REL 2000 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Polytheism, Materialism, Individualism
Document Summary
Braun: validity of category, not validity of traditions, dolphin example, categories: how we know & interact with the world, hard to know what all religions share, religion as a specter, like a ghost: there and exists, seems real: hard to nail down, broad definitions; narrow definitions, ambiguous terms: holy, sacred, reductionism: sociology (durkheim), psychology (freud, enlightenment, reason, rationality instead of theology: religionswissenschaft (religion science, religion = universal: not just judeo christian = problems with definition, bruce lincoln"s academic definition, arts de faire = practices of everyday life. Doesn"t allow for religion as sui generis (of its own kind: academic approaches cant include non human origins, doesn"t mean they don"t exist, religion as a concept, if it isn"t an independent reality, don"t define it as such, solely the creation of the scholar"s study, understand what we call the term religion instead. Civic debates about what is validly american t ruths: t ruths = no, theological, academic, t ruths =
