Discuss or beliefs. Take the words ‘revelation’ or

Discuss or beliefs. Take the words ‘revelation’ or

Discuss the criteria you will employ to determine if people on earth are religious-in other words, what does religion look like? People long to make sense of life; to find the key that will unlocks its mysteries and enable them to understand themselves and their place within the universe. Faced with their own fragility and death, they seek courage and comfort.

Longing to develop and create, they seek inspiration. In this human quest for meaning, some take to philosophy, others to the creative arts, and others- in fact the majority of humankind-take to some form of religion.Almost every aspect of life can become the raw material out of which a religious interpretation of life may be built.

Each religion presents us with a particular view of life, expressed in its teachings, scriptures, and traditions. But is it necessary to be committed to that religion in order to understand and appreciate what it teaches. Describe three examples of behaviors or beliefs you observe that meet the criteria you established above. One example would be for one to experience religion. If there were no religion, there would be no philosophy of religion.If there were no religious experiences there would be no religion.

Religion, unlike most philosophy, starts with the interpretation of experience, with trying to make sense of life as a whole, or of particular things that happen. Very few people who call themselves religious spend their days reflecting on the logic of believing in the existence of God or any higher power. What they are actually doing is living with a particular way of seeing things and a particular set of values.

The take way of seeing things and a particular set of values.They take part in acts of worship and feel uplifted. They claim to be inspired to have moments of insight. They find that, even when not engaged in specifically religious activities, they see an experience that tend to reinforce their faith-they see a beautiful sunset, or experience childbirth: they face their own death or that of a loved one; they fall in love. At all of these moments, their experience is informed by and in turn informs their religion. Another example is religious language. You could argue that there is no such thing as religious language.

There is simply language that is used for particular purposes. It can be used to express or describe religious experiences, practices or beliefs. Take the words ‘revelation’ or ‘incarnation’. Each of these words have specific meaning within religion, and can form part of a religious argument. Yet none is simply a description of something with which science could deal. You cannot point to ‘incarnation’ in the way you might point to ‘man’ or ‘tree’.

In order to communicate, each must therefore be defined in terms of other words- words that can be understood outside the religious context.Without understanding the words of explanation, religious terms are meaningless. The last example is religious beliefs.

It is clear that a person’s religious beliefs will influence his or her moral choices, and that the moral values held by a society are likely to reflect those of its dominant religion, even if these are not made explicit in each and every individual moral choice. Based on your observations, explain what the function of religion appears to be on Earth. In many cultures and times, religion is the basic foundation of life and of human existence.But from the time of the European Enlightenment, religion has become in the West an object to be studied, rather than unquestioned basic fact of life. If you find that religion can be better discussed in terms of something other than its function, explain how else religion could be understood.

Faith is a matter of personal commitment and trust. A person’s faith is not be equated with a list of the things that he or she claims to believe. It includes them but it is more than that, for it describes the way in which he or she relates to them.There is a difference between believing that something is true and believing in something that you believe in. It implies commitment and trust. Believing that something is true simply means that you think the statement is correct, whether or not it is of any personal interest to you.

So for example, ‘I believe that God exists’ may be the logical conclusion of an argument, but does not imply that a person is in any way influenced by that belief, whereas ‘I believe in God’ implies that a person has a personal relationship with God, or at least believes that God in some way matters.