Rels. 205.01 Lecture 1.

Defining “Religion”?
 Study Information
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Remember to read the Smart and Welbourn papers
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 Questions and Issues
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 Tutorials and Assistance

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Lecture Outline for Part One of Rels 205.01
Week 1
Lecture 1 What is “Religion”?
Lecture 2 Studying “Religion”
Week 2
Lecture 1 Ritual and the Study of Religion
Lecture 2 Religious Traditions
Week 3
Lecture 1 Sacral Sentiments
Lecture 2 The meaning of myth
Week 4
Lecture 1 Arguments for Belief in God
Lecture 2 Traditional Christianity
Week 5
Lecture 1 Changing Worldviews
Lecture 2 Review
Week 6 Reading Week
Week 7
Lecture 1 First in class test
This book is required for the final assignment
and as background reading throughout the
course. It will be on sale in class today and next
week for $20
Richard Fletcher The Barbarian Conversion

Richard Fletcher (1944-2005)

 Readings on Religion
Ninian Smart (1927-2001)

“Meaning in religion and the meaning of religion”

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/courses/Courses-
2006/Rels-205/readings/smart-religion.html
Fred Welbourn (1912 - 1986)

“Towards a Definition of Religion”

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/courses/C
ourses-2006/Rels-205/readings/fred1.html
Is Scientology a Religion?
 Scientology

New Centre in Berlin in the news January 2007

Not a religion – German Government

Founded by in 1955 L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1976)

Science fiction writer

Dianetic (1951)
 Is Scientology a Religion?
“Scientologists in German
push” By Tristana Moore
BBC News, Berlin,
Saturday, 13 January 2007
 What is Scientology?

Aims at increasing individual abilities

through a rigorous practice based on a rich
mythology found in Hubbard’s writing. A
form of confession using an e-meter, yoga
like meditation, special diets and other
practices free the individual from evil
influences and discover the true self or
“Theatan” within.
 Is Scientology a REAL
religion?
BBC News, Saturday, 23 February, 2002, 01:55
“Scientologists face Paris ban”

“The public prosecutor in France has accused the

Church of Scientology of engaging in "mental
manipulation" and called for it to be shut down in
Paris.”

What is a “real” religion?

 Problem of Buddhism
and many traditional religions
 God in Buddhism

The importance of dogma

“Buddhists do not believe in God”

Professor Paul Williams

Department of Religious Studies
University of Bristol
What is Buddhism about?
 Problem of Buddhism
and many traditional religions

Buddhism is a religion without God as its central focus

 God in Buddhism
The importance of dogma
“Buddhists do not believe in God”

Professor Paul Williams

Department of Religious Studies
University of Bristol

The Unexpected Way (2002)

 Salvation in Buddhism

Release from Samsara - the wheel of existence

Nirvana/Nibbana
In some other religions: either they
have no god or God is unimportant
What do we mean by “religion”?
 Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
in Tom Jones
“By religion I mean Christianity; by Christianity
I mean Protestantism; by Protestantism I mean
the Church of England, as established by law.”
 A Basic Rule of Definition

Any definition of religion must

apply to all groups we normally
call religions and exclude those
we do not call religions.
 Religion = belief in God or the gods
Buddhism, explicitly rejects the idea of God
 Seeing everything as religion

Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

“Religion is ultimate
concern.”
 Fred Welbourn (1912 - 1986)

“Towards a Definition of Religion”

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~hexham/courses/Courses-
2006/Rels-205/readings/fred1.html
 Stark’s Definition of Religion
Religion refers to systems of general
compensators based on supernatural
assumptions.

Rodney Stark (1940-)

Emile Durkheim’s Definition of Religion
“A unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things.”

Emile Durkheim
(1858-1917)
 Jacob Wilhelm Hauer
(1881-1962)
“The deepest and most consequential insights are not the
products of thought but of ‘revelations’ … ‘powerful inner
experiences’ that convince the hero of ‘being grasped by a
power or possessed by God …” Inaugural lecture 1921
 Max Weber (1864-1920)
“To say what it is, is not possible …
the essence of religion is not even our concern,
as we mike it our task to study the conditions
and effects of a particular type of social behavior.”
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

“The recognition of all our duties

as divine commands.”
 Definitions of Religion
BERGER, Peter - "the human enterprise by which a SACRED
cosmos is established."

FRAZER, James - "a propitiation or conciliation of powers

superior to man which are believed to direct or control the
course of NATURE and human life."

HEGEL, George - "the knowledge possessed by the finite mind

of its NATURE as ABSOLUTE mind."

JAMES, William - "the BELIEF that there is an unseen order,

and that our supreme GOOD lies in harmoniously adjusting
ourselves thereto."
 More Definitions of Religion
MARX, Karl - "the SELF-conscious and SELF-feeling of man who
has either not found himself or has already lost himself again...
the general theory of the world... its logic in a popular FORM... its
moral sanction, its solemn completion, its universal ground for
consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the
human essence..."

SCHLEIERMACHER, Friedrich - "a feeling for the infinite" and "a

feeling of ABSOLUTE dependence.“

WHITEHEAD, Alfred North - "what the individual does with his

own solitariness."
How do we define religion?
Kant Philosophy

Durkheim Sociologically

Marx Historically

Frazer Anthropologically

James Psychologically

Schleiermacher Religiously

Each according to his own discipline/interests

 Self-created religion

“My mind is my
Church”
Tom Paine (1737-1809)
 Private Religion

“Blue Cheese Cult”

The Origins of Cheese
The Social Context: amaNazarites
 Seeking A Practical Solution

A set of institutionalised rituals identified with a

tradition and expressing and/or evoking sacral
sentiments directed at a divine or trans-divine focus
seen in the context of the human phenomenological
environment and at least partially described by
myths or by myths and doctrines.