theology test 1

Mythology vs. religion: mythology is functioning community of stories, striving to maintain its own coherence though its membership can change vs. religion is myth and science both lapse in dogma (always true)

Creation Myths (esp. Aboriginal story):

Aborigine Creation Myth: starts with the All-Father waking up the Sun Mother to go to Earth and wake up all the creatures that lived there. When they woke up, they became alive, which caused conflicts between creatures. To resolve this, the Sun Mother gave everyone the power to shapeshift. However, this caused problems, which made her take away this power and created the Morning Star and the Moon. They were considered above animals because they had their mother’s brain and did not desire to shapeshift. The Morning Star and Moon would oversee the creatures and would be our ancestors.
Inuit Creation Myth: nothing but water → stones/rocks came from sky → land was created. There was darkness & humans and animals lived as one species (took on each other’s forms and shapes). New words were created → contained powerful magic (ex: if you say tree, a tree would be there).
Yoruba Creation Myth: Olorun lived in sky with orishas and Olokun. Obatala asked Olorun for permission to create dry land for other creatures → took bag with sand-filled snail shell, white hen, black cat, and palm nut. He climbed down a gold chain but ran out of it so he poured sand and the hen pecked at it → spread to create hills and valleys. He planted the palm nut → made trees and wine. He was lonely so he made clay creatures. He asked Olorun to breathe life into them → mankind created.

Iroquois, Dakota, Apache religions: all are animist and totem, landbased spirituality, and anthropomorphic, more you move, less religion completed it is

Iroquois	Dakota	Apache
Great spirit, invisible agent, evil minded	Wakan tanka	Sun? Sky? (moved a lot that they couldnt develop a religion)
Many resources	Buffalo: meat, skin for clothes, good for housing, fat for oils and bones for tools Led to water, helped predict seasons Use poop as heat source	Live in desert → no time for anything at all
Complicated religion

Cults vs. Sects/Religions:

Cults: certain religious groups outside of mainstream western religion

Sketchy, has certain bizarre beliefs, has interesting rituals that isn’t orthodoxy

Sects: broken away from church denominations
Religions: belief that God exists and that

Oral vs. Written religion

Oral	Written
No restrictions	Text is final opinion → what the right action is
Land based (what u sear and hear)	Spreads out and quickly
Small, tight knit group (hard to move)	Can carry with you and copy it
Spreads slowly (hard to spead)	Translation → required to have interpretation
No translation	(re) interpretation
Ask for clarification	Hard to change or destroy
flexible	Has consistency
Genocide destroys it (easy to eliminate)	More reliable

The Dreaming: belief in powerful beings who arose out of land, created people, plant, and animal life, and connected groups of people with language and regions.

Dukkha: suffering that exists in our world because we tend to hold onto things that makes us suffer.

Australian Aboriginal religions: believe that the Dreaming exists in everything and that we possess dreaming spirits. Totemism and that Dreaming is below our world. There are sacred sites where you can summon the Dreaming and we have ancestors that live in nature. Child spirit comes from ancestor and its Dreaming can be determined by where it was given birth. Each area has a different dreaming. There are rites of passages and other rituals and there are medicine men that connect normal ppl to the spirit world. If someone breaks religious ethics, the whole group is punished and all must work to restore goodness.

Henotheism: worship of one God but doesn’t deny existence of other smaller deities

Hinduism (basic tenets): one supreme god that has other smaller gods to help Him. Henotheistic (not denying other gods but there is just one) and monotheistic in a way. Soul is immortal and reincarnates to learn more through good karma which leads to moksha (liberation). We seek to live a good life through good dharma and we respect the cow bc it gives everything. We believe in ahimsa (nonviolence) and so we respect the cow as it represents other helpless creatures. We worship a murti as a way to connect to God. We teach vegetarianism as a way to practice ahimsa. We follow the vedas and there are four of them. The bindi represents the third eye and is used in fashion nowadays and differs in each region, or sect. Gods are gender neutral and not really married (i think they are). We erase caste but it has been part of society (which sucks).

Monotheism: one deity

Buddhism (basic tenets, moral system): four noble truths, letting go of suffering is nirvana (kinda like moksha), we can have being cravings (wanna be something) or oblivion cravings (disconnect from life and the world). We can have wise wants that doesnt kill us if we don’t get it. There is dukkha but we must let go in order to be free.

	Theravada	Mahayana	Vajrayana
History (when did it start? How did it start? Where did it start? Where did it spread?)	It started in India when, after the death of Buddha, the community split into different sections, one of them being the Sthaviravadins. They then split up once again, one of the groups called the Mahasanghika. After a few more split-ups between sects and communities, we end up with the Theravada sect. During the reign of the emperor Ashoka (3rd century BCE), the sect traveled to Sri Lanka and eventually continued to spread eastward, becoming very prevalent in areas like Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.	1st Century BCE Sutras written after the death of Gautama (Buddha). Started in India, spread to China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka (central and east Asia)	-Started in the 7th century CE -Marks the transition from Mahayana speculative thought to the enactment of Buddhist ideas in individual life -Developed in India and neighboring countries, notably Tibet. -Spread across the Himalayan region
Creed (Fundamental beliefs? Comparison to other sects?)	Theravada monks have an ideal of an arhat (“perfected saint”) and believe that regular people cannot attain this state – only monks can. They revere the Buddha but do not worship any other saints.	The idea of the bodhisattva, or one who seeks to become a Buddha - Other sects illustrate that the idea of bodhisattva is only for the Buddha The Mahayanists view the as a an earthly manifestation of a celestial Buddha No such thing as dualities (evil/good, existence/nonexistence). Thus, nirvana is not real, cannot be sustained. Rather, Mahayana Buddhists focus more on wisdom and the mastery of knowledge to achieve awakening. People can transfer merit (good karma) to deceased relatives and deities.	There is a Buddha-nature within us. This can be accessed through spiritual practices. To add on, the true nature of self and reality are not different. Followers of the vajrayana sect believe in tantric practices and meditation. This sect is more loose and believes that everyone has a different bodhisattva within their meditations.
Ceremonies (What are specific elements of specific celebrations?)	Monks undertake training which contains 227 rules with 5 main precepts: Refrain from harming living beings Refrain from taking that which is not freely given Refrain from sexual misconduct Refrain from wrong speech; such as lying, idle chatter, malicious gossip or harsh speech Refrain from intoxicating drink and drugs which lead to carelessness Wesak marks the birth or enlightenment of a person. The parinibbana or passing away of the Buddha is another ceremony, and for both communities have services at the temple.	Merit-making, bowing, giving offerings, chanting, meditating on the qualities embodied by specific buddhas or bodhisattvas (such as compassion and wisdom) and pilgrimage.	Tantric rituals, meditations, and several types of yoga, such as deity yoga, guru yoga, and more. There aren’t specific celebrations/ceremonies but we do know that they focus on tantric rituals.
Fun facts?	There are over 100 million Theravada Buddhists. Theravada texts are written in Pali.	“Mahayana” means “the Great Vehicle” because the Buddhist doctrine is often compared to a raft or ship	“Vajra” means “thunderbolt”, or “diamond.” “Yana” is the spiritual pursuit of the ultimately valuable and indestructible.

Polytheism: multiple, equally powered deities

Iconography: entire collection of symbols of deity, religion, religious practice in a specific religion (ex: murtis and drawings in Hinduism → iconography in Hinduism)

Panentheism: God existing in and giving life to all things

Taoism (basic tenets): holy books: taoist canon (was rewrote but kept on getting burned), tao-tzu (poetic and serious), chuang-tzu (prose and wild), lieh-tzu (stories and humorous). Done, not said. Tao is ancestor of all things and is timeless. Humanity follows earth, earth follows sky, sky follows Tao (follows its own way). Don’t get stuck on material goods. No real god but follow the Tao.

Pantheism: God is across the natural world and is in everything

Yoruba (basic tenets): everyone experiences ayanmo, or fate/destiny. Everyone will reach Olodumare, which means to be one with divine creator. The physical world is called the Ayé and there is an ashe, which is a powerful life force possessed by everyone. Orishas help us communicate with spirits and there is a negative force (ajogun), which is something that we can escape by getting help from an Ifa, or a priest. They believe incarnation is a good thing and that gender is nonexistent in that and in God.

Karma: cause and effect; good/bad actions come back in future; helps us learn to live a better life

Inuit religion (basic tenets): oral traditions, carvings to illustrate stories and to enhance the experience. They respect animals because they can understand humans. There is a world beneath us (sea) and in the sky. There are shamans that help connect people and to talk with spirits. Everything has a INUA, or soul, which is why they respect everything, even the things they hunt. They believed in taboos and other rites of passages. When one dies, they can either go to the sky or the sea but it depends on the perception of that society. One is better than the other realm. Sedna, the goddess of the sea, is very important to this religion as she is also the female principle of the world.

Nontheism (“atheism”): no God whatsoever

Dharma: seek to live a good life through right action, thought, and speech

Immanence: God is present on Earth.

Taoist poetry & interpretation: gotta look at the poem but it mainly talks about time being an illusion, be connected with nature, importance to sun and moon, etc.

Transcendence : can move across planes

Asceticism: living a simple life without physical pleasures

Four Noble Truths:

Suffering exists
Suffering has causes
We can end suffering
Eightfold path

(Outline of) Eightfold Path: end to suffering and prescription for healthy life style

View
Intention
Speech
Action
Livelihood
Effort
Mindfulness
Concentration

Teleology: goals based (live a good life to achieve ultimate goals like moksha)

Animism: everything has a soul (ex: seals, canoes have soul)

Creed (belief system), Clergy (place of worship), Ceremony (rituals): what it takes to make a religion

Totemism: carries power of God in an object (can connect you to spiritual world)

Double faith theory: high theology for educated and low theology for the masses (dumbs)

Orthodoxy: right belief system

Orthopraxy: right practice

Anthropomorphizing: making something that isn’t human into a human (ex: pretending the dog is human)