These teachings are incompatible. They can both be false, but certainly they cannot both be true. And so I told the student that I would not com- promise Christianity by mixing it with Buddhism or any other faith. Syncretism is repeatedly forbidden in the Old Testament.
Later in Exodus the Israelites disobeyed this and created a golden calf to worship after Moses went away up the mountain to meet God. King Manasseh once placed an image of a false god named Asherah in the temple of the Lord. Other faiths are based on the ideas and values of men, whereas Christianity is a revelation of God and teaches reliance on Christ and the Scriptures.
Christians need to avoid the empty ideas of men, because they will corrupt our devotion to Jesus Colossians It is a way of life, a path of enlightened living. Buddhism has no real creed, dogma, or conversion ceremony. It is not about beliefs but about practice.
In the Buddha's path of enlightened living, there is nothing to believe and everything to be discovered through its moral, compassionate, wise, and nonviolent practices and principles. To my mind, spiritual practice is perfect--so just do it! Join Beliefnet Today!
See all our uplifting newsletters! Add some inspiration to your inbox. Tales of the Egyptian, Greek and Norse pantheons are now considered legends, not holy writ. It took three centuries for the Christian church to consolidate around a canon of scriptures — and then in it split into the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches. Since then, Christianity has continued both to grow and to splinter into ever more disparate groups, from silent Quakers to snake-handling Pentecostalists.
If you believe your faith has arrived at ultimate truth, you might reject the idea that it will change at all. But if history is any guide, no matter how deeply held our beliefs may be today, they are likely in time to be transformed or transferred as they pass to our descendants — or simply to fade away.
If religions have changed so dramatically in the past, how might they change in the future? Is there any substance to the claim that belief in gods and deities will die out altogether? And as our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge? Find out what it would mean if AI developed a "soul". To answer these questions, a good starting point is to ask: why do we have religion in the first place?
But in fact, he was being perfectly sincere. Many modern students of religion agree. The broad idea that a shared faith serves the needs of a society is known as the functionalist view of religion. One recurring theme is social cohesion: religion brings together a community, who might then form a hunting party, raise a temple or support a political party. They must compete with other faiths for followers and survive potentially hostile social and political environments.
Under this argument, any religion that does endure has to offer its adherents tangible benefits. Christianity, for example, was just one of many religious movements that came and mostly went during the course of the Roman Empire. According to Wood, it was set apart by its ethos of caring for the sick — meaning more Christians survived outbreaks of disease than pagan Romans. Islam, too, initially attracted followers by emphasising honour, humility and charity — qualities which were not endemic in turbulent 7th-Century Arabia.
Read about the "light triad" traits that can make you a good person. Given this, we might expect the form that religion takes to follow the function it plays in a particular society — or as Voltaire might have put it, that different societies will invent the particular gods they need.
Conversely, we might expect similar societies to have similar religions, even if they have developed in isolation. And there is some evidence for that — although when it comes to religion, there are always exceptions to any rule.
Hunter-gatherers, for example, tend to believe that all objects — whether animal, vegetable or mineral — have supernatural aspects animism and that the world is imbued with supernatural forces animatism. This worldview makes sense for groups too small to need abstract codes of conduct, but who must know their environment intimately. An exception: Shinto, an ancient animist religion, is still widely practised in hyper-modern Japan. At the other end of the spectrum, the teeming societies of the West are at least nominally faithful to religions in which a single watchful, all-powerful god lays down, and sometimes enforces, moral instructions: Yahweh, Christ and Allah.
Whether that belief constitutes cause or effect has recently been disputed , but the upshot is that sharing a faith allows people to co-exist relatively peacefully.
The knowledge that Big God is watching makes sure we behave ourselves. Or at least, it did. Today, many of our societies are huge and multicultural: adherents of many faiths co-exist with each other — and with a growing number of people who say they have no religion at all. We obey laws made and enforced by governments, not by God. Secularism is on the rise, with science providing tools to understand and shape the world. Powerful intellectual and political currents have driven this proposition since the early 20th Century.
Communist states like Soviet Russia and China adopted atheism as state policy and frowned on even private religious expression. His successors are emboldened by surveys showing that in many countries, increasing numbers of people are saying they have no religion. Despite this, religion is not disappearing on a global scale — at least in terms of numbers. Muslims would grow in number to match Christians, while the number unaffiliated with any religion would decline slightly.
Modern societies are multicultural where followers of many different faiths live side by side Credit: Getty Images. Religion will continue to grow in economically and socially insecure places like much of sub-Saharan Africa — and to decline where they are stable. That chimes with what we know about the deep-seated psychological and neurological drivers of belief. When life is tough or disaster strikes, religion seems to provide a bulwark of psychological and sometimes practical support.
In a landmark study, people directly affected by the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand became significantly more religious than other New Zealanders, who became marginally less religious. The traditionally religious both belonged and believed; hardcore atheists did neither.
The research suggests that the last two groups are significant. In interim results released in May , the researchers found that few unbelievers actually identify themselves by these labels, with significant minorities opting for a religious identity.
But what does it actually mean? In , Linda Woodhead wrote The Spiritual Revolution , in which she described an intensive study of belief in the British town of Kendal. Today, Woodhead says that revolution has taken place — and not just in Kendal. Organised religion is waning in the UK, with no real end in sight. US megachurches bring in thousands of worshippers Credit: Getty Images. In poorer societies, you might pray for good fortune or a stable job. But if your basic needs are well catered for, you are more likely to be seeking fulfilment and meaning.
Traditional religion is failing to deliver on this, particularly where doctrine clashes with moral convictions that arise from secular society — on gender equality, say.
0コメント