Behold the word of Elmo -
I bet he (God) doesn't want to take the credit for creating Kiteboarders though.
[just thought some light relief would come in handy]
Absolutely right, elmo!
This is the only reason I got involved with this topic: to point out there is more than one side to every story, and different ways of looking at the same problems we all face, as humans.
As I said in one of my first posts, we've all got free choice in this country: each can make up his/her own mind.
peace.
Ok I was gonna leave it alone, but since you asked
History of religions
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For the academic study of religion in general, see Religious studies.
Religious history
founding figures
Origins
Development
Anthropology
Psychology
Comparative religion
Neurotheology/God gene
Prehistoric
Ancient Near East
? Ancient Egypt
? Semitic
Indo-European
? Vedic Hinduism
? Greco-Roman
? Celtic ? Germanic
Axial Age
? Vedanta ? Shramana
? Dharma ? Tao
? Hellenism
? Monism ? Dualism
? Monotheism
Christianization
Islamization
Renaissance ? Reformation
Age of Reason
New religious movements
? Great Awakening
? Fundamentalism
? New Age
Postmodernism
Abrahamic
? Judaism
? Christianity
Indic
? Hinduism
? Buddhism
? Jainism
? Ayyavazhi
? Bah?'? history ? Taoism
The history of religion refers to the written record of human religious experiences and ideas. This period of religious history typically begins with the invention of writing about 5,000 years ago(3,000 BCE) in the Near East. The prehistory of religion relates to the study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the advent of written records. The timeline of religion is a comparative chronology religion.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History of study
* 2 Overview
* 3 Origin
* 4 Organized religion
o 4.1 Neolithic religions
o 4.2 Invention of writing
* 5 The "Axial Age"
* 6 Middle Ages
* 7 Modern period
* 8 Development of new religions
* 9 See also
o 9.1 Shamanism and ancestor worship
o 9.2 Polytheism
o 9.3 Monotheism
o 9.4 Monism
o 9.5 Dualism
o 9.6 New religious movements
* 10 References
* 11 External links
[edit] History of study
Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, school of religious history was a 19th century German school of thought which was the first to systematically study religion as a socio-cultural phenomenon. It depicted religion as evolving with human culture, from primitive polytheism to ethical monotheism.
Religiongeschichteschule appeared at a time when scholarly study of the Bible and church history was flourishing in Germany and elsewhere (see Higher criticism, Historical-critical method).
[edit] Overview
The nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in knowledge about other cultures and religions, and also the establishment of economic and social histories of progress. The "history of religions" school sought to account for this religious diversity by connecting it with the social and economic situation of a particular group.
Typically religions are divided into stages of progression from more simple to more complex societies, especially from polytheistic to monotheistic and from extempore to organised. (There are now claims "that religion evolved from polytheism to monotheism has now been discredited" p. 1763 Man, Myth and Magic 1995)
Thus, the starting point is the tribal band whose religion is animistic and involves shamans and totems. Since the group is tribal, there is no permanent sanctuary. Cultic rites centre on identification with wild animals and appeasing spirits, often of the hunted.
As society developed into chiefdoms and small kingdoms, religious rites began to serve different functions. Agriculture became important and so fertility gods were introduced (often female, as it is the woman who has the power to produce life). The status of the "big man" (or chief) was supported with mythic tales of heroes and demigods, from whom he may be descended.
When these small kingdoms merged into larger groups (often through conquest), different cults merged. The conquest of one group by another is therefore recorded in an epic tale of the conquest of the conquered group's god by the victor's (e.g. some Hinduism and the Babylonian Marduk). Another solution was to syncretise different religious traditions, for example, the Romans' identification of their Gods with the Greeks and the Greeks' adoption of Anatolian myths and characters.
Finally, the growth of the city state brought about progression to the most "civilised" level of religion, ethical monotheism. Students of the history of religions often learnt that this began in Egypt with Akhnaten and grew through 7th century BC Judaism, Persian Zoroastrianism and Greek Philosophy to endow Western society with the most progressive form of religion. The historical basis of this - that religion moved from polytheism to ethical monotheism - is now doubted.
Nevertheless, it is still widely held that ethical monotheism (e.g. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism) was encouraged by the growth of city states. This was partly due to the role of a hierarchical society with a god-like absolute ruler. A more powerful social force was the isolation of the individual as he moved from the clan to a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. Questions of justice and value that had been previously answered by the family and small tribe were now to be pursued independently. The relative anonymity of the city afforded the opportunity for not only "sin" but also loneliness. Ethical monotheism answered society's need for a moral guide and motivation, whilst a unique personal God who was sovereign over all areas of life answered people's feelings of isolation and powerlessness.
Good examples of this are the prophetic literature of the Jewish Tanakh (Old Testament), especially Isaiah, and the wisdom literature of the ancient near east dealing with apparently unjustified suffering. This includes Job, in the Judaeo-Christian Bible, and "The Dialogue of Pessimism", a Babylonian text.
[edit] Origin
See also: Evolutionary origin of religions and Timeline of religion
The earliest evidence of religious ideas dates back several hundred thousand years to the Middle and Lower Paleolithic periods. Archeologists refer to apparent intentional burials of early homo sapiens from as early as 300,000 years ago as evidence of religious ideas. Other evidence of religious ideas include symbolic artifacts from Middle Stone Age sites in Africa. However, the interpretation of early paleolithic artifacts, with regards to how they relate to religious ideas, remains controversial. Archeological evidence from more recent periods is less controversial. A number of artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic (50,000-13,000) are generally interpreted by scientists as representing religious ideas. Examples of Upper Paleolithic remains associated with religious beliefs include the lion man, the Venus figurines, cave paintings from Chauvet Cave and the elaborate ritual burial from Sungir.
[edit] Organized religion
See also: Neolithic revolution
Through the bulk of human evolution, humans lived in small nomadic bands practicing a hunter gatherer lifestyle. The religious practices of hunter gatherers revolve around shamanism, ancestor worship and animism. The emergence of complex and organized religions can be traced to the period when humans abandoned their nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyles in order to begin farming during the Neolithic period. Humans began domesticating crops and animals around 10,000 BCE chiefly in the Near East but independently in a number of locations around the world. The invention of agriculture during the Neolithic revolution was a major event in human history. The increased productivity provided by farming and the relative security of food surpluses allowed these communities to expand. Crop production led to the emergence of the first villages, chiefdoms, states, nations and empires. The societies born out of the neolithic revolution were characterized by high population densities, complex labor diversification, trading economies, centralized administrations and political structures, hiearchical ideologies and depersonalized systems of knowledge.
The transition from foraging bands to states and empires resulted in more specialized and developed forms of religion that were reflections of the new social and political environments. While bands and small tribes possess supernatural beliefs, these beliefs are adapted to smaller populations. Organized religion emerged as a means of providing social and economic stability to large populations through the following ways:
* Organized religion served to Justify the central authority, which in turn possessed the right to collect taxes in return for providing social and security services to the state. The empires of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, were theocracies with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles of political and spiritual leaders.[1] Virtually all state societies and chiefdoms around the world have similar political structures where political authority is justified by divine sanction.
* Organized religion emerged as means of maintaining peace between unrelated individuals. Bands and tribes consist of small number of related individuals. However states and nations are composed of thousands or millions of unrelated individuals. Jared Diamond argues that organized religion served to provide a bond between unrelated individuals who would otherwise be more prone to enmity. He argues that the leading cause of death among hunter gatherer societies is murder. [2]
[edit] Neolithic religions
The religions of the Neolithic peoples provide evidence of some of the earliest known forms of organized religions. The Neolithic settlement of Catalhoyuk, in what is now Turkey, was home to about 8,000 people and remains the largest known settlement from the Neolithic period. James Mellaart, who excavated the site, believed that Catalhoyuk was the spiritual center of central Anatolia.[3]
[edit] Invention of writing
See also: History of writing
Following the neolithic revolution, the pace of technological development intensified. As human society became more complex, more sophisticated accounting systems became necessary. Writing was invented in either Sumeria or Ancient Egypt by 3000 BCE as a means of recording accounting transactions. Subsequently writing would be used to record myth. The first religious texts mark the beginning of religious history. The Pyramid Texts from ancient Egypt are one of the oldest known religious texts in the world dating to between 2400-2300 BCE.[4][5] Writing played a major role in sustaining organized religion by standardizing religious ideas regardless of time or location.
[edit] The "Axial Age"
Main article: Axial Age
Karl Jaspers, in his Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History), identified a number of key Axial Age thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophy and religion, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found very little recorded proof of extensive inter-communication between the ancient Near East, Greece, India and China. Jaspers held up this age as unique, and one which to compare the rest of the history of human thought to. Jaspers' approach to the culture of the middle of the first millennium BCE has been adopted by other scholars and academics, and has become a point of discussion in the history of religion.
In its later part, the "Axial Age" culminated in the development of monism and monotheism, notably of Platonic realism and Neoplatonism in Hellenistic philosophy, the notion of atman in Vedanta Hindu philosophy, and the notion of Tao in Taoism.
[edit] Middle Ages
Newer present-day world religions established themselves throughout Eurasia during the Middle Ages by: Christianization of the Western world; Buddhist missions to East Asia; the decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent; and the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa and parts of Europe and India.
During the Middle Ages, Muslims were in conflict with Zoroastrians during the Islamic conquest of Persia; Christians were in conflict with Muslims during the Byzantine-Arab Wars, Crusades, Reconquista and Ottoman wars in Europe; Christians were in conflict with Jews during the Crusades, Reconquista and Inquisition; Shamans were in conflict with Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims and Christians during the Mongol invasions; and Muslims were in conflict with Hindus and Sikhs during Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent.
Many medieval religious movements emphasized mysticism, such as the Cathars and related movements in the West, the Bhakti movement in India and Sufism in Islam. Monotheism reached definite forms in Christian Christology and in Islamic Tawhid. Hindu monotheist notions of Brahman likewise reached their classical form with the teaching of Adi Shankara.
[edit] Modern period
European colonisation during the 15th to 19th centuries resulted in the spread of Christianity to Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Australia and the Philippines. The 18th century saw the beginning of secularisation in Europe, rising to notability in the wake of the French Revolution.
In the 20th century, the regimes of Communist Eastern Europe and Communist China were explicitly anti-religious. A great variety of new religious movements originated in the 20th century, many proposing syncretism of elements of established religions. Adherence to such new movements is limited, however, remaining below 2% worldwide in the 2000s. Adherents of the classical world religions account for more than 75% of the world's population, while adherence to indigenous tribal religions has fallen to 4%. As of 2005, an estimated 14% of the world's population identifies as nonreligious.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion
Nice one Elmo, let's hope nobody quotes you or Laurie's server will probably get overloaded and crash
Time lines on history of religions and their expansions and subsequent wars
www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html
religions of the world
Major Religions of the World
from www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
also
www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html