scholarly journals Speaking to My Ancestors: An Ethnographic Study of Lived Childhood Religion in Rural Gansu

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-206
Author(s):  
Joseph Chadwin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Gansu Province ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Rural Village ◽  
Ethnographic Data

AbstractThis article provides an overview of the major existing scholarship pertaining to childhood religion in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). More specifically, it examines lived childhood religion in a rural village in Gānsù province. This article challenges the commonly preconceived notion that children in the PRC do not regard religious belief as important and simply mirror the religious practices of their guardians. By utilising ethnographic data, I argue that children in the PRC are capable of constructing their own unique form of lived religion that is informed by, but crucially distinct from, the religious beliefs and practices of adults. The practices and beliefs of this lived religion can be extremely important to children and the evidence from fieldwork suggests that they tend to take both their practice and belief very seriously.

Dennett on Breaking the Spell

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Rudder Baker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mimetic Theory ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Plausible Theory

Dennett’s has recently attempted to break the “spell” that prevents people from submitting their religious beliefs and practices to scientific investigation. But what spell is being broken? Religion is not a unified phenomenon. By supposing that it is, Dennett is led to adopt an implausible mimetic theory of religious belief, and to mistakenly assume that the presence of a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device would impugn religious belief. More troublingly, although religious beliefs and practices should be studied scientifically, it would be a mistake to treat science as the exclusive arbiter of reality. Dennett makes human beings (persons) seem like aggregates of parts. Such a view seems to have no room for human dignity, except as artifacts of an intentional stance. A plausible theory of human dignity would take people to be ontologically significant unities, who, on my view, have first-person perspectives essentially.

Foundation of Religious Beliefs after Foundationalism: Wittgenstein between Nielsen and Phillips

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-267
Author(s):  
Yong Huang
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Beliefs And Practices

Religious beliefs have often been taken either as absolutely foundational to all others or as ultimately founded on something else. This essay starts with an endorsement of the contemporary critique of foundationalism but sets its task as to search for the foundation(s) of religious belief after foundationalism. In its third and main part, it argues for a Wittgensteinian reflective equilibrium (within a belief system, between believing and acting and among people with different ways of believing and acting) as such a foundation. In this reflective equilibrium, religious beliefs are no more and no less foundational to, or founded by, other beliefs and practices. To appreciate this perspective better, I argue,in the first part, that Kai Neilsen's charge of Wittgenstein as a fideist is not accurate, and, in the second part, that D. Z. Phillips's fideistic contentions are unWittgensteinian.

scholarly journals Holding doctrinal belief as an artefact

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
ELENA KALMYKOVA
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Alternative Solutions ◽  
The Way

Abstract In this article, I consider how empirical research on religious belief poses a puzzle for the relationship between religious doctrines and lived religion, and develop one solution to that puzzle. The empirical evidence shows that believers are commonly incorrect about the content of doctrinal statements, and apparently not much interested in that content. I argue that this finding calls for a new understanding of the role of doctrinal commitments in religious life. I propose that in many cases believers relate to doctrinal statements in rather the way that they relate to sacred artefacts, that is, by way of an attitude of reverence and strong adherence, and independently of any attempt to discern the content of doctrinal claims. I note how this account avoids some of the difficulties of alternative solutions, which may undermine the claim of religious beliefs to count as genuine beliefs.

On the Antiquity of Shamanism and its Role in Human Religiosity

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Homayun Sidky
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Civilized World ◽  
Cave Art

AbstractDrawing upon ethnographic data on the thriving and dynamic shamanistic tradition in Nepal (gathered between 1999 and 2008), this paper addresses the problematic nature of many of the central assumptions concerning shamanism and its place in the development of human religiosity. These include beliefs that shamanism was the universal religion of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and that it represents a neurotheology, the expressions of which have been preserved in ancient cave art and in the magico-religious beliefs and practices of extant or recently extant hunting-gathering cultures on the peripheries of the “civilized world.” The paucity of any concrete testable and falsifiable evidence for any of these assumptions raises the compelling question of why so many anthropologists, archaeologists, and scholars in other fields subscribe to these views. The answer does not lead to some ancient grotto or an undisputable assemblage of Paleolithic shamanic paraphernalia, but to the imagination of Mircea Eliade, whose vision of shamanism is rooted in the musings of nineteenth century anthropologists.

scholarly journals “It’s a Big Umbrella”

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-171
Author(s):  
Tinashe Chimbidzikai
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Born Again

This article questions the dominant narrative that considers displaced persons as victims, powerless, and lacking agency to shape their individual and collective conditions. Based on an ethnographic study of largely Zimbabwe Exemption Permit holders living in Johannesburg, the article argues that Pentecostalism offers an alternate worldview that draws on religious beliefs and practices to express triumph over everyday adversities and vicissitudes of forced mobility. The article concludes that such beliefs and practices embolden and espouse individual and collective agency among “born-again” migrants, as they mobilize religious social networks for individuals to make sense of the uncertainties engendered by displacement.

Fighting the Tide: Youth with a History of Migration Living Religion in a New Context

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45
Author(s):  
Amy Casteel
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Migration

Migration promises an opportunity for a different future for those moving while it challenges the status quo for transit and host countries. Changing from one culture to another is no small task. Neither is the process of moving from adolescent to adult. Many rely on religious beliefs and practices as they cope. Still, these practices are modified, adapted, changed. What happens in the lived religion of adolescents after migration to Greece? In discussion with practical and liberation theologians, sociology, and social and cultural psychology, the voices of adolescent migrants themselves contribute to a deeper understanding of current models of adolescent spiritual development.

The Impact of Secularism on Religious Beliefs and Practices

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Adibah Binti AbdulRahim
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Practical Aspect ◽  
The West ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT Secularism is the most serious challenge of modernity posed by the West. Its main ideology is to liberate man from the religious and metaphysical values and expel religion from the practical aspect of man’s life. It clearly presents its materialistic viewpoint which is cut off from Divine, Transcendent or Supernatural principles and does not refer to and is isolated from Revelation. In terms of its intensity and scope as well as its discernable effects upon people’s mind, the repercussion of secularism is so pervasive and universal. It gives a great impact on every facet of life including individual and family lives as well as educational, political, economic and social-cultural realm. Most importantly, secularism affects the very tenets of traditional religious beliefs and practices. This paper tries to focus on the danger of secularism and its principles which are contradict to the religious worldview.  

Insubstantial Burdens

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier ◽  
Michael Weber
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Freedom Restoration Act ◽  
The Government ◽  
A Minor

This chapter articulates and defends a “partially subjectivist” way of defining burdens on religious belief under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). On this view, courts should largely defer to plaintiffs as to what is a burden on their religious belief. There is only a minor requirement that the plaintiffs have to satisfy, which is to show that the government is doing something that pressures them to act in a way contrary to their beliefs—a relatively easy hurdle to clear. In general, courts are ill-equipped to determine what people’s religious beliefs really are, and this extends to determining when those beliefs are substantially burdened. More strongly, there is a tradition that says evaluating when people’s religious beliefs are burdened is really none of the court’s business. The partially subjectivist view honors these principles.

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