Philosophy of Religion

What are the 3 etymological derivations of religion?

• Latin religio, (n)

• Latin religare, (v)

• Latin relegere, (v)

Latin religio

• reverence for gods; piety

• relationship with impersonal realities

• vertical dimension

Latin religare

• to bind together

• religion helps in consolidating social identity

• horizontal dimension

Latin relegere

• to read again, to consider again, to consider closely, to rethink things

• connecting ourselves to others

• substantial dimension

Religion can be defined as

• a set of beliefs and practices that structures individual and communal life

• an account of one’s own life

• a theoretical and practical attitude towards a transcendent entity

What definition of religion relates to religare?

a set of beliefs and practices that structures individual and communal life

What definition of religion relates to relegere?

an account of one’s own life

What definition of religion relates to religio?

a theoretical and practical attitude towards a transcendental entity on which one’s existence and the world that we inhabit is taken to depend

Spirituality is religion …

personalized

Religion is spirituality …

institutionalized

Religious definition can either

• emerge from within a particular religious tradition

• center upon an awareness of an and response to a reality that transcends ourselves and our world

What are the two definitions of religion?

• Religious

• Naturalistic

Naturalistic definition of religion

• describes religion as purely a human activity/state of mind

• tends to be reductionist

  • heightened morality

  • socio-cultural reality

  • personal piety

What definition of religion negates the supernatural dimension of religion?

Naturalistic

Philosophers who reduced religion to morality

• Kant

• Iris Murdoch

Kant on religion

• morality leads to religion

• Critique of Pure Reason

• Critique of Practical Reason

Critique of Pure Reason

there are things that pure reason can never affirm and those are things within religion

Critique of Practical Reason

though there are things that pure reason can never affirm, they have to be affirmed as postulates of religion

Iris Murdoch

morality has always been connected to religion and religion with mysticism

Mysticism

a non-dogmatic essentially unformulated faith in the reality of the Good, occasionally connected with the experience

Philosophers that reduced religion to socio-cultural reality

• Clifford Geertz

• Emily Durkheim

Clifford Geertz

religion as a cultural system ‘of symbols which act to establish powerful, pervasive and long-standing moods and motivations in men’

Emily Durkheim

• God is society writ large

• ‘a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things i.e. things set apart and forbidden’