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Religion: Beliefs
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The question of the origin of religion has produced a range of explanations, many of which get back to the definition of religion and its uses, both to help people and to deceive them. The earliest evidence of religious beliefs and practices are intentional burials of human beings, sometimes with grave goods, which may imply the existence of beliefs about an afterlife. Cave art, some of which portrays beings that are part human and part animal, may imply belief in spiritual or divine beings or in the transformation of human beings into something else. Elaborate arrangements of the skulls and bones of bears in caverns may imply the existence of rituals. In all these cases, material objects or images have been preserved; their uses and any beliefs and practices they might imply are inferences. To date, all evidence is confined to the last hundred thousand years and usually to the last fifty or even thirty thousand years.
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There are several objective scientific approaches to religion to answer questions such as why religious belief is ubiquitous in every society. In neurology, work by scientists such as Ramachandran and his colleagues from the University of California at San Diego [1] has found evidence of brain circuitry in the temporal lobe that gives rises to religious experiences. In sociology, Rodney Stark has looked at the social forces that have caused religions to grow and the features of religions that have been most successful. In evolutionary psychology, scientists consider the survival advantages that religion might have had in the hunter-gatherer societies.
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The study of religion is a way of organizing academic inquiry into how human beings and human cultures express and experience their religious needs, beliefs and values. It involves the study of both specific religious traditions and the general nature of religion as a phenomenon of human life. Using cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approaches, religious studies investigates and interprets systems of religious belief, the history of religious traditions, the function of religion in society, and forms of religious expression such as ritual, symbols, sacred narrative, scripture, practices, theological and philosophical reflection. Students of religion, whether adherents of a religion or of no religion, gain tools to understand, compare and engage the phenomenon of religion and its role in human life and culture.
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From the founding era well into the 1900s, Protestant religion was thought to be a crucial component of public values. In the last half century... American public life has become much more secular, in part because government adoption of any religious ideal appears unacceptably partial in a pluralistic society. At the same time, large numbers of Americans remain seriously committed to religious beliefs and practices in their personal lives, and many insist that religion has public import as well. The Court's struggles in religion cases often reflect debates about whether and to what extent the government must be secular.
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A religion is a set of beliefs and practices generally organized around supernatural and moral claims, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion ... encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.
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See religion as a moral compass to guide their political thinking: Two- thirds of Hispanics say that their religious beliefs are an important influence on their political thinking. More than half say churches and other houses of worship should address the social and political questions of the day. By nearly a two-to-one margin, Latinos say there has been too little expression of religious faith by political leaders rather than too much.
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Beliefs