Religion Nye Basics Summary

Religion: The Basics by Malory Nye In order to understand the complex, global community in which we reside, we have to understand one of its underlying currents, religion !oncludes that since religion is what people do, therefore the study of religion is concerned • with people and cultures Religion is not merely a set aside time or set of beliefs but also dictate social norms and cultural • activity" #religion is culture $%& ' thorough study of religion must be cross(cultural • The study is an agnostic pursuit in that the academic study of religion is not interested in theological speculation, but rather classifying and understanding the human sphere In early )*++s, viewed religion primarily as a way to grapple with the self  • igmund -reud purported that religion was a misguided outgrowth of an adolescent.s struggle with his father  Based on his assumptions of the human personality p ersonality and misguided in that it assumes that all other religions share father figure /ur cultural setting significantly impacts our religious outloo0 $for instance how a particular • culture views fatherhood impacts how it sees its divine fatherly figure& Religion and culture are a symbiotic relationship whereby they both inform each other • 'lthough the fundamentalist approach it there is o nly one religion $their own&, the common •  parlance is to refer to many world religions /ne of approach to the study1 classification classification of religions religions is the world religions paradigm $where • each religion where what distinguishes each religion from a nother is emphasi2ed 3roblematic approach in that it lac0s the rich, vibrant experience of each religion 'lso gives the impression that each religion consists of a homogenous group of people  4losses over other religious groups who simply do not have the large number or  participants hould use the world religions paradigm as a starting point but primarily wor0 from the bottom • up $ie to begin at the particular, locali2ed culture& hould use the terms !hristianties, 5induisms, etc to communicate that each of these #ma6or • religions7 have a very specific way wa y of being lived in different places The mass abandonment of religion can be used to bolster the claim that religion is not innate • nor universal, but could also be argued that communism or other ideologies are the new age religions 8ifficulty in trying to identify the universality of religion is a language barrier: is religion what • we connote with the 9nglish word religion or is it more expansive Religion can mean many different d ifferent things depending on the cultural context • #Religion is about a way of tal0ing about the world, of perceiving differences and similarities • with other types of activities7 $);& ◦

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 Nye in this article attempts to show that the collo
Therefore, it is accurate to classify the foodies, who b elieve in eating healthy and showing 0indness to animals, are a religious group This seems preposterous because there is no divine being in their belief system 5owever, they have a common value system and use the same nomenclature to describe their ideology This is a helpful definition of religion because it creates a more pluralistic view of the world Religion is not something that by participating in it ma0es me superior Rather, it is a common bond that connects all individuals of the world 3erhaps, it is part of the world culture