Religion Defined
I am writing a series of blogs on the subject of religion because it is an emotive and important subject and not as cut and dried as one might think.
There are very few subjects that tend to produce a wide range if intense emotions and religion is definitely one of those subjects, yet most people actually don’t really understand the subject, or have an extremely prejudiced view of it.
You’d thi9nk with all the discussions of this subject it would be well understood, but this just isn’t the case. I am therefore embarking on the difficult and possibly unwise task of bringing some sanity to this subject.
Let’s look at the definition:
Religion: This is a difficult one. For propaganda purposes dictionary definitions tend to favour the Christian definition of religion. Societies that have other types of religions don’t tend to have a tradition of dictionaries for their language.
Christianity is very much one of the “new kids on the block” as far as religions go, that and Islam. I am not making any derogatory comment by saying this, I am just stating the fact that there are may religions practiced on this planet that are much older.
So defining religion as a “belief in God” or even “the worship of a God or his prophet in a house of worship” doesn’t really define the subject as there are many religions that do not insist on a belief in God as part of their practices.
So, let us see if we can come up with a good definition:
“Religion is a set of beliefs or practices that are designed to raise a Man out of suffering and unhappiness by connecting him with God or the Divine or imbuing him with Supernatural powers of abilities that raise him to a superior state."
As you canl see, my proposed definition covers all types of religions
It includes the. The Jewish religion is one that teaches absolute faith in a God or Supreme Being, that life is suffering and that eventually the Jewish people, who are the people chosen by God, will be rescued by a Messiah.
It also includes Christianity which was a Jewish sect that grew to be a world religion in itself.
Also inclided oin this is Islam, which grew out of Christianity. Iit adopted some of the Christian religious books and accepts some of it's prophets, Christ is recognised as a prophet in Islam but not the Messiah.
These are all what I call “faith based religions”, more on that in later blogs
.
Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world, it grew out of the Vedic Hymns, ancient writings about the formation of the Universe. It got very mixed up with other ancient religions and Gods over the period it existed, but at it’s core there is still the original purpose which is that man lives many lives in suffering and the purpose is to raise man to a higher state and free him from this constant cycle of birth, death rebirth. Buddhism grew out of Hinduism and spread around the world to become a world religion and has the same purpose as Hinduism. I’ll talk more on this in later blogs. Buddhism and Hinduism do not insist on abolute unquestiioning faith in God or Gods but are more oriented to self discovery.
There is a third and very ancient type of religion that I know exists but I don’t know much about it because it is very secretive.
Most people think the Pagan religions died out hundreds of years ago, but apparently they did not. Christianity attempted to crush them in the Middle Ages but they just went underground and more secretive.
As I say, I don’t know much about these religions but as far as I can tell they believe in re-incarnation like the Eastern religions but they believe in different Gods and the accumulation of Power and superiority over others through the use of symbolism.
There are thousands of different branches of this particular type of religion but it includes the Pagans, the Wiccas, the Druids and many secret societies. A lot of them grew out of the ancient Mystery Religions of the ancient world and started to revive during the Renaissance. It is difficult to get real information about them as by their nature they are secret. Many sects are very much into the importance of “bloodlines” and they have a hierarchy almost solely based on this.
So as you can see, my definition of religion covers all of these different and vasried types of religions. Let me know what you think, do you agree with this? If not, why not?
Hope to hear from you.
|
