Miami University REL 101 Final Exam

Religion as a field of study - -Is a discipline. Defined by an object of study, the sacred. Made up by multiple disciplines: Psychology, Sociology, Art, Literature, and History. Egyptian Kinship - -Changed the civilization from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists. Nile River created job specialization. Role of women became big (had control over contraception, and knew how to prepare food), as well as decided which men were to be the traders. Nile allowed transportation as well as trade. Increase in trade of luxury goods. Egyptians were buried with their possessions because they believed that they would be able to use them in the afterlife. Power Mystique - -Obscurity of government with the use of religious symbols. Allowed leaders to have an advantage over those in which they ruled over. Marx - -Believes that religion is created by man. Helps explain the unexplainable. Religions reflect the society in which they are created in. Berger - -Purpose of religion is to cosmocize the world. Create order. Durkheim - -Most important thing in the world is to sustain community. Describes the difference between sacred and profane. Things that hold the society together are sacred. Haidt - -(Builds on Durkheim). Human beings are both individual and collective. People are different when they are alone and when they are involved in a group. Transcendence - -*Think ladder* Human beings move from individual to collective. Profane is individual, sacred is being part of a group. Freud - -Ego, Super Ego, ID. Privation, prohibition, frustration. Three categories of circumstance: Free from terror of nature, Fate, compensate you for restricting yourself to fit into society. Freud- Ego - -Negotiates between what you do and what you want to do. Evolves your sense of self. Freud- ID - -Want something but society stops you in order to exist with other beings. Freud- Super Ego - -"I'd like to but I can't" Know the norms of society REL 101 REL 101 Dostoyevsky - -Miracle, Mystery, and Authority. People are always looking for something or someone to follow, and someone to tell them what to do. Theodicy - -The idea that we can justify god's existence in evil, reconciling the idea of an all-good, all-powerful god with the existence of a suffering world. AKA difference between good and evil. Utopia - -View of a perfect world. Ethics - -Rules that we use to view what is good, true, and beautiful relative to a utopian society. Church/Sect - -Church is obligatory- something you are born into. Sect is voluntary- must be admitted into. Soteriology - -Theory of salvation. How one can be saved. Eschatology - -View of how the world should end. Idea of the afterlife. Ritual - -Signifies through behavior Two qualities: strategic and situational. Three functions: Appropriates, Dichotomizes, and mediates Three stages: Beginning, Liminal, and end. Myth - -Signifies through narrative. Signified Signifier/Sign= myth Iconicity - -Signifies through objects. Celebrity - -Signifies through persona. Spectacle - -Signifies through public display. Atheism - -Belief that there is no god. Paine - -Our ideas on how we should live in the world come from nature, ordinary social interactions, and our logical reasoning. He believes that there is no proof that god revealed himself to man, but if it were true, we trust someones integrity. Believes that not all religions are peaceful because it relies on the faith of other men. Survival of the fittest - -Natural Selection (Darwin). Those who are best equipped to live in society, live. Ayn Rand - -Should rely on reason not faith in terms of ethics. The grounds for our reasoning should be our rational self-interest. Also believes in a Laissez-Faire economic system in which there is limited government regulation. REL 101 REL 101 Soros - -Believed that the best way is to allow participants to pursue their own self interest with no restraint or oversight in the economy. Market fundamentalism. Basically a free market system. Singularity - -Creation of super intelligence. Kurzweil. H+ - -Transhumanism. The idea that humans and technology will eventually merge. Reflexivity - -Critique against the notion of a free market. Idea that individuals will drive prices too high and make the economy unsustainable. Consumer Society - -Planned obsolescence and distribution of goods. Wealth and resources are distributed through consumption of objects. Technocracy - -Aristocracy is engineers and scientists. Society is based on technology. Theosophy - -Co-founded by Blavatsky. God can be achieved through spiritual ecstasy. Must be enlightened by a divine wisdom. Scientology - -Created by L. Ron Hubbard. Receive donations by being audited. Purpose is to move up in levels in order to rid alien spirits. Each level requires a donation of a certain amount of money. L. Ron Hubbard - -Creator of scientology. Believes that you must sell yourself in order to be completely enlightened and "saved". Aleister Crowley - -Founded Thelema. Was an occultist- was exclusive in their beliefs. Thelema - -Founded by Crowley. A spiritual religion in which one is to discover "True Will" "Love is the Law" True Will (Thelema) - -To find his/her true self Magick - -The art of causing changes in consciousness in the conformity of the will. Parsons - -Rocket engineer. Worked to reincarnate the goddess Babalon who would give birth to the anti-christ. Was a member of Thelema. Blavatsky - -Co-founded Theosophy (God achieved through spiritual ecstasy) Mystic - -One finds god through self indulgence. REL 101 Ascetic - -One finds the divine through restricting themselves. Jim Jones - -Created "The People's Temple". Wanted to create a utopian society in South America. LRH's Apotheosis - -He was able to tell the people anything they wanted to hear in order to achieve divine status. Polyani - -Believed that there was no such thing as a free market. It is impossible to have a working economy without government in