In Their Image

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 5-25
Author(s):  
Abra Staffin-Wiebe ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
Life Purpose ◽  
Mission Work

Religion, and the desire to find purpose, and often paramount to culture. In this work of philosophical short story fiction, a priest from earth is sent to another planet to continuing the mission work of his predecessor. The planet is inhabited by “teddies” a people with a deep spiritual faith and a belief that it is only by finding and performing one’s life purpose can they serve God’s role. Those that are unable to find their purpose are willingly put to death so that, according to their belief system, they can be reincarnated and make a new attempt at finding their purpose. The visiting human religious leader is appalled by this religious belief, and the religious culture. He goes against the community by helping those that a poor and hungry. This goes against the culture as the teddies see those that are poor or hungry and serving their purpose; they were born to live hungry and poor. This story, like all After Dinner Conversation stories, has suggested discussion questions at the end.

The Secularization Debate

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-45
Author(s):  
Ronald F. Inglehart
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Religious Attendance ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Religious Competition ◽  
The World

Well into the 20th century, leading social thinkers argued that religious beliefs reflected a prescientific worldview that would disappear as scientific rationality spread throughout the world. Though the creationism of traditional religion did give way to evolutionary worldviews, this failed to discredit religion among the general public. Religious markets theory argues that the key to flourishing religiosity is strong religious competition, but recent research found no relationship between religious pluralism and religious attendance. The individualization thesis claims that declining church attendance does not reflect declining religiosity; subjective forms of religion are simply replacing institutionalized ones. But empirical evidence indicates that individual religious belief is declining even more rapidly than church attendance. Secularization’s opponents hold that humans will always need religion. This claim seems true if it is broadened to hold that humans will always need a belief system. Norris and Inglehart argue that as survival becomes more secure, it reduces the demand for religion.

scholarly journals Development and Validation of Religious Belief System Scale

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivani Dangi ◽  
Y K Nagle
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Item Analysis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Good Test ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Adolescents And Adults ◽  
High Internal Consistency ◽  
Test Retest Reliability ◽  
Development And Validation

The literature cites multiple definitions for religiosity, with little consensus among researchers. Religiosity has been associated with a myriad of positive outcomes in both adolescents and adults. Religiosity refers to the degree to which a person adheres to his or her religious values, beliefs and practices and uses them in daily life. Religiosity is still an emerging concept in the developing countries such as India, though rich culture has enriched in the past. Confining to various definitions of Religiosity the study attempts to evolve a Religious belief System scale in an Indian context. With exploration of literature and expert reviews, various attributes of belief System scale was initiated with a pool of 164 items. These items were subjected to experts’ opinion and reduced to 136. The scale was administered on a sample of 456 participants and the item analysis was carried out the having more than 0.35and above value were retained for factor analysis. After initial factor analyses the scale was again administered on a sample of 550 participants. The principal component analyses were employed and 48 items were retained covering three factor i.e. Belief, Attitude and values. The measure demonstrated high internal consistency and good test-retest reliability as well as validity.

Dealing with Religious Resistances in Psychotherapy

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Narramore
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Emotional Health ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Process ◽  
Defensive Structure

Managing resistance to insight and change is one of the central tasks in psychotherapy. When working with religious patients, therapists face the added task of dealing with resistances which may be supported by the patient's religious belief system. When this happens, therapists may be tempted to either avoid confronting the resistances for fear of undermining (or being accused of undermining) the patient's faith or to interpret the resistances in ways that do either undermine the patient's faith, or at least imply that faith is irrelevant to the patient's emotional health. This article deals with the management of resistances with Christian patients who are using their religious faith to reinforce their defensive structure in the psychotherapeutic process.

‘A Double Face of False and True’

2019 ◽  
pp. 62-77
Author(s):  
Michael O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Language ◽  
Poetic Vision

Chapter 3 traces the movements of Shelley’s ideas and attitudes toward religion throughout his life and writings. It views Shelley as a far more nuanced religious thinker than is often implied by critics. It identifies the ambivalence with which Shelley, a self-styled atheist, approaches religious belief—especially Christian modes of belief—and the ways in which Shelley wrestles with and subverts the boundaries between the secular and the religious. The chapter examines how Shelley’s imagination adapts the language of religious belief in order to articulate poetic vision and experience. It traces many of Shelley’s allusions to the Bible and identifies the ways in which Shelley ‘incessantly reorchestrate[s]’ Biblical language in his works. It identifies the treatment of religion in other Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Blake, and shows how Shelley’s poetry departs from their approaches to religion. The chapter also probes a recurring idea in Shelley’s poetry and writings that there is some power or spirit that affects human souls, that originates within or, just possibly, beyond humanity, and has characteristics that influence and are influenced by poets. For Shelley, poetry is religion and poets are prophets and seekers of truth. The chapter also discusses Shelley’s religious prose and the ways in which his writings about God, belief, and religion ‘[reveal] a double rhythm’ in which Shelley ranges from scientific examination to ‘eruptions of latent feeling’. The chapter concludes with a study of Shelley’s final poem, the unfinished Triumph of Life, showing that throughout the poem there ghosts a ‘Christian belief-system that is never wholly abandoned or forgotten’.

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.

The African Traditional Religious Ontology of God, Divinities, and Spirits

2021 ◽  
pp. 44-64
Author(s):  
John Mwangi ◽  
Loizer W. Mwakio
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Belief System ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
Divided Society ◽  
African Worldview ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supreme Being

Earlier scholars of religion argued that Africans were animists and polytheists who didn't have the concept of a supreme being because they did not see clearly the distinction between the supreme being and divinities. It's recent that indigenous scholars disputed this and redefined the relationship as ‘diffused monotheism'. God seemed to be remote to the Africans' daily affairs of life, and African culture of respect and honor had a role in this. The authors attempt to present a reality of an accurate outlook of the obscure yet clear religious ontology of God, divinities, and spirits in the African indigenous religion. Durkheim asserted religion divided society into two categories, the profane and the sacred; nevertheless, in the African religious ontology, the two are intermixed in everyday experiences. On the flip-side, to overlook the concept of spirit being in the African worldview is to proscribe an African religious belief system.

The Religious Culture of Lying

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Thomas More

Chapter 3 explores the varieties of religious belief and religious debates about the nature of lying, in particular whether there was a need to declare religious belief to hostile authorities or whether it was possible to equivocate or practise ‘mental reservation’ even if one could not actually lie. The chapter explores discourses of martyrdom and arguments about the limits of testifying one’s faith, as well as how authorities were to be obeyed or disobeyed. It outlines the implications of the beliefs of a variety of diverse religious groups such as the Jesuits, varieties of Protestants, and those whom Calvin labelled ‘Nicodemites’. The chapter comments on the vitriolic debate between Thomas More and William Tyndale; John Donne’s major treatise Pseudo-Martyr; Nathaniel Woodes’s strange play The Conflict of Conscience; Calvin and Foxe and other Reformation writers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document