Introduction to World Religions

• Belief 


  Something that you believe or accept as true. You might believe something based on fact, an opinion or an assumption
• Belief System 


  not necessarily correct or accurate
• Worldview 


  a collection of beliefs about life and the universe being held by people
• Monotheism 


  the doctrine or belief in one supreme god
• Polytheism


  the belief and worship of many gods
• Monoism 


  asserts that there is no real distinction between god and the universe
• Atheism 


  disbelief in or denial of the existence of a personal god
• Agnoticism 


  denies the possibility for a man to acquire knowledge of the existence of god
• Religion 


  refer to any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices aimed at communicating or propitiating with supernatural beings
• Edward Burnett Tylor


  belief in spiritual beings
• James George Frazer 


  propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to control and direct the course of nature and of human life
• Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 


  a body of self-contained acts being themselves the fulfillment of their purpose; an affair of all, in which everyone takes an active and equivalent part
• Edward Burnett Tylor 


  believed in souls or anima found in people (seen in dreams) and in all of nature. Since spirits could be helpful or harmful to human beings
• Robert Henry Codrington


  found out that the Melanesian people believed in mana or magic, a mysterious force that inhabited all of nature
• Animistic Theories

  • Edward Burnett Tylor
  • Robert Henry Codrington
• Nature-Worship Theory 


  human beings first developed their religions from their observations of the forces of nature
• Wilhelm Schmidt 


  found a common belief in a distant high god, that originally there had been one great god above all oters, and that he may have been the creator of the world of the father of the many lesser deities
• Theory of Original Monotheism

  Wilhelm Schmidt
• James George Frazer 


  found that people had gone three phases of development concerning the spirit world:

  • primitive magic
  • religion
  • science
• Magic Theory

  James George Frazer
• Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach 


  found tta there were no gods and that belief in gods was simply wish fulfilment. Troubled people who could not cope with the difficulties in life projected their wishes and developed gods and religions
• Karl Heinrich Marx


  said that religions were developed by the few as a means to control the masses and supress revolution as a result of the continuing struggle between classes
• Sigmund Freud 


  said that religin originated from the guilt that individuals supposedly feel in hating their fathers
• Wish Fulfilment Theory

  • Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
  • Karl Heinrich Marx
  • Sigmund Freud
• Spirituality 


  can be described as one's integrative view of life and involves a quest for the meaning and ultimate value of life as opposed to an instrumentalist or materialistic attitude to life
• Theology 


  systematic study of the existence and nature of the divine
• Philosophy of Religion 


  not a branch of theology but a branch of pilosophy