Transcript Taxonomy of Religions Flow Charts to Believe In! TAXONOMY OF RELIGIONS Taxonomy = the science or technique of classification To perform taxonomy, one must.

Taxonomy of Religions
Flow Charts to Believe In!
TAXONOMY OF RELIGIONS
Taxonomy =
the science or technique of classification
To perform taxonomy, one must develop
a variety of categories, which function as
vectors of classification
Vectors of Religious Taxonomy
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Distance between Sacred and Human Realms
Number of Deities
Philosophic Cosmology
Scope of Membership and Recruitment
Social Organization (Basic Types)
Social Identities and Locations (class, race, status,
gender, education, etc.)
• Types of Practices and Modes of Knowledge
(literate/oral, legal/mystic, ritual/philosophy)
Micro- and Macro-Levels
• Religion functions at the level of organizing
daily existence (micro), through such
mechanisms as formulating codes of
behavior, marking life-cycle events with
rituals, and dictating community norms.
• Religion also functions at a larger
ideological level by providing a framework
for meaning, determining what is significant
and what is inconsequential.
SIGNIFICANCE
• The word ‘significance’ is related to ‘sign’
• Religious world-views recognize life-cycle events as
significant (birth, death, war, illness, coming-of-age,
etc.)
• Each religious world-view also accords unique
significance to persons/events/places that would not
be immediately understood as significant - these
instances of created significance form
incommensurate differences between religions
• Examples: who Jesus is to Christians, what Mecca
means to Muslims, what Mt. Tamalpais means to
Coast Miwok, etc.
Hierophany
• Word derived from
hieros = sacred, phanos =
to see, know
• Means any manifestation
of the sacred
• Grand hierophany defies
our perceived rules of
nature (i.e. a miracle)
• Intimate hierophany is a
deeply-felt experience
with cosmological
dimensions and insights
Hierophanies reveal the universe
C
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g
y
• In religious studies terms, all religions are
socially-constructed cosmologies. A
cosmology interprets the universe by providing
organizing principles. These principles
distinguish between what is significant and
what is considered unimportant, accidental, or
inconsequential.
• Astronomers, physicists, and philosophers also
use cosmology, but do so in a less sociallyconstructed and behavior-motivating manner
than religions. The use of the term in these
fields is more descriptive than prescriptive. In
religion, cosmologies often lead to normative
regulation
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Examples
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Cosmological •
Organizing
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Principles
Afterlife
Justice, Balance
Hierarchy
Stasis and Motion (Being and
Becoming)
God/desses, Supernatural Beings
Distance between Humans and
Gods
Status of Animals and Nature
Conflict or Harmony (War and
Peace)
Gender, Sex, Sexuality
Four Basic Types of Human
Social Organization
• TYPE
• Gathering/Hunting
• Nomadic Raiding
• Small-scale
Agricultural (Villages)
• Urban (Large-scale
Agricultural)
• SOCIAL EFFECTS
• Relative equality and
little job specialization
• Preference to young,
male, physically able
• Relative equality and
little job specialization
• Hierarchic, increasing
job specialization
Religious Cosmologies and
Social Organization
• Religion makes cosmologies real when it builds
institutions, articulates codes of behavior, and sets
social expectations.
• Religion thus establishes authority.
• Authority and social institutions seek to maintain
the existing social order, rather than change it;
they are inherently conservative, meaning both
that they conserve what exists and that they have a
political bias toward maintaining traditional ways.
Religious Cosmologies and
Social Organization
• "Religion legitimates so effectively because
it relates the precarious reality constructions
of empirical societies with ultimate reality"
- Peter Berger in The Sacred Canopy
• Meaning: religion assures us that our form
of social organization has divine sanction.
But, the moment one begins to reflect
comparatively, this assurance is under
assault!
Hierarchy
• Word literally means government by those
who are closer to, or have access to, the
sacred.
• The religious basis for authority of all kinds
(political, military, familial, etc.) is deeply
rooted - watch for examples in our current
politics, despite the USA being an officially
secular nation.
Centralized Authority
• While all religions have authoritative figures and
stories/writings, some religions have a tendency to
centralize that authority, usually in a pyramidal
manner.
• The Catholic Church, with a strict hierarchy of
officials culminating in the Pope, is an example of
centralized religious authority.
• Ancient city-states, from Egypt to Mexico to
Mesopotamia, literally organized their societies
around such centralized authority, both religious and
political.
Pyramidal Hierarchic Structure:
Catholic Church as Example
Pope
Cardinals
Archbishops
Bishops
Priests
With each ascending layer, there are fewer people in the category.
Decentralized Authority
• Hinduism has multiple centers and sources of
authority. As a result, it cannot, and does not,
impose universal agreement in its communities, or
in its belief system.
• Hinduism is, thus, polycentric, which means having
many centers. This matches its polytheism.
• Catholicism, by contrast, is monocentric, which
means it has one center. This corresponds to that
faith’s monotheism, cosmologically.
Religion and Community
• Because religion marks many life-cycle
moments (birth, death, illness, etc.), religion
functions as a major way of experiencing
community.
• Exclusive religions insist that you can only
belong to one religion at a time; the
monotheistic religions are insistent on this
point.
• Inclusive religions allow for participation in
multiple systems.
Inclusive Religion in Asia
• Religious communities in extensive areas of
Asia, including India, China, and Japan, have
most often allowed, and even encouraged,
inclusive religious practices and the
participation of people in more than one
religious system.
• For instance, in Japan, it is common for people
to go to Shinto shrines for New Year’s Day
celebrations, to Buddhist temples to ask
forgiveness for their failings on New Year’s
Eve, and to a Christian Church for a wedding.
Politics and Religion
• If politics concerns the organization of society, then
its alliance with religion is a natural one.
• Because religions are cohesive, organized
interpretations of the meaning, significance, and
structure of the universe, politics can be seen (and
has been seen in many traditional societies) as a
subset of religion, a micro-level of human
organization which should reflect the macro-level of
divine/sacred cosmology.
• Religious hierarchies and political hierarchies, while
often separate, have also often been mutually
reinforcing.
• Religious and political leaders can often enhance, or
add luster to, each other’s authority.
Five Heuristic Relationships
Between the Sacred and the Human
• Transcendent: the sacred is much more powerful than we are, it is
separate from us, and it is, at best, apathetic toward us
• Interventionary: the sacred is much more powerful than we are, it is
separate from us, and it is deeply concerned with us. This concern leads
to its intervention on our behalf in the form of revelation or direct contact
• Overlapping: the sacred realm and the human realm overlap in some
places/people, in other ways the sacred extends beyond our knowing, and
there are also areas in the human realm which are dangerously void of
sacrality
• Immanent/Pantheism: the sacred realm and the human realm are coterminous with each other: everything is sacred
• Panentheism: the sacred realm entirely contains the human realm, but the
sacred realm is much larger than the human realm.
Five Heuristic Relationships
Between the Sacred and the Human
• Transcendent:
• Interventionary:
• Overlapping:
• Immanent/Pantheism:
• Panentheism:
Number of
Deities
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Monotheism - a religious system which postulates that there is a
single deity. Normally it is understood that this deity is a
universal deity, whose acts and judgments affect the entire world,
not just those who worship this deity.
Polytheism - a religious system which has a multitude of deities,
related to one another in a pantheon. These deities can be
understood as universal or local, depending on the philosophic
outlook of the religious system.
Kathenotheism - a special case of polytheism, loosely translated
as "one-god-at-a-time-ism." Here the deities' heirarchic relation
to each other is fluid, as the god or goddess who is being invoked
or prayed to at a given moment is given precedence and
supremacy over all others at that time. Also called Henotheism.
Pantheism - means "all-is-god:" a religious system which
postulates a one-to-one unity between sacred being/deity/deities
and the universe.
Panentheism - the understanding that the universe is a partial
manifestation in unity with the sacred being/deity/deities. The
name loosely means "all-is-god-and-god-is-more."
Transtheism - a system which includes deities, but maintains
that they are not ultimate. For example, in Jainism and
Mahayana Buddhism the existence of deities is acknowledged,
but human beings can transcend these deities by reaching various
forms of enlightenment.
atheism - no deity (atheism ≠ no religion; there are forms of
Buddhism and Ethical Culture which are religions without
deities)
Philosophic Categories of Cosmology:
How Many Things Are There
in the Universe?
Possible Answers Are
1 = Monism, > 2 = Pluralism
2 that oppose each other = Dualism
2 Ends of a Continuum = Complimentary
Philosophic Categories of Cosmology
• Monism - belief/theory that there is a fundamental unity
to the substance, energy, and/or structure of the
universe. Synonyms include "singularism" and
"henism" ("hen" is a Greek root meaning 'one' - it is
also present in the words "kathenotheism" and
"panenhenic")
• Pluralism - belief/theory that there is a thorough-going
diversity of substances, energies, and/or structures in the
universe
• Dualism - belief/theory that there are two fundamentally
irreconcilable, polarized oppositional structures in the
universe
• Complimentarity - belief/theory which understands
seeming opposites in a unified way, as two sides of the
same coin, as equally necessary and characteristic of the
nature of reality. Also called “duality.”
Continuum and Oppositional Logics
• Complimentarity is also sometimes called
“duality.” Complimentary systems understand
the coexistence of life/death as paradoxical, as
part of a continuum, and/or as transformative.
• Nirguna/Saguna operate in a complimentary
manner.
• Dualism and Complimentarity take oppositional
and continuum approaches to reality,
respectively. Dualism is best known as a ‘good v.
evil’ cosmology. No reconciliation is possible; one
must defeat the other. Complimentarity looks for
reconciliation and dialectic relation, as in the
relation between light and dark.
Dualism and Duality
A playful way of illustrating it!
• Dualism assumes a
Battle - it’s Hot vs.
Cold, and only one can
win: choose wisely!
Duality assumes a
Relation; hot and cold
are relative concepts,
that define each other.
Monism &
Monotheism
• Monism and monotheism are not identical.
This is because monism is about underlying
unity more than it is about singularity.
• from Eck, page 20: “Hindu thought is most
distinctive for its refusal to make the one and
the many into opposites. For most, the
manyness of the divine is not superseded by
oneness. Rather the two are held
simultaneously and are inextricably related.”
Nirguna
• The divine/sacred cannot be accurately
described, and therefore all qualities
(because they are qualifications), must be
avoided, or denied
• The term literally means “formless.”
• Another Sanskrit term, “neti, neti,”
meaning “not this, not that,” is also
frequently used in philosophic descriptions
of nirguna.
Saguna
• Describing the divine/sacred is an additive
process: all that is, must be expanded
exponentially to even begin to adequately
describe the divine
• Flowery epithets, multiple names, grandiose
titles, attributes and other highly positive
qualifications are approaches to describing
the divine through saguna
Holding Opposites Together
• Continuum Logic is well-suited to
resolving opposites
• Nirguna and Saguna co-exist in almost all
Hindu philosophies
• What Eck refers to as the “cultural
genius” of India is the ability to embrace
“diversity, so that diversity unites, rather
than divides” (page 18)
Siva
Nataraja
• a.k.a. Dancing Siva, Siva
as Lord of the Dance
• Siva holds creation (the
drum enables time to
commence) and
destruction (fire) in his
hands; he moves
vigorously yet maintains
meditative focus.
• Siva unites opposite and
disparate energies