Basic Tenets of Religious Beliefs - Essay Example

Basic tenets of Religious beliefs HUMN250-1402A-03 World Values and Cultures Phase 4 Individual Project Basic tenets of Religious beliefs Introduction Religion has dynamic effects on societies. Although at a first glance it is not easy to note the drastic effects that religion has on a culture, religion can influence stability and economic growth, the families, and social lives of the people. Anthropologists such as Wallace have defined religion as beliefs and rituals that focus on supernatural beings, powers and forces. Their emphasis is on collective, shared, and enacted nature of religion, emotions generated, and the meanings therein (Jacobs, 1973). This essay shall focus on examining the basic tenets of the following three religious groups; Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Religion has culturally been expressed in different perspectives. Anthropologists such as E. B. Tylor, who studied religion proposed that religion evolved through the following three stages; animism, polytheism and monotheism. According to Tylor, animism originated through attempts by people to explain dreams and trances, and Monotheism is the belief in a single and all-power deity while Polytheism is the belief in multiple gods. Religion is culturally universal, but with regard to its beliefs and practices, they vary across the different cultures, and there are also different kinds of religion. The different kinds of religion as identified by Wallace are; Shamanic, Communal, Olympian, and Monotheistic. Shamanic religion is a characteristic of foraging societies. This kind of religion as religious figures called Shamans, who are the mediators between people and supernatural beings and forces. Shamans include curers, spiritualists, astrologers, and diviners. Communal religion on the other hand is among the foragers, but is more typically associated with farming societies (Kaplan, 1973). Christianity, having the greater number of population is the world’s biggest religion. Its teachings are based on Jesus Christ. Christianity and other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, do belief in a sovereign God, and that He is the creator of the universe and its existence he continually maintains. This is supported by the Thomistic doctrine of creation continuans, from whose view is that God is the cause of existence and that everything lies within His power, thus nothing can exist on its own. From this point of view, creation is therefore termed as metaphysical rather than being physical and temporal concept. The argument by William McCrea who was a devout Christian and also state physicist, was that cosmology, in any form it exists in, must include the postulation of a divine creator. Theologians of both Protestants and Catholics in the 1950s pointed out that, Holyle’s external universe was not specifically heretical, for there was still need of a creator. They mobilized the old concept of continual creation and in addition emphasized that cosmic creation is mainly about ontological dependence of the world on God. Their emphasis was also that faith in God has little significance with physical cosmology in whatever version (Mascall, 1956). Christianity based its belief on the holy bible, comprising the Old to the New Testament. Christians worship in Churches, where services are led by a priest, a pastor or a reverend. Christians’ day of worship is normally Sunday, but Saturday has been added recently. Christians’ belief is that Jesus Christ was the son of God, who was sent to the earth in order to save humanity. Jesus also rose from the dead during resurrection after his crucifixion. Christians’ belief is that Jesus was the Messiah, who was promised to the people in the Old Testament. They believe in only one God, and that the one God consists of three persons. On the other hand, Christian’s belief on eschatology is constrained by the bible. Christians believe in the visible and bodily return of Jesus Christ. The prophets, apostles and Jesus himself spoke about the end of time (Guttmann, 1964). Judaism on the other hand is a religious tradition with the oldest monotheistic faith. The Hebrew leader, known as Abraham was the founder of Judaism. In comparison, Christianity is very much an outgrowth of Judaic tradition and its beliefs, with the additional belief in the Messiah. Both religions do share prophetic tradition, while each trace their ancestry to the patriarch Abraham, to whom God spoke to and was the first prophet. All the three religions have a similar characteristic of focusing on revelation; they sought knowledge regarding their God. This has been revealed by god through the prophets. Judaism traces its origin to the covenant of God made with Abraham and his lineage, that God will make sacred people and given the promised holy land. Jerusalem is regarded as their holy city. Jews also believe in a single God, whom they can worship and also regarded as their creator of the universe. Jews view the Messiah as their earthly king and they also believe in heaven and that God is the determinant of their after-life on earth (Kaplan, 1973). The Jewish holy book is the Torah and it has the first five books of the Christian bible. Jews place of worship are in either synagogues or temples. The Rabbi leads in their worship and their worship time is Friday evening. Judaism and its beliefs in afterlife is categorized according to division such as Orthodoxy, regional, and Zionist sentiment. Judaism has two attributes, which relates to the after-life. These comprises Sheol and Olam Haba, with Sheol being regarded as the dwelling place for souls. Thus, four main movements in Judaism presently are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist, varying from traditional to liberal and then to religiously progressive in the application of Torah. Olam Haba is considered as the dwelling place for pure souls. Judaism creation story of the universe lies within the bible. Since the initial confrontation of Jewish and Greek religion, there has been an attempt by Jewish philosophers to harmonize biblical account of creation (Guttmann, 1964). Finally, the third religious group under study is Islamic. It is the second most largest religious group in the world. The origin of Islam is in Arabia and its revelation was through Prophet Muhammad. The followers of Islam are Muslims. They believe in only one God who is Allah. Christianity and Islam have a common belief in terms of how the universe came into being. They possess the same similarity in terms of sacred scripture thoughts. In the Islamic religion, the main sacred scripture book is the Qur’an. The origin of this is traced to a man named Muhammad. His purpose was to warn people to turn to God. In addition, the communal building for the Muslim to worship is the Mosque. They are assembled for prayer 5 times a day. Muslim normal day of working is Friday. It is a challenging task in identifying the Islamic concept of the end times. There is no clearly outlined information in regard to this. Unlike Christian scholars, there has not been an attempt by the Islams to systematize their concepts to a chart and diagrams in order to show their relations. The Islamic book written by Dr. Samel, called the Last Supper symbolizes his attempt to show specific major concepts of Islamic eschatology. According to Dr Samuel Shahid, Muslims and Christians are comparable. His attempts were to show that Mohammud secured many of these ideas orally from Christians and Jews (Mascall, 1956). Therefore, this indicates that the three religions possessed some similar characteristics. In addition, Dr. Shahid indicates that the Hadith compilation was during the Islamic period, and at this time, Islamic authorities knew more information about the bible and Christian traditions, doctrines, and their literature. As a result of this, many of the Hadith passages generated were heavily influenced by Christian sources, hence making Islamic and Christianity to acquire some similar characteristics. In Christianity, the book of revelation illustrates the signs of the end of times. Similarly, Islam also teaches that only God knows the end of time so do Christianity. These are the signs indicating the seasons. The religions indicate that the major signs relate to the specific prophesied events, which are expected to occur before Antichrist appearance and the ‘hour’ of resurrection and judgement (Jacobs, 1973). The Islamic events mirrors those of Christianity, hence demonstrating a similar characteristic. The Islamic and Christianity communities center on a Messianic individual, known as Mahdi. Islam on the other hand rejects that God rested on the seventh day during creation. Islam also rejects any attribution of human form to God, thus they are the underlying differences between Islam and the other religions. Moreover, they disagree that God wrestled with one of His angles. In conclusion, despite there being different religions, the three religions have some beliefs which guide their everyday kind of behavior, thus the different behaviors observed in the various groups are just due to the existence of specific aspects of strong beliefs shaping their characters. On the other hand, religion does have virtues, which offers great lessons and advice on ethics and gives guidelines on how to live. References Guttmann, J. (1964). Fundamentals of Religion. Canada: Printing Press. Jacobs, L. (1973). Jewish Theology. New York: Behrman House. Kaplan, A. (1973). Hand Book of Jewish Thought. Maznaim: Press. Mascall. (1956). The Foundation of Jewish Belief. New York: Publishing House. Read More