DAILY SURF: Contents/Religion and belief systems

Religion is the adherence to codified beliefs and rituals that generally involve a faith in a spiritual nature and a study of inherited ancestral traditions, knowledge and wisdom related to understanding human life. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to faith as well as to the larger shared systems of belief.
Religion and culture have a very thin line separating them, so people can confuse a cultural ritual with a religious ritual. Religion is the way of belief on the theory of creation, existence and death. It was initially introduced to unite people on the grounds of faith, fear and society to enable the then heads to rule and drive the group or clan. Slowly, religions engineered to evolve into stronger and wider beliefs. Various preachers have driven their thoughts across centuries to prove that their religion is superior. Lately, religion has become a mixed flavour of serving to mankind with more free thinkers and isolation of superstitions. The 20th century saw many reformers to get rid of some foolish and evil rituals. Today, religion is more of a belief, a provider of the definition of life and its cycle and eventually self esteem.
A belief system can refer to a religion or a world view. A world view (or worldview) is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung (

[ˈvɛlt.ʔanˌʃaʊ.ʊŋ] (help·info)) Welt is the German word for 'world,' and Anschauung is the German word for 'view' or 'outlook'. It is a concept fundamental to German philosophy and epistemology and refers to a wide world perception. Additionally, it refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it. Do you believe?

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Religion and belief systems: Overview • Lists • Outlines • Portals • Categories • Glossaries • Indexes

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Overview (see for all subject areas)

Main article: Religion See also: Relationship between religion and science

Allah • Belief • Biblical inspiration • Buddha • Confucius • Deity • Demon • Devil • Exorcism • Heresy • Inspiration • Faith • God • Jesus • Holy Spirit • Morality • Mythology • Occult • Prayer • Prophecy • Revelation • Ritual • Sin • Supernatural • Virtue
Belief Systems – Acosmism • Agnosticism • Animism • Antitheism • Atheism • Binitarianism • Deism • Determinism • Duotheism • Esotericism • Eutheism and dystheism • Freethought • Gnosticism • Henotheism • Humanism • Ignosticism • Kathenotheism • Monism • Monotheism • Monolatrism • Mysticism • New Age • Nondualism • Nontheism • Pandeism • Panentheism • Pantheism • Polydeism • Polytheism • Secular • Skepticism • Spiritualism • Theism • Theopanism • Theosophy • Transcendentalism • Transtheism • Trinitarianism • Unitarianism
Major beliefs of the world – Antireligion • Ayyavazhi • Bahá'í Faith • Buddhism • Cao Dai • Chinese folk religion • Christianity • Confucianism • Diasporic • Falun Gong • Hinduism • Irreligious • Islam • Neopaganism • Jainism • Judaism • Rastafari • Scientology • Sikhism • Spiritism • Shinto • Taoism • Tenrikyo • Unitarian Universalism • Zoroastrianism
See also: Criticism of religion

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Lists (see for all subject areas)

Major religious groups • Religions and spiritual traditions
Ninety-nine names of Allah • Angels • Ayyavazhi • Bible stories • Biblical names • Buddhism • Glossary of Buddhism • Cathedrals • Christian denominations • Deities • Demons • Indigetes (Roman gods & goddesses) • Founders • Greek mythological characters • Hinduism • Islamic terms in Arabic • Jesus • Dramatic portrayals of Jesus Christ • People claimed to be Jesus • Languages by year of first Bible translation • Monasteries dissolved by Henry VIII of England • Mormonism • Muslims • Biblical nameless • Patriarchs of Antioch • Patriarchs of Constantinople • Popes • Sexually active popes • Saints • 613 Mitzvot• Israelites

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Outlines (see for all subject areas)

Belief systems

Religion – collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.^[1]
- Religions
  - Abrahamic religions
    - Judaism – "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people.^[2] Originating in the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Tanakh) and explored in later texts such as the Talmud, it is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel.
    - Christianity – monotheistic religion^[3] based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings.^[4]
      - Catholicism – Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole.
      - Protestantism – Protestantism is a broad term, usually used for Christians who are not of the Catholic, Anglican, or Eastern Churches. However, some consider Anglicanism to be Protestant, and some consider Radical Reformism not to be Protestant.
    - Islam – monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Arabic: الله‎ Allāh), and by the teachings and normative example (called the Sunnah and composed of Hadith) of Muhammad, considered by them to be the last prophet of God.
    - Bahá'í Faith – a monotheistic religion founded by Baha'u'llah in the 19th century, proclaims Spiritual unity of mankind
  - Buddhism – religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha (Pāli/Sanskrit "the awakened one").
  - Hinduism – predominant and indigenous religious tradition^[5] of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers^[6] as Sanātana Dharma (a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", "the eternal law that sustains/upholds/surely preserves"^[7]^[8]), amongst many other expressions.^[9]^[10]
  - Sikhism – monotheistic religion founded during the 15th century in the Punjab region, on the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji and ten successive Sikh Gurus (the last teaching being the holy scripture Guru Granth Sahib Ji).
- Religious debates
  - Creation–evolution controversy – recurring theological and cultural-political dispute about the origins of the Earth, humanity, life, and the universe, between the proponents of evolution, backed by scientific consensus, and those who espouse the validity and/or superiority of literal interpretations of a creation myth. The dispute particularly involves the field of evolutionary biology, but also the fields of geology, palaeontology, thermodynamics, nuclear physics and cosmology.
  - Theology – systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary. ^[11]
    - Christian theology – enterprise to construct a coherent system of Christian belief and practice based primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and the New Testament as well as the historic traditions of the faithful. Christian theologians use biblical exegesis, rational analysis, and argument to clarify, examine, understand, explicate, critique, defend or promote Christianity.

Irreligion – absence of religious belief, or indifference or hostility to religion^[12], or active rejection of religious traditions.^[13]
- Rejection of religious belief
  - Atheism – rejection of belief in the existence of deities.^[14] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.^[15]^[16] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.^[16]^[17] Atheism is contrasted with theism,^[18]^[19] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.^[19] ^[20]
  - Secular humanism – embraces human reason, ethics, and justice while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience or superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making.

Spirituality – can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality;^[21] an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.”^[22]

References

^ While religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion, used in religious studies courses, was proposed by Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system" (Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973). A critique of Geertz's model by Talal Asad categorized religion as "an anthropological category." (Talal Asad, The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category, 1982.)
^ Jacobs, Louis (2007). "Judaism". In Fred Skolnik. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 11 (2d ed.). Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. p. 511. ISBN 9780-02-865928-2. "Judaism, the religion, philosophy, and way of life of the Jews."
^ Christianity's status as monotheistic is affirmed in, amongst other sources, the Catholic Encyclopedia (article "Monotheism"); William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity; H. Richard Niebuhr; About.com, Monotheistic Religion resources; Kirsch, God Against the Gods; Woodhead, An Introduction to Christianity; The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Monotheism; The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, monotheism; New Dictionary of Theology, Paul, pp. 496–99; Meconi. "Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity". p. 111f.
^ BBC, BBC—Religion & Ethics—566, Christianity
^ Hinduism is variously defined as a "religion", "set of religious beliefs and practices", "religious tradition" etc. For a discussion on the topic, see: "Establishing the boundaries" in Gavin Flood (2003), pp. 1-17. René Guénon in his Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines (1921 ed.), Sophia Perennis, ISBN 0-900588-74-8, proposes a definition of the term "religion" and a discussion of its relevance (or lack of) to Hindu doctrines (part II, chapter 4, p. 58).
^ A Historical-developmental study of classical Indian philosophy of morals, Rajendra Prasad, Centre for Studies in Civilizations (Delhi, India), Concept Publishing Company, 2009, ISBN 8180695956, ISBN 9788180695957
^ Hinduism that is Sanatana Dharma, R. S. Nathan, Chinmaya Mission, 1989, ISBN 8175970650, ISBN 9788175970656
^ A conceptual-analytic study of classical Indian philosophy of morals, Rajendra Prasad, from preface of the book, Centre for Studies in Civilizations (Delhi, India), Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy, and Culture. Sub Project: Consciousness, Science, Society, Value, and Yoga, Concept Publishing Company, 2008, ISBN 8180695441, ISBN 9788180695445
^ The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Ed. John Bowker. Oxford University Press, 2000;
^ The term "Dharma" connotes much more than simply "law". It is not only the doctrine of religious and moral rights, but also the set of religious duties, social order, right conduct and virtuous things and deeds. As such Dharma is the Code of Ethics.[1] The modern use of the term can be traced to late 19th century Hindu reform movements (J. Zavos, Defending Hindu Tradition: Sanatana Dharma as a Symbol of Orthodoxy in Colonial India, Religion (Academic Press), Volume 31, Number 2, April 2001, pp. 109-123; see also R. D. Baird, "Swami Bhaktivedanta and the Encounter with Religions", Modern Indian Responses to Religious Pluralism, edited by Harold Coward, State University of New York Press, 1987); less literally also rendered "eternal way" (so Harvey, Andrew (2001), Teachings of the Hindu Mystics, Boulder: Shambhala, xiii, ISBN 1-57062-449-6). See also René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines (1921 ed.), Sophia Perennis, ISBN 0-900588-74-8, part III, chapter 5 "The Law of Manu", p. 146. On the meaning of the word "Dharma", see also René Guénon, Studies in Hinduism, Sophia Perennis, ISBN 0-900588-69-3, chapter 5, p. 45
^ theology
^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irreligion
^ Campbell, Colin (1971). Toward a Sociology of Irreligion. Macmillan London. ISBN 0333106725.
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^ ^a ^b Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). 1989. "Belief in a deity, or deities, as opposed to atheism"
^ "Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Retrieved 2011-04-09. "belief in the existence of a god or gods"
^ Ewert Cousins, preface to Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman, Modern Esoteric Spirituality, Crossroad Publishing 1992.
^ Philip Sheldrake, A Brief History of Spirituality, Wiley-Blackwell 2007 p. 1-2