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The Meaning(s) Of Religion

GOD

n.----1. God
a . A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.
b . The force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being. (Christian Science) c . “Infinite Mind; Spirit; Soul; Principle; Life; Truth; Love” (Mary Baker Eddy).
2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality. 3. An image of a supernatural being; an idol.
4. One that is worshiped, idealized, or followed: money was their god. 5. A very handsome man.
6. A powerful ruler or despot.
[ Middle English from Old English; See gheu(…)- in Indo-European Roots.]
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Faith
n.--1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, an idea, or a thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See note at belief. See note at trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
Theology-- 4. Often Faith The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Moslem faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.
Idioms:------in faith
1. Indeed; truly.
[ Middle English from Anglo-Norman fed from Latin fid¶s; See bheidh- in Indo-European Roots.]
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Satan
Sa·tan
Theology---1. The profoundly evil adversary of God and humanity, often identified with the leader of the fallen angels; the Devil.
[ Middle English from Old English from Late Latin Satan from Greek Satanas, Satan from Hebrew, devil, adversary , to accuse]
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Tam·muz also Tham·muz
1. The tenth month of the year in the Jewish calendar.
[ Hebrew Tamm¿z from Babylonian Du'uzu, the name of a god]
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The·ol·o·gy
pl. the·ol·o·gies Abbr. theol. 1. The study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational inquiry into religious questions.
2. A system or school of opinions concerning God and religious questions. Protestant theology; Jewish theology.
3. A course of specialized religious study usually at a college or seminary. [ Middle English theologie from Old French from Latin theologia from Greek theo-, theo- -logia, -logy]
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heav·en
1. Often heavens The sky or universe as seen from Earth; the firmament. 2. a . Often Heaven The abode of God, the angels, and the souls of those who are granted salvation.
b . An eternal state of communion with God; everlasting bliss.
3. a . Heaven God: Heaven help you!
b . heavens Used in various phrases to express surprise: Good heavens!
4. Often heavens The celestial powers; the gods: The heavens favored the young prince.
5. A condition or place of great happiness, delight, or pleasure: The lake was heaven.
Idioms: move heaven and earth
1. To do everything possible to bring about something desired.
[ Middle English heven from Old English heofon; See ak- in Indo-European Roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition ©
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Religion, in the broadest sense, a way of life or belief based on a person's ultimate relation to the universe or God. In this sense such diverse systems as Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Shinto may be considered religions. In a more commonly accepted sense, however, the term religion refers to faith in a divinely created order of the world, agreement with which is the means of salvation for a community and thus for each individual who has a role in that community. In this sense the term applies principally to such systems of Western civilization as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which involve faith in a creed, obedience to a moral code set down in sacred scriptures, and participation in a cult. In its most specific sense the term refers to the way of life of a monastic or religious order.
It is impossible to find a satisfactory definition of religion or a realistic way of classifying the various kinds of so-called religion because of the important differences of function among the various systems of belief and practice in various parts of the world. A general survey and comparison of religions would therefore be misleading if the material to be examined were all assumed to be of the same kind. It is a historical accident that the earliest European students of foreign or primitive cultures used the term religion for phenomena of which they had only a rudimentary knowledge. They jumped to the conclusion that other cultures must have institutions of the same type and function as Christianity or Judaism in their own culture. This premature assumption is at the root of much of the confusion.
In light of more advanced knowledge, a survey of religions must therefore begin by restricting the term religion to those institutions for which it has customarily been used: Judaism and its descendants, Christianity, and Islam. If this restriction is somewhat arbitrary, it nevertheless has the merit of giving the word a clearer meaning by confining it to institutions that have much in common.
The next step must be to examine the so-called religions found in other cultures, noting the degree to which they correspond to the term in its restricted sense and then employing new ways of classifying them when no correspondence is to be found. Such correspondence is not a matter of doctrinal agreement or disagreement, for example, as to ideas of God or of moral conduct. It is a matter of deciding whether institutions that have been called religions have the same function in their various cultural contexts that an institution such as Christianity has in the West.
Another difficulty that complicates the attempt to survey religions from the historical standpoint is the customary notion that so-called primitive religion is the earliest and most undeveloped form of human religious feeling and practice. It is not safe, however, to assume that non-Western forms of culture lacking technological development are necessarily representative of the first gropings of the human race toward spiritual insights. The more that is known about different types of culture, the more difficult it becomes to fit them into any simple evolutionary scheme or even into any clear system of types.

Primitive Religions
The varieties of feeling and behavior known as primitive religion constitute a type of consciousness that Western civilization has lost.

Internal and External World
The main feature of primitive religious consciousness, as studied among peoples such as the Polynesians, African blacks, or Native Americans, is the absence of any sharp boundary between the spiritual and the natural world, and thus between the human mind or ego and the surrounding world.

Myth
Similarly, such cultures have no religious doctrine or abstract concepts about the nature of the numinous and its difference from everything else. Spirit is a feeling rather than an idea; the language most appropriate to it consists not of concepts but of images. Thus, instead of religious doctrine, there is myth, or an unsystematic complex of stories handed down from generation to generation because such tales are felt in some undefined way to represent the meaning of the world. According to the earliest anthropological interpretations of myth, the mythical gods and heroes personify the heavenly bodies, the elements, and the so-called spirits of the crops and herds, and myths are naive explanations of the ways of nature. A later interpretation is suggested that myths are based on dreams and fantasies giving concrete expression to unconscious psychological processes. the psychological unconscious, like the human body, has more or less the same structure among all peoples; this uniformity accounts for the astonishing resemblances between mythological themes in unconnected cultures throughout the world. He felt further that these unconscious processes shape people's mental and spiritual growth and that for this reason mythological imagery and its enactment in ritual is a kind of wisdom for the direction of life. Thus, when a tribal dance is believed to assist the rising of the sun, the enactment of the rite gives the members of the tribe a sense of meaning—that is, of playing a significant part in the life of the total universe.

A somewhat similar explanation of myth was offered in the studies of Indian and Indonesian culture by Sri Lankan scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy, who believed that the great mythical themes are parables of a timeless philosophy, an intuitive knowledge of human nature and destiny that has always been available to those who truly wish to plumb the depths of the human mind. American philosopher Susanne K. Langer holds that myth affords the earliest example of general ideas and therefore of metaphysical thinking (see Metaphysics). According to Langer, language is better suited to express new ideas by metaphorical than by literal means. The assumption that solar and fertility myths are rudimentary attempts to explain natural forces, as science explains them, must probably be abandoned. Just as the myth-making cultures do not distinguish between spirit and nature, or religion and life, neither do they demark symbolic truth or fantasy from literal truth or fact. It is not a matter of confusing myth with fact, for the idea of the literal fact has not yet arisen.

Theism
Religion, in this sense, is invariably theistic . It involves belief in a personal, living, and spiritual God, distinct from the world that he has created as the human mind is felt to be distinct from what it knows. Various forms of theism exist, however. The Old Testament of the Bible shows a progress from henotheism (belief that the community must be loyal to one god only) to monotheism (belief that this god is the one and only God). Other forms of theism are polytheism, belief in many gods, which includes usually at least a vague apprehension that the many are aspects of one; pantheism, the belief that God is simply all things in the universe (although this type of belief is historically a philosophical idea rather than a religious belief); and panentheism, the belief that every creature is an appearance or manifestation of God, who is conceived of as the divine actor playing at once the innumerable parts of humans, animals, plants, stars, and natural forces. See also Immanence.

Religion is therefore communal faith in and conformity to the pattern that thought discovers, or has revealed to it, as the will or commandment of the intelligence behind the world. The community binds itself to this pattern as its rule of life consisting of three elements—the creed, the code, and the cult. Creed is faith in the revealed pattern and in the divine intelligence that gave it. Code is the divinely sanctioned and authorized system of human laws and morals comprising the rules of active participation in society. Cult is the ritual of worship, or symbolic acts, whereby the community brings its mind into accord with the mind of God, either by ceremonial dances or dramatic reenactments of the deeds of God, or by sacrificial meals held in common between God and his people. It is from this last-mentioned type of cult that, for example, the Christian Mass or communion service is derived.

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