RST1501 CPT 8 SUMMARY

Introduction to Religion in the modern era

Read pages 149-150




Non belief


 In ancient Greece there were philosophers like Diagoras, Democritus and Protagoras who
did not believe in the existence of the gods of the Greek pantheon

 In Rome, writers like Lucretius advanced in the Epicurean view that if gods existed at all,
they were completely uninvolved in human affairs

 In ancient India there was a philosophical school called Carvaka that would, by modern
standards, be called atheist

 The Hindus and Buddhists at the time didn’t object to that - both religions have atheist
elements built into their own structures

 In all modern societies there are people who are sceptical of the main religious ideas and
practices

 They might still do what is required of them, simply because it is “the done thing”, but they
may not really believe in what they are doing

 If circumstances allow, they will quietly drop out of religious observances

 They have become secular

 The process in which religion loses its influence over the lives of people is called
secularization

 There are still people who still believe, but who no longer feel compelled to worship as a
part of an organisation, like a church

 In 2012 the PEW Forum produced a research report on the state of the world’s religions

 The found that globally, about one person in 6 was unafilliated with any religious
organisation

,  Secular people may still believe in what their religion teaches

 Someone who has been raised as a Christian may still believe in the existence of a god, but
may think that this god does not actually require him or her to go to church on Sundays

 Secularization is an indicator of religious activity, or lack of it. It does not measure religious
belief

 A secular person is not necessarily an atheist, but an atheist will most certainly live a secular
lifestyle

 Atheism - someone who does not believe that gods(s) exists

 Agnosticism - people who believe that we cannot be sure whether a god(s) exist or not

 Humanism - embraces both atheists and agnostics

 Religious people may think that secularization would be bad for public morality, in other
words, that religion is needed to make people behave ethically

 In the 20th century, there were states like the USSR that were officially atheist where human
rights abuses were widespread

 Countries like Sweden and the Netherlands that are highly secular, but the where crime rate
is extremely low

 In the USA today, atheist make up around 10% of the population but only 0.25% of the
prison population

 Civil religion - the way a society uses rituals to maintain its cohesiveness and unity such as
public holidays

 Civil religion is not exclusive to atheists, but the rise in its importance dates back to the 19th
century, precisely the time when secularization started to take off

 Thinkers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud presented critiques of
religion from a variety of philosophical and scientific points of view

 Marx saw religion as something that a ruling class used to keep the working class in line,
while not necessarily believing in it

 Nietzsche sees religion in the light of master-slave morality

 Freud regarded it as the result of deeply buried neuroses and anxieties