Religion in Western civilization has undoubtedly played a pivotal role in shaping and developing Western society. Regardless of the form of religion, such as polytheism or monotheism, people in ancient societies believed in a God or Gods. This belief in a higher power was an important part of human progression and expansion. Religion was the backbone of Western civilization and has always been a very important foundation of culture, schooling, philosophy, art, and social interaction. Before Judaism and Christianity, philosophers such as Aristotle ponder the thought of a higher power and in his book Metaphysics wrote about eternal motion was an unmoved mover. Throughout time and from the expansion of ancient people, new religions formed from the thoughts of morality and virtue. With the help …show more content…
Looking back to the beginnings of the Bronze Age (3300-1300 BCE) to around the fall of Rome (476 A.D.), religion would take a strangle hold on society and be the reason for mass migration, enslavement, revolts, wars, and even create a harmony between different cultures . The Western society would have faltered and human expansion would be nothing like it is today, if Religion and more specifically the monotheism religions such as Judaism and the Catholic Church ceased to exist and did not play the pivotal role in shaping society as we know it.
To really understand the role the Catholic Church play on shaping Western civilization, one must look back to previous forms of religion and understand how faith in Gods or a single God intertwined with the daily life of most human beings. Early forms of religion were built around the belief of multiple Gods (polytheism). Early civilizations in the Bronze Age (3300-1300 BCE) such as the Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians concerned their daily life pleasing the gods or
Many things effected the classical ages. The five classical ages being compared and contrasted are Greece, Rome, Han China, Gupta India, and Olmec. The size of territory and religion effected the legacy. Each age was impacted on either mathematical and scientific theories or their practical technology. Most classical ages had monumental buildings or important things.
Hinduism and Buddhism When thinking about religions, you may not realize that many of them played a huge role in history. They helped unite people, set social standards, and create features of different cultures. Two examples of this is Hinduism and Buddhism. They helped shape each other and are similar in many ways, though they still have differences. Hinduism mainly shaped Buddhism.
Normally, people look at religion as a tool for peace and rarely associate it with violence. In reality, religion has been used as a tool to justify violence for centuries. In the book called ‘Is Religion Killing Us?’, the author, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, critically examines the sacred scriptures of the major religions including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism to unveil despicable portraits of a violent God. According to Pallmeyer, each sacred text is dominated by what he calls ‘violence-of-God-tradition’. He does not believe that the texts directly instigate the human violence, but they justify the use of violence amid the conflicts in which antagonistic parties see religious differences as divisions.
Religion has set the base on the beginning and expansion of many societies. For example, we see this in the 1600s, when Puritans and Separatists from England were moved by religion to settle towards North America in order to form their own colonies and establish their own religious rules. Ultimately, these colonies showed how religion played a key factor in the growth of society in New England, with Puritanism being the focus of the religion. In the 1530s, King Henry VIII’s daughter named Elizabeth creates an Anglican church which ends up causing problems for the Puritans.
In the article “Religions: The Basics” by Malory Nye talks about female writers, inequality and the distinction between males and females. In the article it mentioned how the term Androcentricism assumes that the male’s perspective and experiences are the most vital and key point of reference. I agree with Mary Daly that the concept of belief in a male deity leads to profound sexual inequalities. The reason I agree with Mary Daly is due to the fact there is a lot of gender differences and that women are viewed as inferior, while men are more superior. It is surprising that in western culture, they can’t go a day without woman-male distinction.
Marie Hull Mr. Santini Global H 16 March 2015 How Religion in Rome Influenced the Development of Culture When most students and even some scholars study history, they view the past as just a series of facts and occurrences. And unfortunately, this is more or less the only way we are able to view history, simply because it has all happened many many years ago. But if we were able to look at history the way we look at our lives today, as not just a series of facts, but as a real era with real, living people, then we can gain an enormous amount of insight into what a certain period in history was truly like. We can begin to view history this way by studying how one event influences another.
Religion has always played a part of history in some form of way. For example, in the early 1600s there were wars and difference because of the way people practiced their religion and when new religions started to form and evolve. Many people did not like it because it was “foreign” to them. I noticed throughout the course that many people did not like “new” or did not like when people and culture started to evolve. It was seen as different or people being disobedient to their higher power, especially within the Roman Catholic society.
The thought of progress is a phenomenon that is unquestioned of why it is happening within the world. Progress is the notion that a certain subject or object is being brought into a greater or better outcome than it was set at its predetermined state. With the thought of progress, there is no telling whether progress happens because of a Devine being setting a predetermined fate for the human public or by reflecting on the past and learning from past occurrences. Throughout history of the world thus far, progress has been stationed through two factors. The two factors consist of Religion and REN (race, ethnicity, or nationality).
In the society created by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, there is no dominant religion or prominent presence thereof because it seems to conflict with “machinery, medicine and happiness”. One can see how that is true because religion is usually guided by set superstitions that inhibit one from scientific pursuit. For example, evolution is a risky subject when referring to the Bible because that book says God created the world, but in most of modern-day society and in this one, it is clear that God did not create the world. Science is backed by reason and logic while religion is backed up by the faith of the individual. In this society, everything is organized in a way that makes logical sense: the caste system, creating multitudes of humans
Religion and American Soceity I do believe that Religion society still exist and it still is important because in most countries religions are different from others and they have there own special way .People in America can be apart of any religion and go to whatever church they please or satisfy them , but to also make sure their receive what they went to the church to hear and praise about. Although some americans does not praise or worship the same god, it is apart of their religion of soceity . For example, chinese people praise a man that you would see in most of their resturants and maybe in their homes . Some Indians praise the same god as us but most doesn’t , some may go to the same church as us but others may prefer to praise their god somewhere other than a church.
Ideas, individuals, knowledge, religion and other factors have played major role in shaping the world and society as we know it today. Ideas such as democracy in ancient Greece helped create a template for future societies to follow. Individuals such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn and Adolf Hitler changed the world with war and conquering all in sight. Knowledge has toppled dynasties, changed the way we view ourselves in the universe, leading to medical breakthroughs allowing for longer life and weapons for taking life. Religion has brought billions of individuals together with shared faith and belief, but is one of leading causes of war and discrimination throughout history.
Only a few Buddhist centers survived after the invasion of Muslim armies. On the contrast, Christian churches preserved and spread Christian teachings and the achievements of Greco-Roman civilization. This laid the foundation for future development of the western civilization. The history of Christianity is inseparable from the history of western culture and of western
Religion and Popular Culture in America is a book that, although contains some interjection from Forbers, mainly consists of essays from other various authors. He uses these essays to legitimize his theory of the different relationships between popular culture and religion. Forbes uses an essay written by Micheal Jindra as a means of helping to convey the idea of popular culture functioning as religion. In this essay, Jindra speaks of popular culture as an accessory to religion in the Middle Ages of Europe. As the decades went on, popular culture began to leave religion and become a separate entity, nearly to the verge of forsaking religion altogether.
This also caused Christianity to be one of the major religions in the world. (Social and
Fowler’s religious development theory is one of the most known and understood theory. To review this theory I chose to interview a friend of mine who we will call Cindy. Cindy identifies as a cisgender woman, Vietnamese, White and Black (in that order), and grew up in Des Moines, IA with her Vietnamese mother and step-father. She still has a relationship with both her mother and step-father who recently separated. Cindy is currently unemployed, living with her boyfriend of 6+ years, and taking care of her teenage younger brother as of a year now, here in Ames.