World Religions Midterm Exam

What is the meaning of religion?

Concerns the scared, involving beliefs or ideas and traditions, is a response to preciousness of life, a matter of meanings, arguments for and against religion.

Who discovered animism?

Tylor

What is animism?

That all things, even plants have souls or spirits

What did Frazer say about gods?

Real power is not principles, but personalities, supernatural beings called gods. Totemism (evolution of religion beginning with magic)

What did Frazer write?

The Golden Bough

What was Frazer’s overall idea of what religion is?

Magic

What did Sigmund Freud believe religion was?

Neurosis

Functionalist reductionism

Dismisses religion as a mental disease

What did Freud primarily study?

Psychoanalysis

Without (blank), there is no religion

Society

What is sociology?

Science of society

What is Durkheim’s definition of religion?

Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices, relative to scared things (totemism)

For Karl Marx, religion is

Alienation

Bonus Question: What is the lowest tier on Maslow’s pyramid of hierarchical needs and cannot be fulfilled in capitalist societies according to Marx?

Food, shelter and clothing

Did Marx critique religion?

Yes

Key idea in Hinduism

Reparation

Four stages of life in Hinduism

Students, workers, retirement, beyond retirement

What occurs during the retirement stage in Hinduism?

Religious enlightenment

Four yogas in Hindu

Knowledge, love, work, psychophysical

Dharma

Path of life in Hinduism

Jainism

All beings have a soul, non-violence and non-attachment, not about gods, rather that the individual is a god themselves

Life of Buddha

Lived as a prince, then went into the woods without his clothes and mediated by a tree for 49 days enlightened

Four Noble Truths

The truth of pain and suffering, the truth of arising pain, the truth of cessation of pain and the Eightfold Path

Eightfold Path

Right view, right intention, right speech, right livelihood, right action, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration