (please note: in anthropology we define a “myth” as “a sacred story that shapes a people’s worldview”. We don’t use this term in the dismissive manner that it’s used in common language). The sacred myth of Cargo Cults taught the people that their ancestors resided in another realm and that wealth, prosperity, and cargo could only be acquired from that realm through supernatural means (usually involving pleasing the ancestors). In their view, their ancestors intended for the people of the island to have the technology and goods (which were stored in the Land of the Dead) but, in their view, the Europeans stole the goods from the natives. In the Cargo Cults tradition, practicing magic will return the technology, wealth, and goods to the native people.

Remember that the European colonizers exploited native resources and people in order to amass their own wealth. The colonial governments did, indeed, steal natural resources and exploit native labor in order to profit, advance technology, and amass goods. In a real sense, the wealthy were stealing from the Cargo Cult followers and the colonial governments and missionaries were supposedly offering access to the wealth if the local people could become a part of European expansion.

Furthermore, a reason this interpretation emerged was due to the European’s cultural preference for what anthropologists call negative reciprocity. “Negative reciprocity” occurs when parties seek to gain more than they give. If, for example, the shirt you are wearing was made in a factory for $1 but you paid $25 at the store, then the company selling the shirt made more than they gave to you (this is considered negative reciprocity). While living near the people of Papua New Guinea, the Europeans asked for labor, land, and resources but never offered cargo to the native people (Stein 237-238). Anthropologist Shirley Lindenbaum writes,

“From [their] point of view…they had provided whites with territory, food, and services, and they expected a reciprocal endowment of valuables…In return they expected knowledge they could use to induce the gods to favor them as they had favored the whites.” (Lindenbaum 2013, 111).

The missionaries worked to convert the native people to Christianity during this same time. In the Christian worldview, prosperity is a sign of divine favor (Weber 2001). So, in the Christian worldview, the natives of Papua New Guinea would, in fact, be favored with economic development if they converted to Christianity. So, as a result, much of the Cargo Cult religion evolved to include Christianity. Rebecca and Phillip Stein’s book on the matter explains, “Much of the interest in the newly introduced Christianity was an interest in discovering the ritual secrets that the missionaries used to bring the cargo over from over the sea from the Land of the Dead.”

Wikipedia’s somewhat problematic explanation defines Cargo Cults as, “A belief system in a relatively undeveloped society in which adherents practice superstitious (magical) rituals hoping to bring modern goods supplied by a more technologically advanced society.” This common misunderstanding of Cargo Cults is simply not sufficient and requires a more advanced anthropological analysis. Anthropologists define “magic” as “any practice that is intended to change the fate of the people, usually through supernatural means” (Kuper 79). In this way, both the Europeans and native islanders were engaging in symbolic superstitious rituals (marches, meetings, flag raisings) in order to change their fates,  and both believed that Christianity would lead to prosperity. Each unveils some truth about the other.

By examining the beliefs and rituals of the followers of Cargo Cults, we are presented with an opportunity to examine ourselves. Their etic perspective on our culture highlights what is socially-constructed, culturally-specific, symbolic, and superstitious. When these people interpret our cultural practices, they are doing the work of anthropologists and developing an understanding of our practices that makes sense in their own context.

10.16 Comparing and Contrasting Religious Influences

Let’s wrap up by comparing and contrasting the beliefs of the religions that we have discussed in this chapter. Jesus and Buddha’s stories emerged within 500 years of each other, and their similarities reveal a great deal about what societies needed at the time. You may recall that the hero archetype is a common story-telling structure that exists across cultures and, of course, the stories of Jesus and Buddha follow that structure as well. 

• Their philosophies and stories are very similar; for example, when Jesus gives the “Sermon on the Mount”, the first thing that he teaches is the “Golden Rule”. The Golden Rule says, “do not do anything to others that you would not want others to do to you”. On the other hand, Buddha gives his first lessons beneath the Bodhi tree and his first lesson is: treat others as you would like to be treated. 
• Both Buddhism and Christianity preached nonviolence while living in violent societies, and it was a radical idea at the time.
• Both Buddhism and Christianity rejected material wealth and undermined the ruling powers of their society.
• Both Buddha and Jesus are believed to have had prostitutes as friends which reveals a common cultural oppression of women and a revolutionary new idea to overcome oppressive class structures. 
• Both religious figures started their spiritual journey at age 30. 

Jesus and Buddha’s origin stories are also quite similar: 

• Jesus’ and Buddha’s legends are similar, as both of their mothers’ pregnancies were announced by angels : an elephant in Buddhism and Angel Gabriel in Christianity. 
• Both mothers gave birth during a journey, with Mary traveling to Jerusalem, and Buddha’s mother returning to her hometown.

While the stories of Jesus and Buddha are generally quite similar, they end in very different ways. Consider each: 

• It’s believed that Jesus was crucified by at age 32.
•  It’s believed that Buddha died at age 90 from food poisoning. In the story, one of Buddha’s followers accidentally undercooked a fish and served it to him. Rather than dying dramatically, it’s believed that Buddha calmly explained to his distraught followers the lesson: everything eventually dies. 

Of course, because Buddhism and Hinduism emerged from the same origins, both religions believe in reincarnation, karma, and samsara, both seek liberation from suffering through inward reflection and selfless service. 

Zoroastrianism heavily influenced the development of the Abrahamic religions. Christianity embraces the originally-Zoroastrian idea of “good versus evil”, the idea that humans are engaged in a cosmic battle. Similarly, Zoroastrianism influenced the development of Hinduism as both religions share the ideas of spiritual responsibility (dharma).

Exercise 10E: Journal Reflection

How has your religious community been influenced by the practices and beliefs of other groups?

Exercise 10F: Study Guide

Define the following terms in your own words:

• The cross-cultural approach
• The evolutionary approach
• The diffusionist approach
• Mesopotamians
• Enuma Elish
• Polythsistic
• Monotheistic
• Reincarnation
• Bhagavad Gita
• The Middle Way
• The Four Noble Truths
• The Eightfold Path
• The Silk Road
• The Protestant Work Ethic
• Protestant Reformation
• Prosperity Preachers
• New Religious Movements

Briefly summarize the cultural contributions of the following figures:

• Prophet Zoroaster
•  The Prophet Mohammad

Chapter 10 Works Cited

• Ayoub, Mahmoud M. 2002. “The Islamic Tradition.” In World Religions: Western Traditions.  edited by Willard G. Oxtoby. Canada: Oxford University Press.
• Boadt, Lawrence. 1984. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in the State of New York
• Cole, Joshua. Symes, Carol. Coffllin, Judith. Stacey, Robert. 2012. Western Civilizations Vol. 1. W. W. Norton and Company.
• Fagan, Brian. 2015. Did Akhenaten’s Monotheism Influence Moses? Biblical Archaeology Review 41:4 (July/August).
• Lambert, W. G. 2013. Babylonian Creation Myths Winona Lake. Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
• Matthews, Warren. 2007. “Hinduism.” In World Religions.  Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
• Oxtoby, Willard G. 2002. “The Zoroastrian Tradition.” In World Religions: Western Traditions , edited by Willard G. Oxtoby. Canada: Oxford University Press.
• Sarma, Deepak. 2008. Hinduism: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Segal, Alan F. 2002. “The Jewish Tradition.” In World Religions: Western Traditions.  edited by Willard G. Oxtoby. Canada: Oxford University Press.
• Stein, R.L. and Stein, P.L., 2017. The anthropology of religion, magic, and witchcraft. Routledge.
• Swancutt, Katherine. 2019. Animism. Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
• Winthrop, R.H. 1991. Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Greenwood Press.

Chapter 10 Suggestions for further readings:

• Ehrman, Bart. 2014. “If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?” Interview by Terry Gross.  Fresh Air, NPR , April 7, 2014. Audio, 38. https://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/300246095/if-jesus-never-called-himself-god-how-did-he-become-one#:~:text=God.%20…-,During%20his%20lifetime%2C%20Jesus%20himself%20didn’t%20call%20himself%20God,all%20that%20he%20was%20God.&text=You%20do%20find%20Jesus%20calling,John%2C%20or%20the%20last%20Gospel.
• Henninger-Rener, Sashur. 2020. “Religion.” In  Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition,  edited by Nina Brown, Thomas McIlwraith, Laura Tubelle de González. The American Anthropological Association. https://perspectives.pressbooks.com.
• Redford, Donald. 1987. The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh. Biblical Archaeology Review  13:3 (May/June).

Written by Amanda Zunner-Keating, except for section 10.4 (“Animism”), which was written by Ben Shepard. Edited by Oscar Hernandez, Brian Pierson, Madlen Avetyan, and Tad Mcilwraith. Special thanks to student researchers/reviewers Phillip Te, Ethan Yu, Jared Montaug, and Ahmet Dikyurt. Thanks to Jennifer Campbell for curating photos; and to Melody Yeager-Struthers for organizing our resources. Textbook layout by Amanda Zunner-Keating and Madlen Avetyan. Audio recorded by Amanda Zunner-Keating.

NPR links on this are linked NPR’s website with permission from NPR . All NPR content (audio, text, photographs, graphics, videos) is protected by copyright in the U.S. and other countries. For more, visit  NPR’s Rights and Permissions website .

Comparative Religion Copyright © by Amanda Zunner-Keating; Madlen Avetyan; and Ben Shepard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Communication and Culture
• Communication and Social Change
• Communication and Technology
• Communication Theory
• Critical/Cultural Studies
• Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies)
• Health and Risk Communication
• Intergroup Communication
• International/Global Communication
• Interpersonal Communication
• Journalism Studies
• Language and Social Interaction
• Mass Communication
• Media and Communication Policy
• Organizational Communication
• Political Communication
• Rhetorical Theory
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Religion, culture, and communication.

• Stephen M. Croucher , Stephen M. Croucher School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey Business School, Massey University
• Cheng Zeng , Cheng Zeng Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä
• Diyako Rahmani Diyako Rahmani Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä
•  and  Mélodine Sommier Mélodine Sommier School of History, Culture, and Communication, Eramus University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.166
• Published online: 25 January 2017

Religion is an essential element of the human condition. Hundreds of studies have examined how religious beliefs mold an individual’s sociology and psychology. In particular, research has explored how an individual’s religion (religious beliefs, religious denomination, strength of religious devotion, etc.) is linked to their cultural beliefs and background. While some researchers have asserted that religion is an essential part of an individual’s culture, other researchers have focused more on how religion is a culture in itself. The key difference is how researchers conceptualize and operationalize both of these terms. Moreover, the influence of communication in how individuals and communities understand, conceptualize, and pass on religious and cultural beliefs and practices is integral to understanding exactly what religion and culture are.

It is through exploring the relationships among religion, culture, and communication that we can best understand how they shape the world in which we live and have shaped the communication discipline itself. Furthermore, as we grapple with these relationships and terms, we can look to the future and realize that the study of religion, culture, and communication is vast and open to expansion. Researchers are beginning to explore the influence of mediation on religion and culture, how our globalized world affects the communication of religions and cultures, and how interreligious communication is misunderstood; and researchers are recognizing the need to extend studies into non-Christian religious cultures.

• communication
• intercultural communication

Intricate Relationships among Religion, Communication, and Culture

Compiling an entry on the relationships among religion, culture, and communication is not an easy task. There is not one accepted definition for any of these three terms, and research suggests that the connections among these concepts are complex, to say the least. Thus, this article attempts to synthesize the various approaches to these three terms and integrate them. In such an endeavor, it is impossible to discuss all philosophical and paradigmatic debates or include all disciplines.

It is difficult to define religion from one perspective and with one encompassing definition. “Religion” is often defined as the belief in or the worship of a god or gods. Geertz ( 1973 ) defined a religion as

(1) a system which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (p. 90)

It is essential to recognize that religion cannot be understood apart from the world in which it takes place (Marx & Engels, 1975 ). To better understand how religion relates to and affects culture and communication, we should first explore key definitions, philosophies, and perspectives that have informed how we currently look at religion. In particular, the influences of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel are discussed to further understand the complexity of religion.

Karl Marx ( 1818–1883 ) saw religion as descriptive and evaluative. First, from a descriptive point of view, Marx believed that social and economic situations shape how we form and regard religions and what is religious. For Marx, the fact that people tend to turn to religion more when they are facing economic hardships or that the same religious denomination is practiced differently in different communities would seem perfectly logical. Second, Marx saw religion as a form of alienation (Marx & Engels, 1975 ). For Marx, the notion that the Catholic Church, for example, had the ability or right to excommunicate an individual, and thus essentially exclude them from the spiritual community, was a classic example of exploitation and domination. Such alienation and exploitation was later echoed in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche ( 1844–1900 ), who viewed organized religion as society and culture controlling man (Nietzsche, 1996 ).

Building on Marxist thinking, Weber ( 1864–1920 ) stressed the multicausality of religion. Weber ( 1963 ) emphasized three arguments regarding religion and society: (1) how a religion relates to a society is contingent (it varies); (2) the relationship between religion and society can only be examined in its cultural and historical context; and (3) the relationship between society and religion is slowly eroding. Weber’s arguments can be applied to Catholicism in Europe. Until the Protestant Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries, Catholicism was the dominant religious ideology on the European continent. However, since the Reformation, Europe has increasingly become more Protestant and less Catholic. To fully grasp why many Europeans gravitate toward Protestantism and not Catholicism, we must consider the historical and cultural reasons: the Reformation, economics, immigration, politics, etc., that have all led to the majority of Europeans identifying as Protestant (Davie, 2008 ). Finally, even though the majority of Europeans identify as Protestant, secularism (separation of church and state) is becoming more prominent in Europe. In nations like France, laws are in place that officially separate the church and state, while in Northern Europe, church attendance is low, and many Europeans who identify as Protestant have very low religiosity (strength of religious devotion), focusing instead on being secularly religious individuals. From a Weberian point of view, the links among religion, history, and culture in Europe explain the decline of Catholicism, the rise of Protestantism, and now the rise of secularism.

Emile Durkheim ( 1858–1917 ) focused more on how religion performs a necessary function; it brings people and society together. Durkheim ( 1976 ) thus defined a religion as

a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things which are set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. (p. 47)

From this perspective, religion and culture are inseparable, as beliefs and practices are uniquely cultural. For example, religious rituals (one type of practice) unite believers in a religion and separate nonbelievers. The act of communion, or the sharing of the Eucharist by partaking in consecrated bread and wine, is practiced by most Christian denominations. However, the frequency of communion differs extensively, and the ritual is practiced differently based on historical and theological differences among denominations.

Georg Simmel ( 1858–1918 ) focused more on the fluidity and permanence of religion and religious life. Simmel ( 1950 ) believed that religious and cultural beliefs develop from one another. Moreover, he asserted that religiosity is an essential element to understand when examining religious institutions and religion. While individuals may claim to be part of a religious group, Simmel asserted that it was important to consider just how religious the individuals were. In much of Europe, religiosity is low: Germany 34%, Sweden 19%, Denmark 42%, the United Kingdom 30%, the Czech Republic 23%, and The Netherlands 26%, while religiosity is relatively higher in the United States (56%), which is now considered the most religious industrialized nation in the world ( Telegraph Online , 2015 ). The decline of religiosity in parts of Europe and its rise in the U.S. is linked to various cultural, historical, and communicative developments that will be further discussed.

Combining Simmel’s ( 1950 ) notion of religion with Geertz’s ( 1973 ) concept of religion and a more basic definition (belief in or the worship of a god or gods through rituals), it is clear that the relationship between religion and culture is integral and symbiotic. As Clark and Hoover ( 1997 ) noted, “culture and religion are inseparable” and “religion is an important consideration in theories of culture and society” (p. 17).

Outside of the Western/Christian perception of religion, Buddhist scholars such as Nagarajuna present a relativist framework to understand concepts like time and causality. This framework is distinct from the more Western way of thinking, in that notions of present, past, and future are perceived to be chronologically distorted, and the relationship between cause and effect is paradoxical (Wimal, 2007 ). Nagarajuna’s philosophy provides Buddhism with a relativist, non-solid dependent, and non-static understanding of reality (Kohl, 2007 ). Mulla Sadra’s philosophy explored the metaphysical relationship between the created universe and its singular creator. In his philosophy, existence takes precedence over essence, and any existing object reflects a part of the creator. Therefore, every devoted person is obliged to know themselves as the first step to knowing the creator, which is the ultimate reason for existence. This Eastern perception of religion is similar to that of Nagarajuna and Buddhism, as they both include the paradoxical elements that are not easily explained by the rationality of Western philosophy. For example, the god, as Mulla Sadra defines it, is beyond definition, description, and delamination, yet it is absolutely simple and unique (Burrell, 2013 ).

How researchers define and study culture varies extensively. For example, Hall ( 1989 ) defined culture as “a series of situational models for behavior and thought” (p. 13). Geertz ( 1973 ), building on the work of Kluckhohn ( 1949 ), defined culture in terms of 11 different aspects:

(1) the total way of life of a people; (2) the social legacy the individual acquires from his group; (3) a way of thinking, feeling, and believing; (4) an abstraction from behavior; (5) a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact behave; (6) a storehouse of pooled learning; (7) a set of standardized orientations to recurrent problems; (8) learned behavior; (9) a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior; (10) a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men; (11) a precipitate of history. (Geertz, 1973 , p. 5)

Research on culture is divided between an essentialist camp and a constructivist camp. The essentialist view regards culture as a concrete and fixed system of symbols and meanings (Holiday, 1999 ). An essentialist approach is most prevalent in linguistic studies, in which national culture is closely linked to national language. Regarding culture as a fluid concept, constructionist views of culture focus on how it is performed and negotiated by individuals (Piller, 2011 ). In this sense, “culture” is a verb rather than a noun. In principle, a non-essentialist approach rejects predefined national cultures and uses culture as a tool to interpret social behavior in certain contexts.

Different approaches to culture influence significantly how it is incorporated into communication studies. Cultural communication views communication as a resource for individuals to produce and regulate culture (Philipsen, 2002 ). Constructivists tend to perceive culture as a part of the communication process (Applegate & Sypher, 1988 ). Cross-cultural communication typically uses culture as a national boundary. Hofstede ( 1991 ) is probably the most popular scholar in this line of research. Culture is thus treated as a theoretical construct to explain communication variations across cultures. This is also evident in intercultural communication studies, which focus on misunderstandings between individuals from different cultures.

Religion, Community, and Culture

There is an interplay among religion, community, and culture. Community is essentially formed by a group of people who share common activities or beliefs based on their mutual affect, loyalty, and personal concerns. Participation in religious institutions is one of the most dominant community engagements worldwide. Religious institutions are widely known for creating a sense of community by offering various material and social supports for individual followers. In addition, the role that religious organizations play in communal conflicts is also crucial. As religion deals with the ultimate matters of life, the differences among different religious beliefs are virtually impossible to settle. Although a direct causal relationship between religion and violence is not well supported, religion is, nevertheless, commonly accepted as a potential escalating factor in conflicts. Currently, religious conflicts are on the rise, and they are typically more violent, long-lasting, and difficult to resolve. In such cases, local religious organizations, places facilitating collective actions in the community, are extremely vital, as they can either preach peace or stir up hatred and violence. The peace impact of local religious institutions has been largely witnessed in India and Indonesia where conflicts are solved at the local level before developing into communal violence (De Juan, Pierskalla, & Vüllers, 2015 ).

While religion affects cultures (Beckford & Demerath, 2007 ), it itself is also affected by culture, as religion is an essential layer of culture. For example, the growth of individualism in the latter half of the 20th century has been coincident with the decline in the authority of Judeo-Christian institutions and the emergence of “parachurches” and more personal forms of prayer (Hoover & Lundby, 1997 ). However, this decline in the authority of the religious institutions in modernized society has not reduced the important role of religion and spirituality as one of the main sources of calm when facing painful experiences such as death, suffering, and loss.

When cultural specifications, such as individualism and collectivism, have been attributed to religion, the proposed definitions and functions of religion overlap with definitions of culture. For example, researchers often combine religious identification (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc.) with cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1991 ) like individualism/collectivism to understand and compare cultural differences. Such combinations for comparison and analytical purposes demonstrate how religion and religious identification in particular are often relegated to a micro-level variable, when in fact the true relationship between an individual’s religion and culture is inseparable.

Religion as Part of Culture in Communication Studies

Religion as a part of culture has been linked to numerous communication traits and behaviors. Specifically, religion has been linked with media use and preferences (e.g., Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996 ), health/medical decisions and communication about health-related issues (Croucher & Harris, 2012 ), interpersonal communication (e.g., Croucher, Faulkner, Oommen, & Long, 2012b ), organizational behaviors (e.g., Garner & Wargo, 2009 ), and intercultural communication traits and behaviors (e.g., Croucher, Braziunaite, & Oommen, 2012a ). In media and religion scholarship, researchers have shown how religion as a cultural variable has powerful effects on media use, preferences, and gratifications. The research linking media and religion is vast (Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996 ). This body of research has shown how “religious worldviews are created and sustained in ongoing social processes in which information is shared” (Stout & Buddenbaum, 1996 , pp. 7–8). For example, religious Christians are more likely to read newspapers, while religious individuals are less likely to have a favorable opinion of the internet (Croucher & Harris, 2012 ), and religious individuals (who typically attend religious services and are thus integrated into a religious community) are more likely to read media produced by the religious community (Davie, 2008 ).

Research into health/medical decisions and communication about health-related issues is also robust. Research shows how religion, specifically religiosity, promotes healthier living and better decision-making regarding health and wellbeing (Harris & Worley, 2012 ). For example, a religious (or spiritual) approach to cancer treatment can be more effective than a secular approach (Croucher & Harris, 2012 ), religious attendance promotes healthier living, and people with HIV/AIDS often turn to religion for comfort as well. These studies suggest the significance of religion in health communication and in our health.

Research specifically examining the links between religion and interpersonal communication is not as vast as the research into media, health, and religion. However, this slowly growing body of research has explored areas such as rituals, self-disclosure (Croucher et al., 2012b ), and family dynamics (Davie, 2008 ), to name a few.

The role of religion in organizations is well studied. Overall, researchers have shown how religious identification and religiosity influence an individual’s organizational behavior. For example, research has shown that an individual’s religious identification affects levels of organizational dissent (Croucher et al., 2012a ). Garner and Wargo ( 2009 ) further showed that organizational dissent functions differently in churches than in nonreligious organizations. Kennedy and Lawton ( 1998 ) explored the relationships between religious beliefs and perceptions about business/corporate ethics and found that individuals with stronger religious beliefs have stricter ethical beliefs.

Researchers are increasingly looking at the relationships between religion and intercultural communication. Researchers have explored how religion affects numerous communication traits and behaviors and have shown how religious communities perceive and enact religious beliefs. Antony ( 2010 ), for example, analyzed the bindi in India and how the interplay between religion and culture affects people’s acceptance of it. Karniel and Lavie-Dinur ( 2011 ) showed how religion and culture influence how Palestinian Arabs are represented on Israeli television. Collectively, the intercultural work examining religion demonstrates the increasing importance of the intersection between religion and culture in communication studies.

Collectively, communication studies discourse about religion has focused on how religion is an integral part of an individual’s culture. Croucher et al. ( 2016 ), in a content analysis of communication journal coverage of religion and spirituality from 2002 to 2012 , argued that the discourse largely focuses on religion as a cultural variable by identifying religious groups as variables for comparative analysis, exploring “religious” or “spiritual” as adjectives to describe entities (religious organizations), and analyzing the relationships between religious groups in different contexts. Croucher and Harris ( 2012 ) asserted that the discourse about religion, culture, and communication is still in its infancy, though it continues to grow at a steady pace.

Future Lines of Inquiry

Research into the links among religion, culture, and communication has shown the vast complexities of these terms. With this in mind, there are various directions for future research/exploration that researchers could take to expand and benefit our practical understanding of these concepts and how they relate to one another. Work should continue to define these terms with a particular emphasis on mediation, closely consider these terms in a global context, focus on how intergroup dynamics influence this relationship, and expand research into non-Christian religious cultures.

Additional definitional work still needs to be done to clarify exactly what is meant by “religion,” “culture,” and “communication.” Our understanding of these terms and relationships can be further enhanced by analyzing how forms of mass communication mediate each other. Martin-Barbero ( 1993 ) asserted that there should be a shift from media to mediations as multiple opposing forces meet in communication. He defined mediation as “the articulations between communication practices and social movements and the articulation of different tempos of development with the plurality of cultural matrices” (p. 187). Religions have relied on mediations through various media to communicate their messages (oral stories, print media, radio, television, internet, etc.). These media share religious messages, shape the messages and religious communities, and are constantly changing. What we find is that, as media sophistication develops, a culture’s understandings of mediated messages changes (Martin-Barbero, 1993 ). Thus, the very meanings of religion, culture, and communication are transitioning as societies morph into more digitally mediated societies. Research should continue to explore the effects of digital mediation on our conceptualizations of religion, culture, and communication.

Closely linked to mediation is the need to continue extending our focus on the influence of globalization on religion, culture, and communication. It is essential to study the relationships among culture, religion, and communication in the context of globalization. In addition to trading goods and services, people are increasingly sharing ideas, values, and beliefs in the modern world. Thus, globalization not only leads to technological and socioeconomic changes, but also shapes individuals’ ways of communicating and their perceptions and beliefs about religion and culture. While religion represents an old way of life, globalization challenges traditional meaning systems and is often perceived as a threat to religion. For instance, Marx and Weber both asserted that modernization was incompatible with tradition. But, in contrast, globalization could facilitate religious freedom by spreading the idea of freedom worldwide. Thus, future work needs to consider the influence of globalization to fully grasp the interrelationships among religion, culture, and communication in the world.

A review of the present definitions of religion in communication research reveals that communication scholars approach religion as a holistic, total, and unique institution or notion, studied from the viewpoint of different communication fields such as health, intercultural, interpersonal, organizational communication, and so on. However, this approach to communication undermines the function of a religion as a culture and also does not consider the possible differences between religious cultures. For example, religious cultures differ in their levels of individualism and collectivism. There are also differences in how religious cultures interact to compete for more followers and territory (Klock, Novoa, & Mogaddam, 2010 ). Thus, localization is one area of further research for religion communication studies. This line of study best fits in the domain of intergroup communication. Such an approach will provide researchers with the opportunity to think about the roles that interreligious communication can play in areas such as peacemaking processes (Klock et al., 2010 ).

Academic discourse about religion has focused largely on Christian denominations. In a content analysis of communication journal discourse on religion and spirituality, Croucher et al. ( 2016 ) found that the terms “Christian” or “Christianity” appeared in 9.56% of all articles, and combined with other Christian denominations (Catholicism, Evangelism, Baptist, Protestantism, and Mormonism, for example), appeared in 18.41% of all articles. Other religious cultures (denominations) made up a relatively small part of the overall academic discourse: Islam appeared in 6.8%, Judaism in 4.27%, and Hinduism in only 0.96%. Despite the presence of various faiths in the data, the dominance of Christianity and its various denominations is incontestable. Having religions unevenly represented in the academic discourse is problematic. This highly unbalanced representation presents a biased picture of religious practices. It also represents one faith as being the dominant faith and others as being minority religions in all contexts.

Ultimately, the present overview, with its focus on religion, culture, and communication points to the undeniable connections among these concepts. Religion and culture are essential elements of humanity, and it is through communication, that these elements of humanity are mediated. Whether exploring these terms in health, interpersonal, intercultural, intergroup, mass, or other communication contexts, it is evident that understanding the intersection(s) among religion, culture, and communication offers vast opportunities for researchers and practitioners.

Further Reading

The references to this article provide various examples of scholarship on religion, culture, and communication. The following list includes some critical pieces of literature that one should consider reading if interested in studying the relationships among religion, culture, and communication.

• Allport, G. W. (1950). Individual and his religion: A psychological interpretation . New York: Macmillan.
• Campbell, H. A. (2010). When religion meets new media . New York: Routledge.
• Cheong, P. H. , Fischer-Nielson, P. , Gelfgren, S. , & Ess, C. (Eds.). (2012). Digital religion, social media and culture: Perspectives, practices and futures . New York: Peter Lang.
• Cohen, A. B. , & Hill, P. C. (2007). Religion as culture: Religious individualism and collectivism among American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants . Journal of Personality , 75 , 709–742.
• Coomaraswamy, A. K. (2015). Hinduism and buddhism . New Delhi: Munshiram Monoharlal Publishers.
• Coomaraswamy, A. K. (2015). A new approach to the Vedas: Essays in translation and exegesis . Philadelphia: Coronet Books.
• Harris, T. M. , Parrott, R. , & Dorgan, K. A. (2004). Talking about human genetics within religious frameworks . Health Communication , 16 , 105–116.
• Hitchens, C. (2007). God is not great . New York: Hachette.
• Hoover, S. M. (2006). Religion in the media age (media, religion and culture) . New York: Routledge.
• Lundby, K. , & Hoover, S. M. (1997). Summary remarks: Mediated religion. In S. M. Hoover & K. Lundby (Eds.), Rethinking media, religion, and culture (pp. 298–309). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Mahan, J. H. (2014). Media, religion and culture: An introduction . New York: Routledge.
• Parrott, R. (2004). “Collective amnesia”: The absence of religious faith and spirituality in health communication research and practice . Journal of Health Communication , 16 , 1–5.
• Russell, B. (1957). Why I am not a Christian . New York: Touchstone.
• Sarwar, G. (2001). Islam: Beliefs and teachings (5th ed.). Tigard, OR: Muslim Educational Trust.
• Stout, D. A. (2011). Media and religion: Foundations of an emerging field . New York: Routledge.
• Antony, M. G. (2010). On the spot: Seeking acceptance and expressing resistance through the Bindi . Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 3 , 346–368.
• Beckford, J. A. , & Demerath, N. J. (Eds.). (2007). The SAGE handbook of the sociology of religion . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Burrell, D. B. (2013). The triumph of mercy: Philosophy and scripture in Mulla Sadra—By Mohammed Rustom . Modern Theology , 29 , 413–416.
• Clark, A. S. , & Hoover, S. M. (1997). At the intersection of media, culture, and religion. In S. M. Hoover , & K. Lundby (Eds.), Rethinking media, religion, and culture (pp. 15–36). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Croucher, S. M. , Braziunaite, R. , & Oommen, D. (2012a). The effects of religiousness and religious identification on organizational dissent. In S. M. Croucher , & T. M. Harris (Eds.), Religion and communication: An anthology of extensions in theory, research, and method (pp. 69–79). New York: Peter Lang.
• Croucher, S. M. , Faulkner , Oommen, D. , & Long, B. (2012b). Demographic and religious differences in the dimensions of self-disclosure among Hindus and Muslims in India . Journal of Intercultural Communication Research , 39 , 29–48.
• Croucher, S. M. , & Harris, T. M. (Eds.). (2012). Religion and communication: An anthology of extensions in theory, research, & method . New York: Peter Lang.
• Croucher, S. M. , Sommier, M. , Kuchma, A. , & Melnychenko, V. (2016). A content analysis of the discourses of “religion” and “spirituality” in communication journals: 2002–2012. Journal of Communication and Religion , 38 , 42–79.
• Davie, G. (2008). The sociology of religion . Los Angeles: SAGE.
• De Juan, A. , Pierskalla, J. H. , & Vüllers, J. (2015). The pacifying effects of local religious institutions: An analysis of communal violence in Indonesia . Political Research Quarterly , 68 , 211–224.
• Durkheim, E. (1976). The elementary forms of religious life . London: Harper Collins.
• Garner, J. T. , & Wargo, M. (2009). Feedback from the pew: A dual-perspective exploration of organizational dissent in churches. Journal of Communication & Religion , 32 , 375–400.
• Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays by Clifford Geertz . New York: Basic Books.
• Hall, E. T. (1989). Beyond culture . New York: Anchor Books.
• Harris, T. M. , & Worley, T. R. (2012). Deconstructing lay epistemologies of religion within health communication research. In S. M. Croucher , & T. M. Harris (Eds.), Religion & communication: An anthology of extensions in theory, research, and method (pp. 119–136). New York: Peter Lang.
• Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind . London: McGraw-Hill.
• Holiday, A. (1999). Small culture . Applied Linguistics , 20 , 237–264.
• Hoover, S. M. , & Lundby, K. (1997). Introduction. In S. M. Hoover & K. Lundby (Eds.), Rethinking media, religion, and culture (pp. 3–14). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Karniel, Y. , & Lavie-Dinur, A. (2011). Entertainment and stereotype: Representation of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel in reality shows on Israeli television . Journal of Intercultural Communication Research , 40 , 65–88.
• Kennedy, E. J. , & Lawton, L. (1998). Religiousness and business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics , 17 , 175–180.
• Klock, J. , Novoa, C. , & Mogaddam, F. M. (2010). Communication across religions. In H. Giles , S. Reid , & J. Harwood (Eds.), The dynamics of intergroup communication (pp. 77–88). New York: Peter Lang
• Kluckhohn, C. (1949). Mirror for man: The relation of anthropology to modern life . Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
• Kohl, C. T. (2007). Buddhism and quantum physics . Contemporary Buddhism , 8 , 69–82.
• Mapped: These are the world’s most religious countries . (April 13, 2015). Telegraph Online .
• Martin-Barbero, J. (1993). Communication, culture and hegemony: From the media to the mediations . London: SAGE.
• Marx, K. , & Engels, F. (1975). Collected works . London: Lawrence and Wishart.
• Nietzsche, F. (1996). Human, all too human: A book for free spirits . R. J. Hollingdale (Trans.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Philipsen, G. (2002). Cultural communication. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Cross-cultural and intercultural communication (pp. 35–51). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Simmel, G. (1950). The sociology of Georg Simmel . K. Wolff (Trans.). Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
• Stout, D. A. , & Buddenbaum, J. M. (Eds.). (1996). Religion and mass media: Audiences and adaptations . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Weber, M. (1963). The sociology of religion . London: Methuen.
• Wimal, D. (2007). Nagarjuna and modern communication theory. China Media Research , 3 , 34–41.
• Applegate, J. , & Sypher, H. (1988). A constructivist theory of communication and culture. In Y. Y. Kim & W. B. Gudykunst (Eds.), Theories of intercultural communication (pp. 41-65). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

Related Articles

• Christianity as Public Religion in the Post-Secular 21st Century
• Legal Interpretations of Freedom of Expression and Blasphemy
• Public Culture
• Communicating Religious Identities
• Religion and Journalism
• Global Jihad and International Media Use

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Communication. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 04 May 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|185.66.15.189]
• 185.66.15.189

Character limit 500 /500

Essay About Beliefs: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

To write an essay about beliefs, you need to know the different beliefs people hold; continue reading this article for examples and prompts to help!

Beliefs are a person’s perception of what they believe to be true. However, not everybody’s belief system is accurate. Beliefs are not necessarily religious or spiritual. It can also be political, philosophical, or societal. Our beliefs are formed early based on our environment – what we are told, heard, observed, and experienced. Below are essay examples to help you understand other writers’ viewpoints about beliefs.

1. Christianity Beliefs in The Exorcism of Emily Rose by Penny Silva

2. a personal believe that god does not exist by lauren trauscht, 3. my beliefs by patrick of shrewsbury, massachusetts, 4. irrational beliefs by vincent bridges, 5. my ethical beliefs by blanche allen, 1. your thoughts about the definition of belief, 2. what influenced your belief on a certain subject, 3. an experience that shaped your beliefs, 4. thoughts about the role of religion, 5. your personal political beliefs, 6. your stand on gender identity, 7. opinions about the connection between social media and suicide, 8. the belief system of millenials.

“This means that she believes it is a fact that if there is a God, there is a devil, and if there is a devil, there is God.”

Silva’s essay discusses the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” – a film based on the true story of Anneliese Michel. It’s about a court case concerning the death of a girl. She was either possessed by a demon or was suffering from a severe mental illness.

Viewers of the movie are free to believe what they think happened to Emily as it demonstrates the apparition of both the devil and the However, divine. Silva believes that it’s a must-watch if one wants to understand the accurate interpretation of the works of evil.

“…how could anybody keep up on the Bible for thousands and thousands of years? The stories in there had to have gotten mixed up… if there is a God, then who created God? ”

Trauscht’s many questions about a divine existence lead him to believe there is no God. The author shares these reasons in a simple essay about his beliefs.

“ I have no stronger link to anything else in this world than my family… This belief … was something that was one hundred percent infused in me through my parents.”

The author grew up a family-oriented person, and there’s nothing more important to him than his family. He believes he is today because his parents influenced his life. His belief made him a better person.

“I can always distract myself from negative, judgmental thoughts by simply telling myself, “STOP!” Then replace my blaming, complaining, or excusing with something positive. Wisely choosing the thoughts that occupy my mind and avoiding automatic, negative thoughts that undermine my self-esteem will also help.”

Bridges shares his experience with irrational beliefs that made him think negatively, which affected his behavior and self-esteem. He also talks about how he overcame his irrational beliefs when someone believed in him until he finally started to believe in himself, turning the negative thoughts into positive ones.

Looking for more? Check out these essays about religion .

“In a way, ethics are like a set of rules that govern human behaviors and serve as a basis for right conduct principles.”

Allen argues that we have a different understanding of ethics and how we use it in our everyday lives. He says fairness is one of the ethics he applied in his life. Before concluding, he considers the good and bad effects. He believes ethics should be used to reach a fair decision.

8 Writing Prompts on Essay About Beliefs

After reading the examples above, you now better understand what beliefs are. Below are prompts that can help you in writing your essay.

If you want to properly convey your reasons why you believe in a topic, here is a guide on how to write an argumentative essay .

Since all of us may have varying ideas about the definition of beliefs, you can write an essay about your understanding of what belief is all about. You can also provide answers to the following questions: Is belief something you unconsciously developed or something you consciously made? Do you agree that some of your beliefs may not be authentic? 

Many factors can influence why we think what we think. This includes our environment, what we hear and see, and our observations and experiences. 

Pick a particular belief you have and relay to your readers how you came to consider it as fact. You can also talk about something you didn’t believe before, then tell your audience how you came to support it.

If a particular experience forced you to develop a belief about something consciously, you could explore it via your essay. For example, you grew up not believing in God, but due to a near-death experience where you were forced to pray and were saved, you finally accepted that there is an existing God. 

Or, if you previously believed in God but suffered a painful death of a loved one, you start to question His existence. There are so many experiences out there that may have contributed to what we believe in today. Feel free to write them all down.

You might have heard adults complaining about the morality of the youth today. Does the decreasing interest of young people in religion have to do with moral degeneration? Explain your thoughts about the relationship between religion and morality. 

Your political beliefs have to do with what you consider a prosperous country. “Success” can be defined as a booming or not-so-great economy, but one where the citizens are happy, safe, and accessible. Discuss why you favor a particular political system, including aspects that you want to change.

Gender identity is an ever-controversial subject that still divides many groups today.

However, it also has many subtopics you can focus on. For example, some parents would let their minor children undergo procedures and treatments to change their sex, believing they are supporting their child’s decision. Do you agree with the parents’ beliefs, or would you instead want the parents to wait for the child to be of legal age before undergoing such a procedure?

If you want to expand your knowledge on diversity, here are 21 essays about diversity for students and writers .

With social media’s popularity, cyberbullying also increased. Research found that children and people below 25 years old cyberbullying victims are twice more likely to present suicidal behaviors and self-harm. The same study also found that bullies or perpetrators risk experiencing suicidal ideation and self-harm. What is your opinion on this matter, and do you believe that social media has to do with it? Do parents also have liability on this matter?

During challenging times, more people seek God. However, during the pandemic, millennials in the US-led the shift away from religious organizations. If you belong to the Gen Z or millennials, what’s your stand on this matter? 

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

View all posts

Regions & Countries

Religious landscape study.

The RLS, conducted in 2007 and 2014, surveys more than 35,000 Americans from all 50 states about their religious affiliations, beliefs and practices, and social and political views. User guide | Report about demographics | Report about beliefs and attitudes

Explore religious groups in the U.S. by tradition, family and denomination

Explore religious affiliation data by state, region or select metro areas, northeastern states.

• Connecticut
• Massachusetts
• New Hampshire
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island

Southern States

• District of Columbia
• Mississippi
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• West Virginia

Midwestern States

• North Dakota
• South Dakota

Western States

All metro areas.

• Atlanta Metro Area
• Baltimore Metro Area
• Boston Metro Area
• Chicago Metro Area
• Dallas/Fort Worth Metro Area
• Detroit Metro Area
• Houston Metro Area
• Los Angeles Metro Area
• Miami Metro Area
• Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro Area
• New York City Metro Area
• Philadelphia Metro Area
• Phoenix Metro Area
• Pittsburgh Metro Area
• Providence Metro Area
• Riverside, CA Metro Area
• San Diego Metro Area
• San Francisco Metro Area
• Seattle Metro Area
• St. Louis Metro Area
• Tampa Metro Area
• Washington, DC Metro Area

Topics & Questions

Demographic information.

• Race and Ethnicity
• Immigration Status
• Marital Status
• Parental Status

Beliefs and Practices

• Belief in God
• Importance of Religion
• Attendance at Religious Services
• Prayer Frequency
• Prayer Groups
• Feelings of Spiritual Wellbeing
• Feelings of Sense of Wonder
• Guidance on Right and Wrong
• Standards for Right and Wrong
• Reading Scripture
• Interpretation of Scripture
• Belief in Heaven
• Belief in Hell

Social and Political Views

• Political Party
• Political Ideology
• Size of Government
• Government Aid to the Poor
• Homosexuality
• Same-Sex Marriage
• Protecting the Environment
• Human Evolution

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

• WRITING CENTER
• CUSTOMER AREA
• Client Reviews
• Our Writers
• Sample Papers
• Study Resources

Get Your Grades Improved by Our Professional Writers - We are Trusted by Thousands of Students!

Global compose inc. constantly employs professional homework writing help writers from usa, uk, ca and au. the writers are highly trained professionals, comprising of 500+ masters and ph.d level writers available 24/7. we assist clients who either have difficulty completing their assignments, sick or in need family time. to get started, submit your instructions., calculate your order price.

Use Discount Code: FIRST5 at Checkout FIRST5 -->

PRICE BEFORE DISCOUNT: $15.00

• Anthropology

Sample Essay on Religious Beliefs

Get homework help on this topic - check the quality of writing from this sample, if you are looking for assignment help on this topic or similar topic, click on order now button to submit your details. once we have your order details, your assignment will be assigned to one of our best writers, who will then proceed to write your paper and deliver it within your specified deadline. thank you for choosing us today, religious beliefs.

Religion is the practice of faith in a supreme being with powers that are extraordinary.  Religious beliefs, therefore, are the belief in the existence of gods. There are various forms of religious beliefs . This paper examines types of religious beliefs, how they came about and the influence they have on human behavior.

Types of Religion

Christianity ..

This is the religion where its followers believe in Christ Jesus. Christianity started “in the   Middle East and later spread to Africa, Europe and South America” (Types of religion). It further notes that Christians communicate to God through prayer and sing to him as a way of worship. They believe in the existence of the trinity.

Muslims are the people who engage in the Islam religion. They believe in God, Allah, and Prophet Mohammad. Muslims read from the book of the Quran. They also eat foods that are allowed in their religion and have their customs such as the five pillars. They have a certain way of dressing.

Buddhism is a religion which “places stress on personal spiritual development and the achievement of deep understanding of the true meaning of life” (Type of religion). It further notes that Buddhists follow the teachings of Buddha.  They believe in aspects like karma.

This religion is most found with the people of India.  Hindus have their customs which include images and worship from any place. “Hindus believe that karma determines the cycle of life” (Type of religion).

Followers of Judaism believe in God and have Moses as their initiator.  They have laws that they follow and do not indulge in some foods.

Other forms of religions .

There are many other forms of religions found in the world. They include paganism, atheism, Zoroastrianism. etc. Each type has its diverse concepts and customs.

Influence of Religious Beliefs on Human Behavior

Religious beliefs have ways of molding human character. They have an impact on morality, politics, and even freedom. Diener noted that: “religious believers practice moral teaching and demonstrate private and public virtues because of the reality to a transient reality” (46). Not only do religious beliefs influence, but some also explain where how mankind came into existence and where we end after death.

In most cases, people choose leaders who practice the same religion as them. Religion has a great impact on our way of thinking and dealing with issues. Some religions like Christianity encourage moral values such as loving one another, forgiving, humility, and patience. Religion like Judaism and Islam restrict the eating of certain foods. Due to practices like the above, religion influence human health. Some types of foods are known to cause ailments and disorders such as obesity. People who do not divulge in those foods would therefore remain healthier. Religion is also a means that bring together human beings from different parts of the world. In some nations, religious law-making and legitimacy are based on religion (Fox and Sandler 3). Some religions also single out people on the basis of sexual category.

Religious beliefs exist in different ways. Whichever faiths we have all have a way in which they influence our character. We should appreciate our diverse nature so as to coexist in peace and harmony. Religion belief is an important factor that we just cannot ignore in our life. It could have more impacts in the future in many ways of human character .

Works Cited

“Christianity, Islam, Buddhism & Judaism.” Type of religion , n.d. Web. 8 th October. 2014.

Diener, Paul W.  Religion and Morality: An Introduction . Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. Print.

Fox, Jonathan and Shmuel Sandler. Religion in world conflict . London: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Do you have an Assignment on a Similar or Related Topic? We can Help You Right Now! Click on the Order Now button...

Are you looking for homework writing help on this topic? This question was posted by one of our client seeking homework help.  If you are therefore looking for an assignment to submit, then click on  ORDER NOW button or contact us today. Our Professional Writers will be glad to write your paper from scratch, and delivered within your deadline. Perfect choice for your excellent grades! www.globalcompose.com.

We ensure that assignment instructions are followed, the paper is written from scratch. If you are not satisfied by our service, you can either request for refund or unlimited revisions for your order at absolutely no extra pay. Once the writer has completed your paper, the editors check your paper for any grammar/formatting/plagiarism mistakes, then the final paper is sent to your email.

Writing Features

Affordable Writing Services

Experienced Writing Team

24/7 Team of Writers

Professional E ssay Writers

Quality Measures

Trained Support Team

Non-Plagiarized Papers

Well Researched Papers

Free Writing Resources

Privacy | Confidentiality

We do not share your personal information with any company or person. we have also ensured that the ordering process is secure; you can check the security feature in the browser. for confidentiality purposes, all papers are sent to your personal email. if you have any questions, contact us any time via email, live chat or our phone number., our clients testimonials, a team of +500 masters and ph.d level homework writing help writers available 24/7 cannot get it wrong. the following are customer reviews about the quality of our services..

“Thanks for offering your professional assistance on this one. Topic was confusing but writer worked it out”

Added 24 Minutes Ago

“Thanks, I like the literature review, it is discussed in depth. Have looked at the results section and it is conclusive as I expected. Thank you”

Added 12 Hours Ago

“I like the discussion on the case study. Thank you. Am satisfied and wanted to request that same writer will handle my future assignments”

Added 30 Minutes Ago

“I was paranoid about online writing services, but on this one, the results are evident that you are much better. Will order more papers”

Added 3 Minutes Ago

“I think the paper is alright. If I can book the writer for the soon upcoming assignment, it will be great. Thanks”

Added 6 Minutes Ago

Why choose our homework writing help, we try to work as diligent as we can to help you meet your homework’s deadline. our support staff is always online 24/7 to help clarify any issues or concerns you have regarding our services. talk to us today to find out how our writers may be of help to you., customized papers, we consider your instructions and specifications in order to tailor the paper to suit your expectations., only professional writers, all our writers have a masters or ph.d and are well trained to handle assignments in various disciplines at different education levels., fast and reliable, our writers are capable of handling any assignment with short deadline and deliver without any delay, thus saving you time and energy, round the clock support, our customer support is always ready to offer real time assistance of day and night, through email, live-chat and phone., cost effective prices, we save you money with our affordable prices and huge discounts on all assignments., 100% original papers, all our papers are thoroughly researched and written from scratch. be sure of completely non-plagiarized papers., our ordering process, to get started with our homework writing help, simply click on the order now button. its easy, secure and takes less than 2 minutes to complete. the following steps illustrates the entire process., fill the order form: include all instructions and files for your assignment., submit your payment via card or paypal so that your order can be processed., a writer works on your paper and submits to editors upon completion., the completed paper is examined by our editors, then sent to your email, want to learn from experts check the writing tips below.

Final Paper Assignments

• Thesis Writing Help
• Dissertation Chapters
• Writing Research Papers
• Project Writing
• Term Paper Writing
• Speech Writing

Weekly Assignments

• Essay Writing
• Coursework Writing
• Assignment Writing Help
• Homework Writing Help
• Book Review Writing
• Movie Review Writing

Creative Assignments

• Power Points Preparation
• Analyzing Case Studies
• Creative Writing Papers
• Critical Thinking Writing
• Annotated Bibliography
• Capstone Project Writing

Admission Papers

• Writing Scholarship Essay
• Writing Admission Essays
• Writing Application Essays
• Writing Entrance Essays
• Personal Statement Essays
• Reaction Paper Writing

Samples of our Writing Illustrated Below

We have compiled a list of samples written by our writers for your review. you can use these samples to write your paper. you must however cite the source properly. if you are looking for a non-plagiarised paper, click on the order button. our professionals will work on your order. are you looking for writing tips check the list on this page. we are glad that we could help..

• Discussion Essay Homework
• Dissertation/Thesis Writing
• Book Review Paper
• Business Plan Homework
• Capstone Project Paper
• Creative Writing Homework
• Critical Thinking Homework
• Application Essay Homework
• Case Study Homework
• Literature Review Homework
• Personal Reflection Homework
• Reflection Essay Homework
• Research Proposal Homework
• Annotated bibliography Paper
• Article Review Homework
• Research Paper Homework
• Movie Review Sample
• Term Paper Sample
• Admission Essay Homework
• Argumentative Essay Paper
• Response Essay Homework

A List of Related Papers On This Category is Provided Below

• Sample Dissertation Chapter on Chun use Mock Asian Based on Nation, Race, and Languages
• Sample Essay on Meanings of Words, Language and Thoughts
• Sample Book Review Paper on Chapter 2 Anthropology and Human Nature
• Sample Essay on Is a People’s Behavior Determined More by Beliefs and Values, or More by Environment?
• Sample Article Review Paper on the Claim: “In the land of extremes, Asia and the Pacific cover them all.”
• Sample Essay on Marriage and Different Family Concepts
• Sample Essay on Ethnographic Interview- Immigrant Experiences
• Sample Dissertation Chapter Paper on Making English the official language in US
• Sample Coursework Paper on the Garbage Project
• Sample Essay on Reflection Paper on Web 2.0
• Sample Essay on Linguistic
• Sample Coursework Paper on Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs
• Sample Article Review Paper on the First Americans Article Review
• Sample Paper on Culture and Violence
• Sample Essay on Research Ethics
• Sample Essay on the Evolution Theory
• Sample Paper on Middle Childhood
• Sample Paper on The Plight of Immigrants in United States

Get your Homework Written by our Top-Notch Writers Now

Idaho Falls news, Rexburg news, Pocatello news, East Idaho news, Idaho news, education news, crime news, good news, business news, entertainment news, Feel Good Friday and more.

COURTROOM INSIDER | Chad’s religious beliefs, what he said at the funeral and more

Nate Eaton, EastIdahoNews.com

Tonight on ‘Courtroom Insider,’ we take a closer look at Chad Daybell’s religious beliefs and if they align with the LDS Church. Plus the stunning comments he said at Tammy Daybell’s funeral, witness testimony and more.

Watch in the video player above.

SUBMIT A CORRECTION

Religious Beliefs of People Essay

Introduction.

The motivation for, and the results of, the religious revival that swept the US in the early part of the 19 th century has received divergent views from historians. While evidence abounds on the massive change that society underwent as a result of this revival, some historians have alluded to the positive impacts that are the direct result of the revival while others see it in a negative light. Historians Johnson and Hatch view the revival differently. For Hatch, the revival was a liberating force of unequalled character that empowered the average man and made the elite less influential in running the society. Johnson, however, has the divergent view that the revivals were mainly used for influence-peddling, with the middle class using it to advance their agenda at the expense of a hapless working class.

The revival in America was embraced by a majority because it seemed to provide liberating influences that had not been experienced before. Through the revival, Americans, regardless of their social standing, were getting united in the service of Christ and the church. For the society then, the promise of cohesion was becoming an achievable reality. According to the leaders of the churches that grew immensely during the revival, the work being done had one objective – to prepare the church for the millennium (Johnson 291). All actions then were to be regulated by the knowledge that the whole society was working for a greater goal than merely daily profit-seeking. With such lofty ideals being pursued, it is easy to see why Americans embraced the spirit of the revival.

The revival led to massive changes in society. The number of churches grew immensely, as did the number of followers. This growth was revolutionary in a number of ways. First, the churches that were coming up were more liberal in their teachings than the established churches. Groups such as the Methodists, the Disciples of Christ and the Mormons experienced phenomenal growth (Hatch 300). The liberation that the new churches were preaching seemed to fit in perfectly with the ideas of the American Revolution. According to Hatch (301), the ideas of freedom and the people’s ability to think for themselves, which were the hallmarks of the Revolution, were now finding fertile ground for growth and advancement in the churches. By their very development, the new churches were breaking away from a long tradition in which the clergy was an elitist group that had strict dogma and manner of worship taught to the followers. Through the revival, the new churches were declaring their independence from such control and developing ways of worship that made sense to them. The society improved in certain ways as a result of the revival. The virtues of hard work and abstinence from consumption of alcohol got new impetus. The Bible became an important guide in everyday life.

Yet what the Revival seems to have done is to raise the profile of the middles class even higher. Using the wealth and connections that they already had, this class was able to determine the direction in which the lower classes of society moved. Johnson gives many examples to prove that the success that an individual enjoyed was determined by the individual’s association with the church. For this reason, the revival would appear to have been used to coercively force the workers to follow the dictation of the middle class. To prove that Christianity was simply being used as a guide for the control of the working classes, Johnson (295) says that what were seen as the strongest economic credentials during this period was conversion to Christianity and abstinence. Using the church, careers were established and those that tried to go against the spirit of the revival had their careers ruined.

Whatever may be said about the revival, it certainly presented a new form of expression for the common man. As Hatch explains, the ordinary man was empowered as the elitists were no longer in charge of matters of worship. However, Hatch (303), notes a paradox that developed as a result of the revival and the reason he thinks its influence waned after a while. Though the churches preached liberty, they failed to control the rise of demagogues. Examples are given of churches where the congregations were doing the bidding of a dictatorial leader. Even though Christianity was getting democratized, new forms of dictatorship were also emerging.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 16). Religious Beliefs of People. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religious-beliefs-of-people/

"Religious Beliefs of People." IvyPanda , 16 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/religious-beliefs-of-people/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Religious Beliefs of People'. 16 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Religious Beliefs of People." March 16, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religious-beliefs-of-people/.

1. IvyPanda . "Religious Beliefs of People." March 16, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religious-beliefs-of-people/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Religious Beliefs of People." March 16, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religious-beliefs-of-people/.

• Organizational Theory by Hatch & Cunliffe: Chapter 10
• Business Plan For Second Cup’s Coffee Outlet Startup
• Corporate Branding: Innovation in British Airways
• Analysis of the Brine Shrimp
• Brine Shrimp Habitat
• A Study of the Brine Shrimps and Their Natural Environment
• Nationalism as a Liberating and an Enslaving Force
• Nationalism as a Liberating and Enslaving Force
• Invertebrate Exhibit: Cockroaches
• Revival Preaching in the United States' History
• Legal Brief: The People vs. Paul
• Sri Lanka: Influence of Religion in Government
• Global Culture Against Religious Fundamentalism
• Surviving the Dark Side of Ministry: An Observation of Resilience
• Politics and Religion Relationships