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Religion

Religion

Overview
A religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may stand for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield...

s, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity
Deity
A deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....

 or deities, or ultimate truth
Truth
Truth can have a variety of meanings, from the state of being the case, being in accord with a particular fact or reality, being in accord with the body of real things, events, actuality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard. In archaic usage it could be fidelity, constancy or sincerity in...

. Religion is commonly identified by the practitioner's prayer
Prayer
Prayer is the act of addressing a god or spirit for the purpose of worship or petition. Specific forms of this may include praise, requesting guidance or assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or an expression of one's thoughts and emotions...

, ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...

, meditation
Meditation
Meditation is used here as a broad term for practices done by a sole practitioner without much, if any, external aide, often for the purpose of self-transformation...

, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 and art
Art
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...

, among other things, but more generally is interwoven with society
Society
Society or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....

 and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions...

. It may focus on specific supernatural
Supernatural
The term supernatural or supranatural pertains to an order of existence beyond the scientifically visible universe. Religious miracles are typically supernatural claims, as are spells and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others...

, metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...

, and moral
Morality
Morality has three principal meanings.In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief concerning matters of what is moral or immoral...

 claims about reality
Reality
Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist." Literally, the term denotes what is real; in its widest sense, this includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to...

 (the cosmos
Cosmos
In its most general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from a Greek term κόσμος meaning "order, orderly arrangement, ornaments," and is the antithetical concept of chaos. Today the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The words cosmetics and...

 and human nature
Human nature
Human nature is the concept that there are a set of characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that all 'normal' humans have in common. The branches of science associated with the study of human nature include sociology, sociobiology and psychology, particularly...

) which may yield a set of religious law
Religious law
In some religions, law can be thought of as the ordering principle of reality; knowledge as revealed by God defining and governing all human affairs. Law, in the religious sense, also includes codes of ethics and morality which are upheld and required by God...

s, ethics
Ethics
Ethics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is , how moral values should be determined , how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations , how moral...

, and a particular lifestyle
Lifestyle
Lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives. A lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviors that makes sense to both others and oneself in a given time...

.
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Quotations

Organized religion is a Choose Your Own Adventure novel for people of extremely limited imagination.

Jacob M. Appel in W:Arborophilia|Arborophilia (2005)

All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers.

Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871)

The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

Joel Barlow, in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams (1796)

One's religion is whatever he is most interested in.

J.M. Barrie The Twelve-Pound Look (1910)

The primary epiphenomenona of any religion’s foundation are the production and flourishment of hypocrisy, megalomania and psychopathy, and the first casualties of a religion’s establishment are the intentions of its founder.

Louis de Bernières|Louis de Bernières, in Birds Without Wings

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Encyclopedia
A religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something such as an object, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention. For example, a red octagon may stand for "STOP". On maps, crossed sabres may indicate a battlefield...

s, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity
Deity
A deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....

 or deities, or ultimate truth
Truth
Truth can have a variety of meanings, from the state of being the case, being in accord with a particular fact or reality, being in accord with the body of real things, events, actuality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard. In archaic usage it could be fidelity, constancy or sincerity in...

. Religion is commonly identified by the practitioner's prayer
Prayer
Prayer is the act of addressing a god or spirit for the purpose of worship or petition. Specific forms of this may include praise, requesting guidance or assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or an expression of one's thoughts and emotions...

, ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers, or dictated purely by logic, chance, necessity, etc..A ritual may be...

, meditation
Meditation
Meditation is used here as a broad term for practices done by a sole practitioner without much, if any, external aide, often for the purpose of self-transformation...

, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 and art
Art
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...

, among other things, but more generally is interwoven with society
Society
Society or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....

 and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic and religious institutions...

. It may focus on specific supernatural
Supernatural
The term supernatural or supranatural pertains to an order of existence beyond the scientifically visible universe. Religious miracles are typically supernatural claims, as are spells and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others...

, metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...

, and moral
Morality
Morality has three principal meanings.In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief concerning matters of what is moral or immoral...

 claims about reality
Reality
Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist." Literally, the term denotes what is real; in its widest sense, this includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to...

 (the cosmos
Cosmos
In its most general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from a Greek term κόσμος meaning "order, orderly arrangement, ornaments," and is the antithetical concept of chaos. Today the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The words cosmetics and...

 and human nature
Human nature
Human nature is the concept that there are a set of characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that all 'normal' humans have in common. The branches of science associated with the study of human nature include sociology, sociobiology and psychology, particularly...

) which may yield a set of religious law
Religious law
In some religions, law can be thought of as the ordering principle of reality; knowledge as revealed by God defining and governing all human affairs. Law, in the religious sense, also includes codes of ethics and morality which are upheld and required by God...

s, ethics
Ethics
Ethics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is , how moral values should be determined , how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations , how moral...

, and a particular lifestyle
Lifestyle
Lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives. A lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviors that makes sense to both others and oneself in a given time...

. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural tradition
Tradition
The word tradition comes from the Latin traditionem, acc. of traditio which means "handing over, passing on", and is used in a number of ways in the English language:...

s, writings, history, and mythology
Mythology
Mythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...

, as well as personal faith
Faith
Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. The word "faith" can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general....

 and religious experience
Religious experience
Religious experience is a subjective experience where an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality, an encounter or union with the divine....

.

The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith
Faith
Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. The word "faith" can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general....

" or "belief system
Belief system
A belief system can refer to*a life stance*a religion. See also List of religions*a world view*a philosophy. See also List of philosophies*an ideology. See also :Category:Ideologies...

," but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors
Religious behaviour
The religions of the world consist of religious images and religious behaviour. The religious images of the religions from the past and of present day religions, like gods, ghosts and worshipped ancestors, concepts of guilt, dogmatic teachings and ideas of the hereafter, are generally quite well...

, respectively.
The development of religion
Development of religion
The term Development of Religion is a generic term used in a variety of situations. The term is often used to describe the various stages in the evolution of any particular religion or religious system....

 has taken many forms in various cultures. It considers psychological
Psychology of religion
Psychology of religion is the psychological study of religious experiences, beliefs, and activities.- William James :U.S. psychologist and philosopher William James is regarded by most psychologists of religion as the founder of the field. He served as president of the American Psychological...

 and social
Sociology of religion
The sociology of religion concerns the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, developments, universal themes and roles of religion in society. There is particular emphasis on the recurring role of religion in all societies and throughout recorded history...

 roots, along with origins and historical development.

In the frame of western religious thought
Western religion
The term Western religion refers to religions that originated within Western culture, and are thus which historically, culturally, and theologically distinct from the Eastern religions...

, religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane
Sacred-profane dichotomy
French sociologist Émile Durkheim considered the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." In Durkheim's theory, the...

. Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural
Supernatural
The term supernatural or supranatural pertains to an order of existence beyond the scientifically visible universe. Religious miracles are typically supernatural claims, as are spells and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others...

, sacred, divine
Divinity
Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power, or its attributes or manifestations in the world...

, or of the highest truth.
Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scripture
Scripture
Scripture is that corpus of literature deemed authoritative for establishing doctrine within any of a number of specific religious traditions, especially the Abrahamic religions.Such bodies of writings are also sometimes known as the canon of scripture...

s are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular
Secularity
Secularity is the state of being separate from religion.For instance, eating and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them...

 philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...

. Religion is also often described as a "way of life
Lifestyle
Lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives. A lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviors that makes sense to both others and oneself in a given time...

" or a life stance
Life stance
A person's life stance or lifestance is his or her relation with what he or she accepts as of ultimate importance, the presuppositions and theory of this, and the commitments and practice of working it out in living....

.

Definitions of religion




Religious scholars generally agree that writing a single definition that applies to all religions is difficult or even impossible, because all people examine religion with some kind of critical eye, and the term is therefore fraught with ideological consequences for anyone who might want to construct a universal definition. Talal Asad
Talal Asad
Talal Asad is an anthropologist at the City University of New York who has made important theoretical contributions to Post-Colonialism, Christianity, Islam, and Ritual Studies and has recently called for, and initiated, an anthropology of Secularism...

 writes that "there cannot be a universal definition of religion ... because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes"; Thomas A. Tweed, while defending the idea of religion in general, writes that "it would be foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion's essence, and then proceed to defend that definition from all comers."

The earliest definition of religion is from Johnson's Dictionary
A Dictionary of the English Language
Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language....

, which simply calls it "a system of faith and worship". Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly translated as "a feeling of absolute dependence". His contemporary Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through the finite spirit." Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.-Life:...

's definition of religion as a "cultural system" was dominant for most of the 20th century and continues to be widely accepted today.

Sociologists and anthropologists tend to see religion as an abstract set of ideas, values, or experiences developed as part of a cultural matrix. For example, in Lindbeck's Nature of Doctrine, religion does not refer to belief in "God
God
God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....

" or a transcendent Absolute. Instead, Lindbeck defines religion as, "a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.” According to this definition, religion refers to one's primary worldview and how this dictates one's thoughts and actions. Thus religion is considered by some sources to extend to causes, principles, or activities believed in with zeal or conscientious devotion concerning points or matters of ethics or conscience, and not necessarily including belief in the supernatural.

The English word religion has been in use since the 13th century, loaned from Anglo-French
Anglo-French
Anglo-French is a term that may be used in several contexts:*Nationality, e.g. a person with one English parent and one French parent may be said to be Anglo-French*Anglo-French *Joint activities between England and France, e.g...

 religiun (11th century), ultimately from the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...

 religio, "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety
Pietas
Pietas was one of the Roman virtues, along with gravitas and dignitas. Pietas is usually translated as "duty" or "devotion," and it simultaneously suggests duty to the gods and duty to family - particularly to the father Pietas was one of the Roman virtues, along with gravitas and dignitas. Pietas...

, the res divina
Res divina
Res divina refers to the laws of the Roman state that dealt with the religious duties of the state and its officials...

e
".

The ultimate origins of Latin religiō are obscure.
It is usually accepted to derive from "bind, connect"; probably from a prefixed , i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect." This interpretation is favoured by modern scholars such as Tom Harpur
Tom Harpur
Tom Harpur is a Canadian author, broadcaster, columnist and theologian.Born in Toronto, Ontario in 1929, Harpur earned an Honours B.A. in 1951 at the University College, University of Toronto, where he won the Jarvis Scholarship in Greek and Latin, the Maurice Hutton Scholarship in Classics, the...

 and Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...

, but was made prominent by St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....

, following the interpretation of Lactantius
Lactantius
Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author .-Biography:Lactantius, a Latin-speaking native of North Africa, was a pupil of Arnobius and taught rhetoric in various cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, ending in Constantinople...

. Another possibility is derivation from a reduplicated . A historical interpretation due to Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...

 on the other hand connects "read", i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully".

Specific religious movements



In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious study that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...

 divided religious belief into philosophically-defined categories called "world religions." However, some recent scholarship has argued that not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a certain philosophy, or even calling a given practice religious, rather than cultural, political, or social in nature, is limited. The list of religious movements given here is an attempt to summarize the most important regional and philosophical influences, but it is by no means a complete description of every religious community.
  • Abrahamic religions
    Abrahamic religions
    Abrahamic religions has become a popular and often used designation for the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, emphasizing their common origin and values. For some 1,300 years their histories and thought have been intertwined...

    are practiced throughout the world. They share in common the Jewish patriarch Abraham
    Abraham
    Abraham is the founding patriarch of the Israelites, Ishmaelites, Midianites and Edomite peoples, as described in the book of Genesis. He is widely regarded as the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims....

     and the Torah
    Torah
    The term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...

     as an initial sacred text, although the degree to which the Torah is incorporated into religious beliefs varies between traditions.
    • Judaism
      Judaism
      Judaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...

      accepts only the prophets of the Torah, but also relies on the authority of rabbi
      Rabbi
      Rabbi is the term in Judaism for a religious teacher. The word rabbi derives from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ in many senses, including "revered." The word comes from the Semitic root R-B-B, and is cognate to Arabic ربّ rabb, meaning "lord" Rabbi ' onMouseout='HidePop("42971")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Israel">Israel
      Israel
      Israel officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...

       but also scattered throughout the Jewish diaspora
      Jewish diaspora
      The Jewish diaspora , the presence of Jews outside of the Land of Israel, is a result of the expulsion or emigration of Jews from Israel...

      . Today, Jews are outnumbered by Christians and Muslims.
    • Christianity
      Christianity
      Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....

      is centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the Gospels and the writings of the apostle Paul
      Paul
      -Saints:*Paul the Apostle or Saint Paul, a Jewish Roman citizen from Tarsus - also called "Saul of Tarsus" - and 1st-century AD Christian missionary and author of numerous letters of the New Testament of the Christian Bible...

       (1st century CE). The Christian faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ
      Christ
      Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed". It is a translation of the Hebrew . The term "Christ" was a title rather than a proper name. In the four gospels in the New Testament, the word "Christ" is nearly always preceded by the definite article...

      , the Son of God
      Son of God
      "Son of God" is a phrase found in the Hebrew Bible, various other Jewish texts and the Christian Bible. In the holy Hebrew scriptures, according to Jewish religious tradition, "Son of God" has many possible meanings, referring to angels, or humans or even all mankind...

      , and as Savior
      Savior
      Savior or Saviour refers to a person who helps people achieve Salvation, or saves them from something:- Film :* Savior , 1998 film starring Dennis Quaid, Stellan Skarsgård and Nastassja Kinski- Television :...

       and Lord. As the religion of Western Europe
      Western Europe
      Western Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe...

       during the time of colonization, Christianity has been propagated throughout the world. However, Christianity is not practiced as a single orthodoxy but as a mixture of Catholicism
      Catholicism
      Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole...

      , Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy
      Oriental Orthodoxy
      Oriental Orthodoxy is the communion of Eastern Christian Churches that recognize only three ecumenical councils — the First Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus. They rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council of Chalcedon...

      , and many forms of Protestantism
      Protestantism
      Protestantism is a branch within Christianity, containing many denominations with some differing practices and doctrines, that principally originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the major divisions within Christianity, together with the Roman...

      . In the United States
      Christianity in the United States
      Christianity is the largest religion in the United States, with 76% of the population identifying themselves as Christian. This is down from 86% in 1990. About 62% of the population are members of a church....

      , for example, African-Americans and Korean-Americans usually attend separate churches from Americans of European descent. Many European countries as well as Argentina
      Argentina
      Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico,...

       have established a specific church as the state religion, but this is not the case in the United States nor in many other majority Christian areas.
    • Islam
      Islam
      Islam Islam Islam ( al-’islām, There are ten pronunciations of Islam in English, differing in whether the first or second syllable has the stress, whether the s is or , and whether the a is pronounced as in father, as in cat, or (when the stress is on the i) as in the a of sofa...

      refers to the religion taught by the Islamic prophet
      Prophets of Islam
      Muslims regard as prophets of Islam those non-divine humans chosen by Allah . Mere humans rely on revelation or tradition to identify prophets....

       Muhammad
      Muhammad
      Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh , is the founder of the religion of Islam [ إِسْلامْ ] and is regarded by Muslims as a messenger and prophet of , the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets as taught by the...

      , a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is the dominant religion of northern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. As with Christianity, there is no single orthodoxy in Islam but a multitude of traditions which are generally categorized as Sunni and Shia, although there are other minor groups as well. Wahhabi Islam is the established religion of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are also several Islamic republic
      Islamic republic
      Islamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Islamic...

      s, including Iran
      Iran
      Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...

       which is run by a Shia Supreme Leader.
    • The Bahá'í Faith
      Bahá'í Faith
      The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in nineteenth-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories.The Bahá'í Faith teaches a doctrine of...

      was founded in the 19th century in Iran and since then has spread worldwide. It teaches unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as additional prophets including its founder Bahá'u'lláh
      Bahá'u'lláh
      Bahá'u'lláh , born Mírzá usayn-`Alí Nuri , was the founder of the Bahá'í Faith...

      .
    • Smaller Abrahamic groups that are not heterodox versions of the four major groupings include Mandaeism
      Mandaeism
      Mandaeism or Mandaeanism is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist....

      , Samaritanism, the Druze
      Druze
      The Druze are a religious community found primarily in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, whose traditional religion is said to have begun as an offshoot of Islam, but is unique in its incorporation of Gnostic, neo-Platonic and other philosophies, similar to other followers of Ismaili Shi'a...

      , and the Rastafari movement
      Rastafari movement
      The Rastafari movement is a monotheistic, Abrahamic, new religious movement that accepts Haile Selassie I, the former, and final, Emperor of Ethiopia, as the incarnation of God, called Jah or Jah Rastafari....

      .
  • Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent
    Indian subcontinent
    The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent and other terms, is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate south of the Himalayas, forming a peninsula which extends southward into the Indian Ocean...

    . Concepts most of them share in common include karma
    Karma
    Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Sikh and Buddhist philosophies..'Karma' is an Eastern religious concept in contradistinction to...

    , caste
    Caste
    A caste is a combined social system of occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power. Caste should not be confused with class, in that members of a caste are deemed to be alike in function or culture, whereas not all members of a defined class may be so alike.Although Indian...

    , reincarnation
    Reincarnation
    Reincarnation, literally "to be made flesh again", is a doctrine or metaphysical belief that some essential part of a living being survives death to be reborn in a new body. This essential part is often referred to as the spirit or soul, the "higher" or "true" self, "divine spark", or "I"...

    , mantra
    Mantra
    For secular and business interpretation, see Motto.A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that are considered capable of "creating transformation"...

    s, yantra
    Yantra
    Yantra are 'instruments'. The meaning is contextual. Much like the word 'instrument' itself. It can stand for symbols, processes, automata, machinery or anything that has structure and organization. One use popular in the west is as symbols or geometric figures. Traditionally such symbols are used...

    s, and darśana. Islam in India
    Islam in India
    Islam is India's second-most practiced religion after Hinduism, with more than 13.4% of the country's population identifying themselves as Muslims....

     has also been influenced by Indian religious practices.
    • Hinduism
      Hinduism
      Hinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...

      is a synechdoche describing the similar Indian religious philosophies of Vaishnavism
      Vaishnavism
      Vaishnavism is a tradition of Hinduism, distinguished from other schools by its worship of Vishnu or his associated avatars, principally as Rama and Krishna, as the original and supreme God. This worship in different perspectives or historical traditions addresses God under the names of Narayana,...

      , Shaivism
      Shaivism
      Shaivism names the oldest of the four sects of Hinduism. Followers of Shaivism, called "Shaivas," and also "Saivas" or "Saivites," revere Shiva as the Supreme Being. Shaivas believe that Shiva is All and in all, the creator, preserver, destroyer, revealer and concealer of all that is. Shaivism is...

      , and related groups
      Hindu denominations
      Hinduism comprises numerous sects or denominations. The denominations are roughly comparable to different religions. The main divisions in current Hinduism are Shaivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism, and Smartism...

      , and is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent
      Indian subcontinent
      The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent and other terms, is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate south of the Himalayas, forming a peninsula which extends southward into the Indian Ocean...

       Hinduism is not a monolithic religion in the Romannic sense but a religious category containing dozens of separate philosophies amalgamated as Sanātana Dharma
      Sanatana Dharma
      The Sanskrit term Sanātana Dharm or Dharmam Sanātanam , lit. "the way of life", is an epithet used natively in Indian Religions, notably Hinduism and early Buddhism to collectively refer to their religious practices and beliefs respectively...

      .
    • Sikhism
      Sikhism
      Sikhism, founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev and ten successive Sikh Gurus in fifteenth century Punjab, is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world. This system of religious philosophy and expression has been traditionally known as the Gurmat or the Sikh Dharma...

      is a monotheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak and ten successive Sikh Gurus
      Sikh Gurus
      Sikhism was established by Guru Nanak and nine other Sikh Gurus over the period of 1469 to 1708. Most of the Gurus were born in Northern India, although they traveled extensively from as far west as Iraq to Assam in the east and Sri Lanka in the south...

       in 15th century Punjab
      Punjab region
      The Punjab The Punjab The Punjab (pronounced or ; Punjabi: ਪੰਜਾਬ, The Punjab (pronounced or ; [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]]: [[Gurmukhī script|ਪੰਜਾਬ]], The Punjab (pronounced or ; [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]]: [[Gurmukhī script|ਪੰਜਾਬ]], [[Shahmukhi script|, ), also spelled Panjab ' onMouseout='HidePop("65951")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Jainism">Jainism
      Jainism
      Jainism is an ancient dharmic religion from India that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world. Its philosophy and practice relies mainly on self-effort in progressing the soul on the spiritual ladder to divine consciousness...

      , taught primarily by Parsva (9th century BCE) and Mahavira
      Mahavira
      Mahavira is the name most commonly used to refer to the Indian sage Vardhamana who established what are today considered to be the central tenets of Jainism. According to Jain tradition, he was the 24th and the last Tirthankara...

       (6th century BCE), is an ancient Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world. Jains are found mostly in India.
    • There are dozens of new Indian religions and Hindu reform movements
      Hindu reform movements
      Several contemporary groups, collectively termed Hindu reform movements, strive to introduce regeneration and reform to Hinduism. Although these movements are very individual in their exact philosophies they generally stress the spiritual, secular and logical and scientific aspects of the Vedic...

      , such as Ayyavazhi
      Ayyavazhi
      Ayyavazhi is a dharmic belief system that originated in South India in the 19th century. It is cited as an independent monistic religion by several newspapers, government reports and academic researchers. In Indian censuses, however, the majority of its followers declare themselves as Hindus...

       and Swaminarayan Faith
      Swaminarayan Faith
      Swaminarayan Hinduism, also known as the Swaminarayan faith or the Swaminarayan sect, is a modern tradition of Hinduism, in which followers offer devotion and worship Swaminarayan as the final manifestation of God...

      .
  • Buddhism
    Buddhism
    Buddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...

    was founded by Siddhattha Gotama in the 6th century BCE. Buddhists generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their suffering
    Dukkha
    Dukkha is a Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress,...

     by understanding the true nature of phenomena
    Dharma
    The term , is an Indian spiritual and religious term, that means one's righteous duty or any virtuous path in the common sense of the term. A Hindu's Dharma is affected by a person's age, class, occupation, and sex. In Indian languages it can be equivalent simply to "religion", depending on context...

    , thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra
    Samsara
    Samsara is the endless cycle of suffering caused by birth, death and rebirth within Buddhism, Bön, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and other related religions....

    ), that is, achieving Nirvana
    Nirvana
    In sramanic thought, Nirvana is the state of being free from suffering. It is an important concept in Buddhism and Jainism....

    .
    • Theravada
      Theravada
      Theravada Theravada Theravada (Pāli: थेरवाद theravāda (cf Sanskrit: स्थविरवाद sthaviravāda); literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India...

       Buddhism
      , which is practiced mainly in Southeast Asia alongside folk religion, shares some characteristics of Indian religions. It is based in a large collection of texts called the Pali Canon
      Pāli Canon
      The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pali language. It is the only completely surviving early Buddhist canon, and one of the first to be written down...

      .
    • Under the heading of Mahayana
      Mahayana
      Mahayana is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice. It was founded in India...

      (the "Great Vehicle") fall a multitude of doctrines which began their development in China
      Buddhism in China
      Chinese Buddhism refers collectively to the various schools of Buddhism that have flourished in China proper since ancient times after introduction from its original source, India...

       and are still relevant in Vietnam
      Buddhism in Vietnam
      Buddhism came to Vietnam as early as the second century CE through the North from central Asia and via Southern routes from India. Buddhism in Vietnam as practiced by the ethnic Vietnamese is mainly of the Mahayana school, although some ethnic minorities adhere to the Theravada school...

      , in Korea, in Japan
      Buddhism in Japan
      The history of Buddhism in Japan can be roughly divided into three periods, namely the Nara period , the Heian period and the post-Heian period . Each period saw the introduction of new doctrines and upheavals in existing schools...

      , and to a lesser extent in Europe and the United States
      Buddhism in the West
      Buddhism in the West broadly encompasses the knowledge and practice of Buddhism outside of Asia. Occasional intersections between Western civilization and the Buddhist world have been occurring for thousands of years, but it was not until the era of European colonization of Buddhist countries in...

      . Mahayana Buddhism includes such disparate teachings as Zen
      Zen
      Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, translated from the Chinese word Chán. This word is in turn derived from the Sanskrit dhyāna, which means "meditation" ....

      , Pure Land
      Pure land
      Pure land in the Buddhadharma is an English rendering of the celestial realm or pure abode of a buddha or bodhisattva. Various Buddhadharma traditions have arisen that focus on Pure Lands in various capacities, especially what has been given the nomenclature Pure Land Buddhism...

      , and Soka Gakkai.
    • Vajrayana
      Vajrayana
      Vajrayāna Buddhism is also known as Tantric Buddhism, Tantrayāna, Mantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Esoteric Buddhism and the Diamond Vehicle. The period of Vajrayana Buddhism has been classified as the fifth or final period of Indian Buddhism...

       Buddhism
      , sometimes considered a form of Mahayana, was developed in Tibet
      Tibet
      Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is home to the indigenous Tibetan people, and to some other ethnic groups such as Monpas and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese people. Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average...

       and is still most prominent there and in surrounding regions.
    • Two notable new Buddhist sects are Hòa Hảo
      Hoa Hao
      Hòa Hảo is a religious tradition, based on Buddhism, founded in 1939 by Huynh Phu So, a native of the Mekong River Delta region of southern Vietnam. Adherents consider So to be a prophet, and Hoa Hao a continuation of a 19th-century Buddhist ministry known as Buu Son Ky Huong...

       and the Dalit Buddhist movement, which were developed separately in the 20th century.
  • Yazdânism
    Yazdânism
    Yazdânism is a term introduced by Mehrdad Izady to denote a group of native Kurdish monotheistic religions: Alevism, Yarsan and Yazidism. Izady claims that the Yazdâni faiths were the primary religion of the Kurds until their Islamization in the 10th century. The three religions of Yazdanism are...

    is a non-Abrahamic monotheistic category including the traditional beliefs of the Yazidi
    Yazidi
    The Yazidi are a Kurdish ethnicity with ancient Indo-European roots.They are primarily Kurdish speaking, and most live in the Mosul region of northern Iraq...

    , Alevi
    Alevi
    The Alevi are a religious, sub-ethnic and cultural community in Turkey, numbering in the tens of millions . Alevism is considered one of the many branches of Islam. However, Alevi worship takes place in assembly houses rather than mosques. The ceremony , features music and dance...

    , and Ahl-e Haqq
    Ahl-e Haqq
    The Ahl-e Haqq or Yârsân , are members of a religion founded by Sultan Sahak in the late 14th century in western Iran...

    .
  • Religious movements centered in the United States
    Religion in the United States
    Religion in the United States is remarkable both in its high adherence level as well as its diversity. The First Amendment to the country's Constitution prevents the government from having any authority in religion, and guarantees the free exercise of religion...

    are often derived from Christian tradition. They include the Latter Day Saint movement
    Latter Day Saint movement
    The Latter Day Saint movement is a group of Restorationist religious denominations and adherents who follow at least some of the teachings and revelations of Joseph Smith, Jr., publisher of the Book of Mormon in 1830...

    , Christian evangelicalism
    Evangelicalism
    Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for biblical authority; and an emphasis on the...

    , and Unitarian Universalism
    Unitarian Universalism
    Unitarian Universalism is a theologically liberal religion characterized by its support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning." Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth...

     among hundreds of smaller groups.
  • Folk religion
    Folk religion
    Folk religion consists of ethnic or regional religious customs under the umbrella of an organized religion, but outside of official doctrine and practices...

    is a term applied loosely and vaguely to disorganized local practices. It is also called paganism
    Paganism
    Paganism is a word with several different meanings.In its broadest definition, pagan denotes all non-Abrahamic religions, that is to say it denotes all religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.Other usages are:*Paganism may mean Polytheism: The group so defined includes most of the...

    , shamanism
    Shamanism
    Shamanism comprises a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. It is a prominent term in anthropological research. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman, , noun...

    , animism
    Animism
    Animism is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, a proposition also...

    , ancestor worship, and totemism, although not all of these elements are necessarily present in local belief systems. The category of "folk religion" can generally include anything that is not part of an organization. The modern neopagan movement draws on folk religion for inspiration.
    • African traditional religion
      African Traditional Religion
      African traditional religions, also referred to as African indigenous religions or African tribal religions, is a term referring to a variety of religions indigenous to the continent of Africa...

      is a category including any type of religion practiced in Africa before the arrival of Islam and Christianity, such as Yoruba religion or San religion
      San religion
      The religion of the San people, or Bushmen, of southern Africa consists of a spirit world and our material world. To enter the spirit world, trancing has to be initiated by a shaman through the hunting of power animals.-The trance dance & eland potency:...

      . There are many varieties of religions developed by Africans in the Americas
      Afro-American religion
      Afro-American religions are a number of related religions that developed in the Americas among African slaves and their descendants in various countries of the Caribbean Islands and Latin America, as well as parts of the southern United States...

       derived from African beliefs, including Santería
      Santería
      Santería is a syncretic religion of Caribbean origin, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi.- Etymology :...

      , Candomblé
      Candomblé
      Candomblé is an African-originated or Afro-Brazilian religion, practiced chiefly in Brazil by the "povo de santo" . The religion was largely originated in the city of Salvador, the capital of Bahia. Although Candomblé is practiced primarily within Brazil, it is also practiced in other countries...

      , Umbanda
      Umbanda
      Umbanda is an Afro-Brazilian religion that blends African religions with CatholicismUmbanda is related to and has many similitudes with other Afro-Brazilian religions like Candomblé, Batuque, Macumba, Quimbanda, Xambá, Egungun, Ifá, Irmandade, Confraria, Xangô do Nordeste and Tambor de Mina, but...

      , Vodou, and Oyotunji
      Oyotunji
      Oyotunji African Village is a village located near Sheldon, Beaufort County, South Carolina that was founded by the late Oba Efuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I in 1970, as part of a "New World Yoruba" initiative....

      .
    • Folk religions of the Americas include Aztec religion
      Aztec religion
      Aztec religion is a Mesoamerican religion combining elements of polytheism, shamanism and animism within a framework of astronomy and calendrics. Like other Mesoamerican religions, it had elements of human sacrifice in connection with a large number of religious festivals which were held according...

      , Inca religion
      Inca religion
      The religion of the Incas is the religion practiced by the Inca civilization.- Deities :Inca deities occupied the three realms:*Hanan Paca, the celestial realm in the sky*Ukhu Paca, the inner earth*Cay Paca, the outer earth where humans live...

      , Maya religion
      Maya religion
      The traditional Maya religion of western Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico is a southeastern variant of Mesoamerican religion resulting from centuries of symbiosis with Spanish Catholicism. As a recognizably distinct phenomenon, however, traditional Maya religion, including its pre-Spanish...

      , and modern Catholic beliefs such as the Virgin of Guadalupe
      Our Lady of Guadalupe
      Our Lady of Guadalupe is a celebrated 16th-century icon of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. The image, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe represents a famous Marian apparition. According to the traditional account, the image appeared miraculously on the front of a simple peasant's cloak...

      . Native American religion
      Native American mythology
      Although a section on Mythology is no substitute for a section on Native American Religion, Native American belief systems include many sacred narratives. Such spiritual stories are deeply based in Nature and are rich with the symbolism of seasons, weather, plants, animals, earth, water, sky and fire...

       is practiced across the continent of North America.
    • Australian Aboriginal culture
      Australian Aboriginal culture
      Aboriginal Australia contains a large number of tribal divisions and language groups, and, corresponding to this, a wide variety of diversity exists within cultural practices. There are some similarities between cultures however.-Practices and ceremonies:...

      contains a mythology
      Australian Aboriginal mythology
      Australian Aboriginal myths are the stories traditionally performed by Aboriginal peoples within each of the language groups across Australia....

       and sacred practices characteristic of folk religion.
    • Chinese folk religion
      Chinese folk religion
      Chinese folk religion is a collective label given to various folkloric beliefs that draws heavily from Chinese mythology. It comprises the religion practiced in much of China for thousands of years which included ancestor worship and drew heavily upon concepts and beings within Chinese mythology...

      , practiced by Chinese people
      Chinese people
      The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People who reside in and hold citizenship of the People's Republic of China or the Republic of China . This definition stems from a legal perspective...

       around the world, is a primarily social practice including popular elements of Confucianism
      Confucianism
      Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . It is a complex system of moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought that has had tremendous influence on the culture and history of East Asia...

       and Taoism
      Taoism
      Daoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...

      , with some remnants of Mahayana Buddhism. Most Chinese do not identify as religious due to the strong Maoist influence on the country in recent history, but adherence to religious ceremonies remains common. New religious movements include Falun Gong
      Falun Gong
      Falun Gong is a system of beliefs and practices founded in China by Li Hongzhi in 1992. The practice emerged at the end of China's "qigong boom" as a form of qigong practice. Its teachings are influenced by both Taoism and Buddhism.The number of Falun Gong practitioners is unknown, and the group...

       and I-Kuan Tao
      I-Kuan Tao
      I-Kuan Tao, also Yīguàn Dào, or usually initialized as IKT is a new religious movement that originated in twentieth-century China. It incorporates much older elements from Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism, and recognizes the validity of non-Chinese religious traditions such as...

      .
    • Traditional Korean religion
      Religion in Korea
      Religion in Korea encompasses a number of different traditions. Traditional Buddhism, Confucianism, Korean shamanism, Taoism and Christianity all play a role in Korea's religious tradition...

      was a syncretic mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and Korean shamanism
      Korean shamanism
      Korean shamanism encompasses a variety of indigenous beliefs and practices that have been influenced by Buddhism and Taoism. In contemporary Korean, shamanism is known as muism and a shaman is known as a mudang...

      . Unlike Japanese Shinto, Korean shamanism was never codified and Buddhism was never made a social necessity. In some areas these traditions remain prevalent, but Korean-influenced Christianity
      Christianity in Korea
      The practice of Christianity in Korea has a relatively short history but, after a slow start, it has seen significant growth and high numbers of believers...

       is far more influential in society and politics.
    • Traditional Japanese religion
      Religion in Japan
      There are many religions in Japan that have come along with current times but most follow Shintō or Buddhism. Most Japanese people do not identify as exclusively belonging to just one religion, but incorporate features of both religions into their daily lives in a process known as syncretism....

      is a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and ancient indigenous practices which were codified as Shinto
      Shinto
      or kami-no-michi is the natural spirituality of Japan and the Japanese people. The word Shinto was adopted from the written Chinese , combining two kanji: , meaning gods or spirits ; and , or "do" meaning a philosophical path or study...

       in the 19th century. Japanese people retain nominal attachment to both Buddhism and Shinto through social ceremonies, but irreligion
      Irreligion
      Irreligion is an absence of religion, indifference to religion, and/or hostility to religion. Depending on the context, it may be understood as referring to atheism, deism, nontheism, agnosticism, ignosticism, antireligion, skepticism, freethought, or secular humanism. Irreligious people may have...

       is common.
  • A variety of new religious movement
    New religious movement
    A new religious movement is a faith-based community, or ethical, spiritual, or philosophical group of recent origin. NRMs may be novel in origin or they may be part of a wider religion, such as Christianity, in which case they will be distinct from pre-existing denominations...

    s
    still practiced today have been founded in many other countries besides the United States and Japan, including Cao Đài in Vietnam.
    • Shinshūkyō
      Shinshukyo
      ' is a term used in Japan to describe new religious movements. They are also known as ' in Japanese, and are most often called simply Japanese new religions in English. Japanese theologians classify all religious organizations founded since the middle of the 19th century as Shinshūkyō. Thus, the...

      is a general category for a wide variety of religious movements founded in Japan since the 19th century. These movements share almost nothing in common except the place of their founding. The largest religious movements centered in Japan include Soka Gakkai, Tenrikyo
      Tenrikyo
      Tenrikyo is a monotheist religion originating in revelations to a Japanese woman named Miki Nakayama, known as Oyasama by followers...

      , and Seicho-No-Ie
      Seicho-No-Ie
      Seicho-no-Ie, sometimes rendered Seicho-no Iye , translated into English means "The Home of Long Life." It is a syncretic, nondenominational, monotheistic, New Thought religion, one of the 新宗教 Shinshūkyō in Japan that have spread since the end of World War II...

       among hundreds of smaller groups.


Sociological classifications of religious movements
Sociological classifications of religious movements
Sociologists have proposed various classifications of religious movements. The most widely used classification in the sociology of religion is the church-sect typology. The typology states that churches, ecclesia, denominations, and sects form a continuum with decreasing influence on society. Sects...

 suggest that within any given religious group, a community can resemble various types of structures, including "churches", "denominations", "sects", "cults", and "institutions".

Religion and superstition


While superstitions and magical thinking refer to nonscientific causal reasoning, applied to specific things or actions, a religion is a more complex system about general or ultimate things, involving morality, history and community. Because religions may include and exploit certain superstitions or make use of magical thinking, while mixing them with broader considerations, the division between superstition and religious faith is hard to specify and subjective. Religious believers have often seen other religions as superstition
Superstition
Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason, knowledge, or experience. The word is often used pejoratively to refer to folk beliefs deemed irrational. This leads to some superstitions being called "old wives' tales"...

.
Likewise, some atheists, agnostics, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as superstition.
Religious practices are most likely to be labeled "superstitious" by outsiders when they include belief in extraordinary events (miracles), an afterlife, supernatural interventions, apparitions or the efficacy of prayer, charms, incantations, the meaningfulness of omens, and prognostications.

Greek and Roman pagans, who modeled their relations with the gods on political and social terms scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods, as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. Such fear of the gods (deisidaimonia) was what the Romans meant by superstitio (Veyne 1987, p 211). Early Christianity
Early Christianity
Early Christianity is commonly known as the Christianity of the roughly three centuries between the Crucifixion of Jesus and the First Council of Nicaea in 325....

 was outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica, a "Jewish superstition", by Domitian
Domitian
Titus Flavius Domitianus , known as Domitian, was a Roman Emperor who reigned from 14 September 81 until his death...

 in the 80s AD, and by AD 425, Theodosius II
Theodosius II
Flavius Theodosius , called the Calligrapher, known in English as Theodosius II, was a Eastern Roman Emperor . He is mostly known for promulgating the Theodosian law code as well for the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople...

 outlawed pagan traditions as superstitious.

The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is an official exposition of the teachings of the Catholic Church. A provisional, "reference text" was issued by Pope John Paul II on October 11, 1992 — "the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council" — with his apostolic...

 states superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110).

Superstition is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16-22 (para. #2111)

History



Ideally, a history of religion could include all human religious practices, but archaeological study of religion is a relatively new and undeveloped field. Therefore, the history of religion is largely limited to those practices which have been described in writing.

Development of religion



Like the definition of religion, the construction of religious history is a task fraught with ideological implications. Early studies of religions were often written to imply that the author's own religion was the most accurate. Even in a secular history, to imply that religion "progresses" towards better understanding of reality makes a value judgment about past religions; likewise, to consider religion an essentially social construction with no transcendent meaning denies the claims of every religious authority.

There is no time or place in human history where religious movements are not being founded, and religious practice is not merely a matter of founding prophets but also of local traditions and reforms. There is not even a single era when the Abrahamic religions were developed; the Jewish prophets lived some centuries before Jesus, Muhammad came six centuries after him, and Bahá'u'lláh founded the Bahá'í Faith over a millennium later.

Middle Ages



The Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...

 (800 AD-1500 AD) was a time of philosophical development for several major religions. As Christianity became the focus of scholarship throughout Europe, Buddhist missions were sent to East Asia
Silk Road transmission of Buddhism
The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to China started in the 1st century CE with a semi-legendary or quasi-historical account of an embassy sent to the West by the Chinese Emperor Ming...

, and Islam was spread
Spread of Islam
The Spread of Islam started shortly after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 632. Trade networks connected many regions which helped the spread of Islam. During his lifetime, the community of Muslims, the ummah, was established in the Arabian Peninsula by means of conversion to Islam...

 throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa and parts of Europe and India. Meanwhile, the decline of Buddhism in India
Decline of Buddhism in India
The decline of Buddhism in India, the land of its birth, occurred for a variety of reasons, and happened even as it continued to flourish beyond the frontiers of India. Buddhism was established in the area of ancient Magadha and Kosala by Gautama Buddha in the 6th century BCE, in what is now modern...

 led to the flourishing of folk religion there.

Many medieval religious movements emphasized mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...

, such as the Cathars and related movements in the West, the Bhakti movement
Bhakti movement
The Bhakti movement is a Hindu religious movement in which the main spiritual practice was loving devotice among the Vaishnava saints. Not only is she the only female Vaishnava saint but also her hymns are among the best expressions of bridal mysticism in the Hindu religion...

 in India and Sufism
Sufism
Sufism or ' , also spelled as tasavvuf and tasavvof, is generally understood to be the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a ' , though some adherents of the tradition reserve this term only for those practitioners who have attained the goals...

 in Islam. Monotheism
Monotheism
In theology, monotheism is the belief that only one god exists. The concept of "monotheism" tends to be dominated by the concept of God in the Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the Platonic concept of God as put forward by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite...

 was articulated distinctly in Christian Christology
Christology
Christology is a field of study within Christian theology which is concerned with the nature of Jesus the Christ, particularly with how the divine and human are related in his person. Christology is generally less concerned with the details of Jesus' life than with how the human and divine...

 and in Islamic Tawhid
Tawhid
Tawhid is the concept of monotheism in Islam. It holds God is one and unique ....

. Hindu monotheist
Hindu views on monotheism
Monotheism in Hinduism is set in the views of the spiritual world are broad and range from monism, pantheism to panentheism, aptly termed as monistic theism and even open monotheism by some scholars, but are not polytheistic as outsiders perceive it to be...

 notions of Brahman
Brahman
In the Hindu religion, Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe. The nature of Brahman is described as transpersonal, personal and impersonal by different...

 likewise reached their classical form with the teaching of Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara ; , also known as ' and ', was an Indian philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta. His teachings are based on the unity of the soul and Brahman, in which Brahman is viewed as without attributes...

.

Religion was the dominant ideology behind many conflicts of the Middle Ages. Muslim
Muslim
:A Muslim , , is an adherent of the religion of Islam. The feminine form is Muslimah . Literally, the word means "one who submits ". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. Muslims believe that there is only one God, translated in Arabic as Allah...

s were in conflict with Zoroastrian
Zoroastrian
A Zoroastrian is an adherent to Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion that is based on the teachings and philosophies of Zoroaster....

s during the Islamic conquest of Persia
Islamic conquest of Persia
The Muslim conquest of Persia led to the end of the Sassanid Empire in 644, of the Sassanid dynasty in 651 and the eventual extirpation of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia. The Sassanid Empire was first invaded by Muslims in present day Iraq in 633 under general Khalid ibn Walid, which resulted...

; Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, and the Son of God.The term "Christian" is also used adjectivally to...

s were in conflict with Muslims during the Byzantine-Arab Wars
Byzantine-Arab Wars
The Byzantine–Arab Wars were a series of wars between the Arab Caliphates and the East Roman or Byzantine Empire between the 7th and 12th centuries AD These started during the initial Muslim conquests under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs and continued in the form of an enduring border tussle...

, Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between...

, Spanish Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in retaking the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims...

 and Ottoman wars in Europe
Ottoman wars in Europe
The wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe are also sometimes referred to as the Ottoman Wars or as Turkish Wars, particularly in older, European texts.- Rise :...

; Christians were in conflict with Jew
Jew
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

s during the Crusades, Reconquista and Inquisition
Inquisition
The term Inquisition can apply to any one of several institutions charged with trying and convicting heretics within the Catholic Church...

; Shamans
Shamanism
Shamanism comprises a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. It is a prominent term in anthropological research. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman, , noun...

 were in conflict with Buddhists
Buddhism
Buddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...

, Taoists
Taoism
Daoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...

, Muslims and Christians during the Mongol invasions
Mongol invasions
The Mongol invasions progressed throughout the 13th century, resulting in the vast Mongol Empire covering much of Asia and Eastern Europe by 1300....

; and Muslims were in conflict with Hindu
Hindu
A Hindu is an adherent of Hinduism, a set of religious, philosophical and cultural systems that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The vast body of Hindu scriptures, divided into Śruti and Smriti , lay the foundation of Hindu beliefs which primarily include dhárma, kárma, ahimsa and saṃsāra...

s during Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent
Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent
The Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from the 11th to the 17th centuries, though earlier Muslim conquests made limited inroads into the region, beginning during the period of the ascendancy of the Rajput Kingdoms in North India, from the 7th century onwards.Throughout...

.

Modern period


European colonisation
Colonisation
Colonization, , occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect," originally related to humans...

 during the 15th to 19th centuries resulted in the spread of Christianity to Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

, the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America...

, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...

 and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....

. The 18th century saw the beginning of secularisation in Europe, rising to notability in the wake of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...

. By the 20th century, religion was no longer the dominant ideological force behind international wars, but had generally been unseated by political ideals such as democracy
Democracy
Democracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...

 and communism
Communism
Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...

.

In the 20th century, the regimes of Communist Eastern Europe and Communist China were explicitly anti-religious. A great variety of new religious movements originated in the 20th century, many proposing syncretism
Syncretism
Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. This may involve attempts to merge and analogise several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an...

 of elements of established religions. Adherence to such new movements is limited, however, remaining below 2% worldwide in the 2000s. Adherents of the classical world religions account for more than 75% of the world's population, while self-reported alliegance to indigenous folk religion
Folk religion
Folk religion consists of ethnic or regional religious customs under the umbrella of an organized religion, but outside of official doctrine and practices...

s has fallen to 4%. As of 2005, an estimated 14% of the world's population identifies as nonreligious.

Religious belief




Religious belief usually relates to the existence, nature and worship of a deity
Deity
A deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....

 or deities and divine involvement in the universe
Universe
The Universe comprises everything that physically exists, the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter and energy, and the physical laws and constants that govern them...

 and human life. Alternately, it may also relate to values and practices transmitted by a spiritual leader. Unlike other belief systems, which may be passed on orally, religious belief tends to be codified in literate societies (religion in non-literate societies is still largely passed on orally). In some religions, like the Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions has become a popular and often used designation for the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, emphasizing their common origin and values. For some 1,300 years their histories and thought have been intertwined...

, it is held that most of the core beliefs have been divinely revealed.

Religious belief can also involve causes, principles or activities believed in with zeal or conscientious devotion concerning points or matters of ethics or conscience, not necessarily limited to organized religions.

Religion and science



Religious knowledge, according to religious practitioners, may be gained from religious leaders, sacred texts (scriptures), and/or personal revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious and clearly understood through active or passive communication with supernatural entities . It is believed that revelation can originate directly from a deity, or through an agent, such as an angel...

. Some religions view such knowledge as unlimited in scope and suitable to answer any question; others see religious knowledge as playing a more restricted role, often as a complement to knowledge gained through physical observation. Some religious people maintain that religious knowledge obtained in this way is absolute and infallible (religious cosmology
Religious cosmology
Religious cosmologies are ways of explaining the history and evolution of the universe based, at least in part, on the acceptance of principles that cannot be justified by accepted scientific arguments...

).

The scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific...

 gains knowledge by testing hypotheses to develop theories through elucidation of facts
Facts
Facts may refer to:*Carroll, Lewis, who wrote a poem called "Facts"*Chuck Norris facts*fact, an incontrovertible truth.*FACTS , program produced by Asia Television in Hong Kong.*Flexible AC transmission system, abbreviated FACTS...

 or evaluation by experiments and thus only answers cosmological
Physical cosmology
Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology involves itself with studying the motions of the celestial bodies and the first cause....

 questions about the physical universe
Physical universe
In religion and esotericism, the term "physical universe" or "material universe" is used to distinguish the physical matter of the universe from a proposed spiritual or supernatural essence....

. It develops theories
Theory
The term theory has two broad sets of meanings, one used in the empirical sciences and the other used in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and across other fields in the humanities. There is considerable difference and even dispute across academic disciplines as to the proper usages of the term...

 of the world which best fit physically observed evidence. All scientific knowledge is subject to later refinement in the face of additional evidence. Scientific theories that have an overwhelming preponderance of favorable evidence are often treated as facts (such as the theories of gravity or evolution).

Many scientists have held strong religious beliefs (see List of Christian thinkers in science) and have worked to harmonize science and religion. Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton FRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is perceived and considered by a substantial number of scholars and the general public as one of the most influential men in history...

, for example, believed that gravity caused the planet
Planet
A planet , is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...

s to revolve about the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass....

, and credited God
God
God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....

 with the design. In the concluding General Scholium to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
The Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Latin for "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", often Principia or Principia Mathematica for short, is a work in three books by Isaac Newton, first published on 5 July 1687. Newton also published two further editions, the second in 1713,...

, he wrote: "This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Nevertheless, conflict has repeatedly arisen between religious organizations and individuals who propagated scientific theories that were deemed unacceptable by the organizations. The Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...

, for example, has in the past reserved to itself the right to decide which scientific theories were acceptable and which were unacceptable. In the 17th century, Galileo was tried and forced to recant the heliocentric theory
Heliocentrism
In astronomy, heliocentrism is the theory that the Sun is stationary and at the center of the universe. The word came from the Greek . Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center. Discussions on the possibility of heliocentrism date to classical...

 based on the church's stance that the Greek Hellenistic
Greek astronomy
Greek astronomy is the astronomy of those who wrote in the Greek language in classical antiquity; for example, Aristarchus of Samos Greek astronomer/mathematician and his heliocentric model of the solar system. Greek astronomy is understood to include the ancient Greek, Hellenistic, Greco-Roman,...

 system of astronomy was the correct one. Today, however, only 7% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences may refer to:*National Academy of Sciences of Argentina*Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences*National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Korea*Armenian Academy of Sciences*National Academy of Sciences of Belarus...

 believe in a god.

Epistemology


Many theories exist as to why religions sometimes seem to conflict with scientific knowledge. In the case of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....

, a relevant factor may be that it was among Christians that science in the modern sense was developed. Unlike other religious groups, as early as the 17th century the Christian churches had to deal directly with this new way to investigate nature and seek truth.

The perceived conflict between science and Christianity may also be partially explained by a literal interpretation of the Bible
Bible
The Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...

 adhered to by many Christians, both currently and historically.
The Catholic Church has always held with Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....

 who explicitly opposed a literal interpretation of the Bible
Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism is the interpretation or translation of the explicit and primary sense of words in the Bible. A literal, Biblical interpretation is associated with the fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to Scripture, and is used by most conservative Christians today...

 whenever the Bible conflicted with Science. The literal way to read the sacred texts became especially prevalent after the rise of the Protestant reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a Christian reform movement in Europe which is generally deemed to have begun with Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 although a number of precursors such as Jan Hus predate that event...

, with its emphasis on the Bible as the only authoritative source concerning the ultimate reality. This view is often shunned by both religious leaders (who regard literally believing it as petty and look for greater meaning instead) and scientists who regard it as an impossibility.

Some Christians have disagreed or are still disagreeing with scientists in areas such as the validity of Keplerian astronomy
Kepler's laws of planetary motion
In astronomy, Kepler's three laws of planetary motion are:#The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at a focus.#A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time....

, the theory of evolution
Evolution
In biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...

, the method of creation of the universe
Universe
The Universe comprises everything that physically exists, the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter and energy, and the physical laws and constants that govern them...

 and the Earth, and the origins of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have self-sustaining biological processes from those that do not—either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as "inanimate."In biology, the science of living organisms, "life"...

. On the other hand, scholars such as Stanley Jaki
Stanley Jaki
Stanley L. Jaki, OSB was a Benedictine priest and Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey since 1975...

 have suggested that Christianity and its particular worldview was a crucial factor for the emergence of modern science. In fact, most of today's historians are moving away from the view of the relationship between Christianity and science as one of "conflict" — a perspective commonly called the conflict thesis
Conflict thesis
Conflict thesis is the theoretical premise of an intrinsic conflict between science and religion. The term was originally used in a historical context: its proponents claim the historical record is evidence of religion's perpetual opposition to science. Later uses of the term may refer to an...

. Gary Ferngren in his historical volume about Science & Religion states:

Eastern religions


In the Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in nineteenth-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories.The Bahá'í Faith teaches a doctrine of...

, the harmony of science and religion
Bahá'í Faith and science
A fundamental principle of the Bahá'í Faith is the harmony of religion and science. Bahá'í scripture asserts that true science and true religion can never be in conflict. `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion, stated that religion without science leads to superstition and that...

 is a central tenet. The principle states that that truth is one, and therefore true science and true religion must be in harmony, thus rejecting the view that science and religion are in conflict. `Abdu'l-Bahá
`Abdu'l-Bahá
‘Abdu’l-Bahá , born `Abbás Effendí, was the eldest son of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith...

, the son of the founder of the religion, asserted that science and religion cannot be opposed because they are aspects of the same truth; he also affirmed that reasoning powers are required to understand the truths of religion and that religious teachings which are at variance with science should not be accepted; he explained that religion has to be reasonable since God endowed humankind with reason so that they can discover truth. Shoghi Effendi
Shoghi Effendi
Shoghí Effendí Rabbání , better known as Shoghi Effendi, was the Guardian and appointed head of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921 until his death in 1957...

, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, described science and religion as "the two most potent forces in human life."

Proponents of Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...

 claim that Hinduism is not afraid of scientific explorations, nor of the technological progress of mankind. According to them, there is a comprehensive scope and opportunity for Hinduism to mold itself according to the demands and aspirations of the modern world; it has the ability to align itself with both science
Science
Science is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...

 and spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a monotheistic belief system or religion, postulating a belief in God, but the distinguishing feature is belief that spirits of the dead can be contacted, either by individuals or by gifted or trained "mediums", who can provide information about the afterlife.Spiritualism developed...

. This religion uses some modern examples to explain its ancient theories and reinforce its own beliefs. For example, some Hindu thinkers have used the terminology of quantum physics to explain some basic concepts of Hinduism such as Maya or the illusory and impermanent nature of our existence.

The philosophical approach known as pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected. Pragmatism began in...

, as propounded by the American philosopher and psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...

 William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism...

, has been used to reconcile scientific with religious knowledge. Pragmatism, simplistically, holds that the truth of a set of beliefs can be indicated by its usefulness in helping people cope with a particular context of life. Thus, the fact that scientific beliefs are useful in predicting observations in the physical world can indicate a certain truth for scientific theories; the fact that religious beliefs can be useful in helping people cope with difficult emotions or moral decisions can indicate a certain truth for those beliefs. (For a similar postmodern view, see grand narrative).

Religion and philosophy



Being both forms of belief system
Belief system
A belief system can refer to*a life stance*a religion. See also List of religions*a world view*a philosophy. See also List of philosophies*an ideology. See also :Category:Ideologies...

, religion and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...

 meet in several areas - notably in the study of metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...

 and cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it...

. In particular, a distinct set of religious beliefs will often entail a specific metaphysics and cosmology. That is, a religion will generally have answers to metaphysical and cosmological questions about the nature of being, of the universe, humanity, and the divine.

Mysticism and esotericism



Mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...

 focuses on methods other than logic
Logic
Logic, from the Greek λογική is the art and science of reasoning. More specifically, it is defined by the Penguin Encyclopedia to be "The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning". As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its...

, but (in the case of esoteric mysticism) not necessarily excluding it, for gaining enlightenment. Rather, meditative
Meditation
Meditation is used here as a broad term for practices done by a sole practitioner without much, if any, external aide, often for the purpose of self-transformation...

 and contemplative
Contemplation
The word Contemplation comes from the Latin root templum , and means to separate something from its environment, and to enclose it in a sector. Contemplation is the Latin translation of Greek 'theory'...

 practices such as Vipassanā
Vipassana
Vipassanā or vipaśyanā in the Buddhist tradition means insight into the nature of reality. A regular practitioner of Vipassana is known as a Vipassi ....

 and yoga
Yoga
Yoga refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines originating in India. The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In Hinduism, it also refers to one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, and to the goal toward which that school directs...

, physical disciplines such as stringent fasting
Fasting
Fasting is primarily the act of willingly abstaining from some or all food, drink, or both, for a period of time. A fast may be total or partial concerning that from which one fasts, and may be prolonged or intermittent as to the period of fasting...

 and whirling (in the case of the Sufi dervish
Dervish
A Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus....

es), or the use of psychoactive drug
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical or psychotropic substance is a chemical substance that acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it alters brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness and behavior...

s such as LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD-25, LSD, formerly lysergide, commonly known as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family...

, lead to altered states of consciousness that logic can never hope to grasp. However, regarding the latter topic, mysticism prevalent in the 'great' religions (monotheisms, henotheisms, which are perhaps relatively recent, and which the word 'mysticism' is more recent than,) includes systems of discipline that forbid drugs that can damage the body, including the nervous system.

Mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...

 (to initiate) is the pursuit of communion with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality
Ultimate Reality
"Ultimate Reality" is a term often used within mystical and esoteric circles, as well as various metaphysical traditions of philosophical study and certain spiritual or religious systems...

, the divine
Divinity
Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power, or its attributes or manifestations in the world...

, spiritual truth
Spirituality
Spirituality is relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. Synonyms include immaterialism, dualism, incorporeality and eternity....

, or Deity
God
God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....

 through direct, personal experience (intuition or insight) rather than rational thought. Mystics speak of the existence of realities behind external perception or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible through personal experience. They say that such experience is a genuine and important source of knowledge.

Esotericism
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism is a term with two basic meanings. In the dictionary sense of the term, it signifies the holding of esoteric opinions, and derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward", mystic. Its antonym is exoteric...

 is often spiritual (thus religious) but can be non-religious/-spiritual, and it uses intellectual understanding and reasoning, intuition and inspiration (higher noetic and spiritual reasoning,) but not necessarily faith (except often as a virtue,) and it is philosophical in its emphasis on techniques of psycho-spiritual transformation (esoteric cosmology
Esoteric cosmology
Esoteric cosmology is cosmology that is an intrinsic part of an esoteric or occult system of thought. It almost always deals with at least some of the following themes: emanation, involution, evolution, epigenesis, planes of existence or higher worlds , hierarchies of spiritual beings, cosmic...

). Esotericism
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism is a term with two basic meanings. In the dictionary sense of the term, it signifies the holding of esoteric opinions, and derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward", mystic. Its antonym is exoteric...

 refers to "hidden" knowledge available only to the advanced, privileged, or initiated, as opposed to exoteric knowledge
Exotericism
Exotericism is the opposite of esotericism in any application.The word is derived from the comparative form of Greek ἔξω eksô . It signifies anything which is public, without limits, or universal....

, which is public. All religions are probably somewhat exoteric
Exotericism
Exotericism is the opposite of esotericism in any application.The word is derived from the comparative form of Greek ἔξω eksô . It signifies anything which is public, without limits, or universal....

, but most ones of ancient civilizations such as Yoga
Yoga
Yoga refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines originating in India. The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In Hinduism, it also refers to one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, and to the goal toward which that school directs...

 of India
India
India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...

, and the mystery religion
Greco-Roman mysteries
Mystery religions, sacred Mysteries or simply Mysteries, were religious cults of the Greco-Roman world, participation in which was reserved to initiates....

s of ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and...

, Israel
Israel
Israel officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...

 (Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the mystical aspect of Judaism. It is a set of esoteric teachings that is meant to explain the relationship between an infinite, eternal and essentially unknowable Creator with the finite and mortal universe of His creation...

,) and Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...

 are examples of ones that are also esoteric
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism is a term with two basic meanings. In the dictionary sense of the term, it signifies the holding of esoteric opinions, and derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward", mystic. Its antonym is exoteric...

.

Spirituality




Members of an organized religion may not see any significant difference between religion and spirituality. Or they may see a distinction between the mundane, earthly aspects of their religion and its spiritual dimension.

Some individuals draw a strong distinction between religion and spirituality. They may see spirituality as a belief in ideas of religious significance (such as God, the Soul, or Heaven), but not feel bound to the bureaucratic structure and creeds of a particular organized religion. They choose the term spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality is relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. Synonyms include immaterialism, dualism, incorporeality and eternity....

rather than religion to describe their form of belief, perhaps reflecting a disillusionment with organized religion (see Major religious groups), and a movement towards a more "modern" — more tolerant, and more intuitive — form of religion. These individuals may reject organized religion because of historical acts by religious organizations, such as Christian Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between...

 and Islamic Jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning "struggle." Jihad appears frequently in the Qur'an and common usage as the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of Allah "...

, the marginalisation and persecution of various minorities or the Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Spanish Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal started in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the medieval inquisition which was under papal control...

. The basic precept
Precept
A Precept is a commandment, instruction, or order intended as an authoritative rule of action.-Christianity:The term is encountered frequently in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; e.g.:...

 of the ancient spiritual tradition of India
Hindu idealism
There are currents of idealism in classical Hindu philosophy.Idealism and materialism are the principal monist ontologies.A related branch is the Buddhist concept of consciousness-only.Idealist notions have been supported by the Vedanta and Yoga schools...

, the Vedas
Vedas
The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in Ancient India. The texts are composed in Vedic Sanskrit and form the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature, and the oldest sacred texts of Hinduism....

, is the inner reality of existence, which is essentially a spiritual approach to being
Being
Being is the object of study of metaphysics, and more specifically ontology. In its most indeterminate sense, being could be understood as anything that can be said to be, which is opposed to nonexistence...

.

Myth




The word myth has several meanings.
  1. A traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon;
  2. A person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence; or
  3. A metaphor for the spiritual potentiality in the human being.


Ancient polytheistic
Polytheism
Polytheism is the belief in and worship of multiple deities, called gods and goddesses. These are usually assembled into a pantheon, along with their own mythologies and rituals...

 religions, such as those of Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...

, Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

, and Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a geographical region in northern Europe that includes, and is named after, the Scanian Province. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark...

, are usually categorized under the heading of mythology
Mythology
Mythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...

. Religions of pre-industrial peoples, or culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

s in development, are similarly called "myths" in the anthropology of religion
Anthropology of religion
The anthropology of religion involves the study of religious institutions in relation to other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and practices across cultures.-History:...

. The term "myth" can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, one implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...

 remarked, "Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, and religion can be defined as mis-interpreted mythology."

In sociology, however, the term myth has a non-pejorative meaning. There, myth is defined as a story that is important for the group whether or not it is objectively or provably true. Examples include the death and resurrection
Resurrection
The resurrection of dead humans is a central doctrine of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It may refer either to the resurrection of particular individuals, or a general resurrection of humanity....

 of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth —also known as Jesus Christ or occasionally Jesus the Christ—is the central figure of Christianity. Within most Christian denominations...

, which, to Christians, explains the means by which they are freed from sin and is also ostensibly a historical event. But from a mythological outlook, whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, the symbolism
Symbolism
Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent things such as ideas and emotions. Symbolism is sometimes used to refer specifically to totemic symbols that stand on their own, as opposed to linguistic symbols....

 of the death of an old "life" and the start of a new "life" is what is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations.

Cosmology


Human
Human
Humans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens in Hominidae, the great ape family. They are the only surviving member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving...

s have many different methods which attempt to answer fundamental questions about the nature of the universe
Universe
The Universe comprises everything that physically exists, the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter and energy, and the physical laws and constants that govern them...

 and our place in it (cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it...

). Religion is only one of the methods for trying to answer one or more of these questions. Other methods include philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...

, metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...

, astrology
Astrology
Astrology is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs which hold that the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details can provide information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters. A practitioner of astrology is called an astrologer...

, esotericism
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism is a term with two basic meanings. In the dictionary sense of the term, it signifies the holding of esoteric opinions, and derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward", mystic. Its antonym is exoteric...

, mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...

, and forms of shamanism
Shamanism
Shamanism comprises a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. It is a prominent term in anthropological research. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman, , noun...

, such as the sacred consumption of ayahuasca
Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...

 among Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.Peruvian territory was home to the Norte Chico...

vian Amazonia's Urarina
Urarina
The Urarina are an indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon Basin who inhabit the Chambira, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. According to both archaeological and historical sources, they have resided in the Chambira Basin of contemporary northeastern Peru for centuries. The Urarina refer to...

. The Urarina have an elaborate animistic cosmological system, which informs their mythology
Mythology
Mythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...

, religious orientation and daily existence. In many cases, the distinction between these means are not clear. For example, Buddhism and Taoism have been regarded as schools of philosophies as well as religions.

Given the generalized discontents with modernity
Modernity
Modernity is a term that is related to the modern era, but is distinct both from it and from modernism. In different contexts, the term refers to a condition associated with cultural and intellectual movements of a period beginning anywhere from 1436 to 1789 , and extending to the 1970s or later...

, consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is the equation of personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen or, more recently by a movement called Enoughism...

, over-consumption
Consumption (economics)
Consumption is a common concept in economics, and gives rise to derived concepts such as consumer debt. Generally consumption is defined by opposition to production. But the precise definition can vary because different schools of economists define production quite differently...

, violence
Violence
Violence is the expression of physical or verbal force against self or other, compelling action against one's will on pain of being hurt. Variant uses of the term refer to the destruction of non-living objects . Worldwide, violence is used as a tool of manipulation and also is an area of concern...

 and anomie
Anomie
Anomie, in contemporary English language, is a sociological term which may most simply be described as a personal condition resulting from a lack of norms. For Émile Durkheim, a lack of social ethic produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. Though anomie is commonly...

, many people in the so-called industrial or post-industrial West rely on a number of distinctive religious worldviews. This in turn has given rise to increased religious pluralism
Religious pluralism
Religious pluralism is a loosely defined expression concerning acceptance of different religions, and is used in a number of related ways:...

, as well as to what are commonly known in the academic literature as new religious movements, which are gaining ground across the globe.

Criticism of religious belief



The most widely known Western criticism of religious constructs and their social consequences has come from atheists
Atheism
Atheism can be either the rejection of theism,or the position that deities do not exist.In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities....

 and agnostics
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality — are unknown or, in some forms of agnosticism, unknowable.It is not a...

. Anti-Catholic/anti-Christian sentiment first gathered force during the 18th century European Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....

 through pioneering critics such as Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit and his defense of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every...

 and his fellow Encyclopedists, who were for the most part deists
Deism
Deism or is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme being created the universe, and that this can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion...

. The French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...

 then instituted what later became known as secularism
Secularism
Secularism is the concept that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs.In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and freedom from the government imposition of religion upon the people, within a...

, a constitutional declaration of the separation of church and state
Separation of church and state
Separation of church and state is a political and legal doctrine that government and religious institutions are to be kept separate and independent from each other...

. In addition to being adopted by the new French and United States republics, secularism soon came to be adopted by a number of nation states, both revolutionary and post-colonial. Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a Germanphilosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism...

 famously declared religion to be the "opium of the people". This conception was applied in the state atheism
State atheism
State atheism has been defined as the official promotion of atheism by a government, typically by active suppression of religious freedom and practice....

 of social systems inspired by Marx's writings, most notably in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...

 and China
People's Republic of China
The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...

, and most notoriously in Cambodia, although Marx himself believed that religion would disappear by itself once the perceived social ills of capitalism were eliminated, therefore requiring no actual repression of religion. Systematic criticism of the philosophical underpinnings of religion paralleled the upsurge of scientific discourse within industrial society. T.H. Huxley in 1869 coined the term "agnostic," a term subsequently adopted by such figures as Robert Ingersoll
Robert G. Ingersoll
Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll was a Civil War veteran, American political leader, and orator during the Golden Age of Freethought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism.-Biography:...

. Later, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was an English philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the...

 told the world Why I Am Not a Christian
Why I Am Not a Christian
Why I Am Not a Christian is an essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic", and listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century....

.

Many contemporary critics fault religion as being irrational. Some assert that dogmatic religions are in effect morally deficient, elevating to moral
Morality
Morality has three principal meanings.In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief concerning matters of what is moral or immoral...

 status ancient, arbitrary, and ill-informed rules—taboos on eating pork, for example, as well as dress codes and sexual practices—possibly designed for reasons of hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene, refers to the set of practices associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. Hygiene is a concept related to medicine, as well as to personal and professional care practices related to most aspects of living, although it is most often associated with cleanliness and...

 or even mere politics in a bygone era.

In North America and Western Europe the social fallout of the 9/11 attacks contributed in part to the appearance of numerous pro-secularist books, such as The God Delusion
The God Delusion
The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford....

by Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, zoologist, Neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist and theorist and a popular science author....

, The End of Faith
The End of Faith
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason is a book written by Sam Harris, concerning organized religion, the clash between religious faith and rational thought, and the problems of tolerance towards religious fundamentalism....

by Sam Harris
Sam Harris (author)
Sam Harris is an American neuroscientist, non-fiction writer, and proponent of scientific skepticism. He is the author of The End of Faith , which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and Letter to a Christian Nation , a rejoinder to the criticism his first book attracted.-Early life and...

, and God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
God Is Not Great
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a book-length critique of religion by author and journalist Christopher Hitchens...

 by Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an English-American author, journalist, and literary critic. He has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets...

. This criticism is largely, but not entirely, focused on the monotheistic Abrahamic traditions.

Memetic theory of religion


Although evolutionists had previously sought to understand and explain religion in terms of a cultural attribute which might conceivably confer biological advantages to its adherents, Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, zoologist, Neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist and theorist and a popular science author....

 called for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas apart from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow. He argued that the role of key replicator in cultural evolution belongs not to genes, but to memes
Meme
A meme is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena...

 replicating thought from person to person by means of imitation. These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival.

In her book, The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore
Susan Blackmore
Susan Jane Blackmore is an English freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster on psychology and the paranormal, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine.-Career:...

 regards religions as particularly tenacious memes. Many of the features common to the most widely practiced religions provide built-in advantages in an evolutionary context, she writes. For example, religions that preach of the value of faith-based belief over evidence from everyday experience or reason inoculate societies against many of the most basic tools people commonly use to evaluate their ideas. By linking altruism with religious affiliation, religious memes can proliferate more quickly because people perceive that they can reap societal as well as personal rewards. The longevity of religious memes improves with their documentation in revered religious texts.

Aaron Lynch
Aaron Lynch
Aaron Lynch was an American writer, best known for his book Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society.-Outline of Lynch's theory:...

 attributed the robustness of religious memes in human culture to the fact that they incorporate multiple modes of meme transmission. Religious memes pass down the generations from parent to child and across a single generation through proselytism. Most will hold the religion taught them by their parents throughout their life. Many religions feature adversarial elements, punishing apostasy
Apostasy
Apostasy is the formal religious disaffiliation or abandonment or renunciation of one's religion, especially if the motive is deemed unworthy. In a technical sense, as used sometimes by sociologists without the pejorative connotations of the word, the term refers to renunciation and criticism of,...

, for instance, or demonizing infidel
Infidel
Infidel is an English word meaning "a person who does not believe in religion or who adheres to a religion other than one's own"...

s. In Thought Contagion Lynch identifies the memes of transmission in Christianity as especially powerful in scope. Believers view the conversion of non-believers both as a religious duty and as an act of altruism. The promise of eternity in heaven to believers or hell to non-believers provides a strong incentive to accept and retain Christian faith. Lynch asserts that belief in the crucifixion
Crucifixion of Jesus
The crucifixion of Jesus is an event that occurred during the first century A.D. in which Jesus was arrested, tried by the Jewish Sanhedrin, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged and finally executed on a cross...

 in Christianity amplifies each of its other replication advantages through the indebtedness believers have to their Savior for sacrifice on the cross. The image of the crucifixion recurs in religious sacraments, and the proliferation of symbols of the cross
Christian cross
The Christian cross is the best-known religious symbol of Christianity. It is a representation of the instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is related to the crucifix and to the more general family of cross symbols...

 (itself a meme) in homes and churches potently reinforces the wide array of Christian memes.

Criticism of the concept of "religion"


The Canadian scholar of comparative religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Wilfred Cantwell Smith was a Canadian professor of comparative religion. He notably and controversially questioned the validity of the concept of religion in his 1962 work The Meaning and End of Religion....

 argued that religion, rather than being a universally valid category as is generally supposed, is a peculiarly European concept of comparatively recent origin. His work has been enlarged upon by E.J. Sharpe, C.F. Keyes, and Timothy Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald especially notes in The Ideology of Religious Studies that the concept of religion as a study irreducible to sociology, history, etc., is a fallacy caused by a desire to protect the transcendent ideals of world cultures. He claims that writers cannot define a single concept called "religion" that applies to all cultures, because all definitions of religion have the dual effect of setting up an imaginary ideal onto which real practices are merely mapped, and serializing
Seriality
A seriality is a social construct which differs from a mere group of individuals. Serialities take the form of labels which are either imposed onto persons or voluntarily adopted by them...

 individual identity to include a separate aspect called "religion." In short, "there is no coherent non-theological theoretical basis for the study of religion as a separate academic discipline." The implication of Smith's and Fitzgerald's work is that religion, rather than being a special category which can be criticized or praised as a group, is merely one type of ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of aims and ideas that directs one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a...

, alongside humanism
Humanism
Humanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority...

, Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...

, nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...

 and so forth.

See also



  • Faith
    Faith
    Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. The word "faith" can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general....

  • Belief
    Belief
    Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.- Belief, knowledge and epistemology :The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....

  • List of religious populations
  • Religions by country
    Religions by country
    This article gives an overview about religion by country. Note that the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, will show dual figures; those are the percentage of people who believe in God and the percentage of nominal adherents who celebrate traditional religious holidays although...

  • Wealth and religion
    Wealth and religion
    There has been some research on the correlation of wealth and religion.Wealth is the status of being the beneficiary or proprietor of a large accumulation of capital and economic power....

  • Religion and happiness
    Religion and happiness
    Religion and happiness have been studied by a number of researchers. For example, the Handbook of Religion and Health describes a survey by Feigelman who examined happiness in Americans who have given up religion, in which it was found that there was little relationship between religious...

  • Religious conversion
    Religious conversion
    Religious conversion is the adoption of new religious beliefs that differ from the convert's previous beliefs. It involves a new religious identity, or a change from one religious identity to another. Conversion requires internalization of the new belief system...

  • Theocracy
    Theocracy
    Theocracy is a form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state's supreme civil ruler, or in a higher sense, a form of government in which a state is governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. In Common Greek, “theocracy” means a...


External links