User:Andries/Theories of religion
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Scope and classifications
This article only treats influential theories about religion that are open for empirical verification or falsifications. This means that most religious views will not be treated here.
Theories and definitions of religion can be classified into
- Substantive, focusing on the contents of religions and the meaning the contents has for people
- Functionalist (and in a stronger form Reductionist) that focuses on the function that religion has for people.[1]
(Pals)
E. B. Tylor (1832 – 1917) defined religion as belief in supernatural beings and stated that this belief originated as explanations to the world. Belief in supernatural being grew out of attempts to explain life and death. Primitive people used human dreams in which spirits seemed to appear as an indication that the human mind could exist independent of a body. They used this by extension to explain life and death, and belief in the after life. Myths and deities to explain natural phenomena originated out of an analogy and an extension of these explanations. His theory assumed that the psyche of all peoples of all times are more or less the same and that explanations in cultures and religions tend to grow more sophisticated via monotheist religions, like Christianity and eventually to science.[2]
James George Frazer (1854 – 1941) followed Tylor's theories to a great extent, but he distinguished between animism and religion. He asserted that animism relied on an uncritical belief of primitive people in contact and imitation. He asserted that according to them animism worked through laws. In contrast religion is faith that the natural world is ruled by one of more deities with personal characteristics, not by laws.[3]
Their theory has been criticized for neglecting the social aspects of religion.
Marx and the opiate of the masses
(Pals and Kunin)
Karl Marx held a strictly materialist world view and saw religion originating from alienation and supportive as the status quo, in correspondence with his famous saying that religion is opium of the people.
Durkheim and functionalism
Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) Émile_Durkheim#Religion (Pals and Kunin)
(Kunin)
Freud and psychoanalysis
(pals and Kunin)
Otto and the idea of the holy
Eliade and the sacred
Mircea Eliade (1907 – 1986)
(Pals)
Evans-Pritchard Society's construct of the heart
E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902 – 1973)
(Pals)
Geertz religion as cultural system
(Pals)
Stark and Bainbridge theory
Rodney Stark & W. S. Bainbridge's in their book "Theory of Religion" and subsequent works present four models: the Psychopathological Model, the Entrepreneurial Model, the Social Model and the Normal Revelations model.
- Psychopathological model: religions are founded during a period of severe stress in the life of the founder. The founder suffers from psychological problems, which they resolve through the founding of the religion. (The development of the religion is for them a form of self-therapy, or self-medication.)
- Entrepreneurial model: founders of religions act like entrepreneurs, developing new products (religions) to sell to consumers (to convert people to). According to this model, most founders of new religions already have experience in several religious groups before they begin their own. They take ideas from the pre-existing religions, and try to improve on them to make them more popular.
- Social model: religions are founded by means of social implosions. Members of the religious group spend less and less time with people outside the group, and more and more time with each other within it. The level of affection and emotional bonding between members of a group increases, and their emotional bonds to members outside the group diminish. According to the social model, when a social implosion occurs, the group will naturally develop a new theology and rituals to accompany it.
- Normal revelations: religions are founded when the founder interprets ordinary natural phenomena as supernatural; for instance, ascribing his or her own creativity in inventing the religion to that of the deity.
See also
Notes
References
- Kunin, Seth D. "Religion; the modern theories" University of Edinburgh
- Pals, Daniel L. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508725-9