REL 101 Midterm: Study Guide, 2019
25 Feb 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Looking back from stonehenge there are a few concepts shared virtually by all human cultures which seem fundamental to what we call religion. Powerful gods, sacred places, a life of some kind after death, and the presence in the physical world of spirits that interact with humans in various ways. For instance a common belief among sacred places is that this is where humans tend to feel they are in the presence of some unusual energy or power. Spatial reasoning through a religious perspective often associates the sky with the greatest or most powerful deities. Thus many sacred places can be high up such as on hills or mountains. The adaptation of traditional jewish thought and practice to the modern world laid the foundation for the emergence of what we know today as the reform, orthodox, reconstructionist and humanistic branches of judaism.
