Chapter 1 Definitions Flashcards
Atheism
Perspective that denies the existence of a God or gods.
Cosmology
Understanding the nature of the world that typically explains its origin and how it’s ordered.
Empathy
The capacity for seeing things from another’s perspective, and an important methodlogical approach for studying religion.
Globalization
The linking and intermixing of cultures; any process that moves a society towards an internalization of religious discourse.
Henotheism
The belief that acknowledges a plurality of gods but elevates one of them to special status.
Modernization
The general process through which societies transform economically, socially, and culturally to become more industrial, urban, and secular; any transformation of societies and cultures that leads to the abandonment of traditional religious values.
Monism
The belief that all reality is ultimately one.
Monotheism
The belief in only one God
Multiculturalism
The coexistence of different peoples and their cultural ways in one place at one time.
Mysterium Tremendum and Fascinans
The contrasting feelings of awe-inspiring mystery and overwhelming attraction that, according to Rudolf Otto, characterize the numinous experience.
Mystical Experience
A general category of religious experience characterized in various ways, for example, as the union with the divine through inward contemplation or as the dissolution of the sense of individual selfhood.
Myth
A story or narrative, originally conveyed orally, that sets forth basic truths of a religious tradition and that often involves events of primordial time that describe the origins of things
Nontheistic
Term denoting a religion that does not maintain a belief in a God or gods.
Numinous Experience
Rudolf Otto’s term for descriing an encounter with the divine; it is characterized by the two forces Mysterium Tremendum and Fascinans.
Pantheism
The belief that the divine reality is identical to nature or the material world
