What is Religious Studies?

Religion covers a wider area and it simply means the relationship existing between the human beings with God with human beings being the creation of God in His own image. The several numbers of religions look up to one supreme God or gods. Basically, I don’t think my study prejudiced my discernment of what makes a religion rather than a philosophy. Nonetheless, it did provide more resources to comprehend dissimilar religions and the different phases of them better (Norenzayan, 265). The number of religions in the recent past has risen and so to the number of the believers, it is difficult to define religion in words because each faith is dissimilar and consequently every detail is in deep depth. The chief identification of religion involves rituals, symbols, and beliefs (Cowling & Maurice, 52). The obvious religious beliefs comprise of spiritual influence, deities, belief in life after death and lastly miracles. Lastly, rituals are practices or religious ceremony entailing a number of series of schedules performed bestowing to a prescribed order, they are performed during different religious segregation. In contemporary Christianity common rituals would be baptisms, weddings, naming. Philosophy, by contrast, has to under a series of agreements in a quest to prove if for sure the certain reasoning is true beyond any reasonable doubts. And if by any chance there is distinguishable and worth explainable reason for it, then it cannot be proximately acknowledged as veracity (Durkheim, 27). Consequently, religion and philosophy are related to various numbers and at one point one would confuse the two (Noll, Mark & Harlow, 27). Religions have composure of ethics, rules, belief and morality which serve as guidance to the way of living whereas philosophy covers a bigger domain of discipline which dwells with concepts such as metaphysics, knowledge and quest for the ultimate truth. Philosophy and religion are the roots of change in today’s society, they are responsible for what is going on in the contemporary world politics, for instance, has some borrowing from the religious perspective even though it is being degraded with the wake of paradigm in the political arena.

 Philosophy has taken many formations of worship and for starters it is not inclining towards any ritualistic ways, but we find that philosophy tries to discern what really nature of these very rituals administered by man is and properly why they occur. The son of God Jesus can be seen as philosopher whereby later on mankind started bringing His teaching and like that it turned out to be a religion (Norenzayan, 265). The difference between the two is so complex by the fact the more you define the dissimilarity starts becoming thinner. Christianism is what is contained in churches where is has building blocks of religion where Christ teachings are administered, however, an individual can be called a Christian or a person who attest Christian philosophies (Cowling & Maurice, 52). Generally, we tend to believe that a religious person is anybody who is morally uprights in all manners others would say it is all about good life and making sure you do the right thing. Both can be true depending on which point of view and further what are this moral and righteous has to do with being religious (Cowling & Maurice, 52). Religion has to have a combination of purity and living the ways which God deems right as taught in the holy book, I cannot say it has anything to do with good life since it might be an immoral way yet one considers good life in his own perception (Noll, Mark & Harlow, 29). Therefore, religion has to be conjoined with following the ways of Christ assimilated by morality and purity in heart.

Religion is the amalgamated structure of philosophies and observes which happen to be relative hallowed things, it is simple as setting apart the forbidden beliefs together with does which marry to unique solitary decent civic christened church. This is what structures a society in a diverse number of ways to an extent it influences how things are run. Durkheim a much-respected philosopher believes that it is the religion which system of ideas by which men envision the society of which they themselves are the members find it obscure yet it intimidates relations they have with it (Noll, Mark & Harlow, 27). Social groups, for instance, were based on tribal alterations; society is the system of interrelated parts which religion among others is enabled to perform functions in helping maintain unanimity and societal commonality inside all humanities (Durkheim, 127). Indeed during the times of crisis in the society, religion always come on the way to help tackle the issue in a varied number of ways, also in birth, marriage and death which makes a chief disruptive change in social groups is depending on religion to minimize the disruption (Norenzayan, 265). Up to date, religion is still a force to reckon in the society, during the early day religions did introduce mission schools before it was later taken by the government, however, they are still a number of them managed by the churches (Cowling & Maurice, 52). On the negative side, though, religion has been as a weapon which Karl max reinstates that the ruling group of people legitimates the travail of the poor class into believing that suffering is moral.

Over the past few decades, research on religion has revealed religious practice significantly helps a lot in shaping the society. Provide the extent at which religion as managed to maneuver to change in society we can say that understanding religion greatly contributes to the contribution to constitutional order which is related to country’s prosperity. Religion is a powerful antidote to many pressing issues in our society today of which many has hit historically high proportions. Marriage conjoint in religious upbringing has proved overtime to be a stable marital relationship (Noll, Mark & Harlow, 27). When religion is not persuasive in a society or by any chance ceases to exist, the society is more relatively to inherits the whole burden of immorality in the public, rise of crime and tolerance equating the same. For society to survive well in things trying times, a need of religion is ultimate option for the restoration of good deeds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Norenzayan, Ara. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton, NJ [u.a.: Princeton University Press, 2013. Print.

 

Noll, Mark A, and Luke E. Harlow. Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007

 

Cowling, Maurice. Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 2003. Print.

 

Durkheim, Émile. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Dover Publications, 2012. Internet resource.