EFFECTS OF RELIGION - Essay Example

Section/# Organized Religion and its Effects on People and Cultures: A Brief Analysis of Belief as a Fundamental Definition of Meaning, Belonging, and Place in the World/Society The article in question states that religion has long been a means for individuals to express the world through mythical and mystical means. As such, religion is a way that individuals express their own reality. Accordingly, the idea, definition, scope, perspective, and sense of situations analyzed through a religious prism mean a variety of different things to different peoples (Fisher 2005).

Depending on the religion, it is easy for individuals to define a given situation or an issue in different ways. Although much as been made of the recent era of globalization, there are few solitary factors that can provide a level basis of understanding across the world religions. An example of this can be seen through the way in which Imperial Japan was able to use its religious fervor to require the kamikaze pilots to sacrifice their lives in suicide missions. Although the allies did not understand such an approach at that time, the theory behind this was simple.

Sacrifice for the fatherland was a highly desirable form of sacrifice that ensured a firm link would remain between the ancestors and the current generations. This is a prime example of how a religious point of view helped to define a nation in the midst of wartime via a reliance on the traditions and shared religion that helped to define the group as a whole.Similarly, organized religion in Middle Ages Europe served to retard the process of knowledge acquisition and scientific discovery. The Catholic church exhibited such a high degree of control that the overall result was that human and scientific knowledge and development were delayed by nearly 400 years.

In this way, it is easy to see some of the net effects of complete societal control by a religious entity. Although these two examples are both pejorative, there exist positive examples as well. However, these are usually with relation to an overall sense of morality and/culture that a societal interpretation of religion invariable gives.ReferenceFisher, M. (2005). Living religions. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice-Hall.