1/19- The Study of Religion, Pt.1

Question 1

Xenophanes of Colophon

Answer 1

projection of human onto the divine

Question 2

plato

Answer 2

religion is meant to serve moral and pedagogical ends

Question 3

plato’s beliefs

Answer 3

positive stories of the gods produce good citizens

Question 4

Euhemerus

Answer 4

Euhemerism
all stories of divine beings are confused history

Question 5

Euhemerus Book

Answer 5

“The Sacred History” - asserts that the gods are just deified humans

Question 6

Cicero

Answer 6

explains religious practice on a social & political basis

Question 7

Cicero Conservatism

Answer 7

religion serves an important role in society; it binds people together through activities and rituals, teaches good morals

Question 8

factors that produced the modern academic study of religion

Answer 8

Colonialism, Missionary Work, The Enlightenment

Question 9

The Enlightenment

Answer 9

-reason and observation
-knowledge
-believed in god, not churches
-natural religion

Question 10

natural religion

Answer 10

accessible and noble, either intuitively or through reason alone

Question 11

E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer

Answer 11

-British anthropologists with a special interest in religion
-Posited an evolutionary model of religion where science and modernity were antithetical to religion
-Religion was invented to explain what cannot be explained
-Religion is fundamentally a belief in immaterial, superhuman beings

Question 12

Emile Durkheim

Answer 12

-french sociologist
-Studied aboriginal religion in Australia to understand the most “primitive” form of religion”
-Religion is a projection of group solidarity into sacred objects, rituals, and beliefs (“God is the Community”)

Question 13

Emile Durkheim Book

Answer 13

“The Elementary Forms of Religious Life”

Question 14

Mircea Eliade Year

Answer 14

1906-1986

Question 15

Mircea Eliade

Answer 15

Religious experience is sui generis and that which grows out of this experience is the object of religious studies

Question 16

sui generis

Answer 16

from itself

Question 17

Marx

Answer 17

Religion is the opiate of the masses

Question 18

Summary of Modern Study of Religion (4)

Answer 18

-modern vs primitive people
-Grows in tandem with tools and ideas of social sciences (anthropology, sociology)
-overarching statements, theory can be a definition
-disagreement

Question 19

enlightenment time period

Answer 19

1685-1815