RELI 1710 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Practice, Totem
13 Oct 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Religious studies: the knowledge of religion, categorization of things, way of distinguishing religion. Theories of religion: (cid:272)ie(cid:374)tists (cid:272)reate the (cid:272)ategories: sports are(cid:374)"t religio(cid:374)s, makes rules & applies them/fundamental essences of science, more interested in academic aspect/just trying to understand, magic = a way of manipulating something to get what you want. Beaver on totempoles: group cohesion, religion cements the group together; why it exists even with science, did(cid:374)"t see ho(cid:449) it (cid:272)a(cid:374) also (cid:271)e a (cid:272)ause for (cid:272)o(cid:374)fli(cid:272)t, some groups do not separate all items into profane & sacred. Definitions: over 50 different ways to defining religion, with over 50 different definitions, religion cannot be defined. Its evidence that religion can be defined in at least fifty different ways. Internal debates, not scholarly: there is no data for religion, getting dressed, traveling, speaking, killing an animals. Everything around us is potentially data for religion.
