welcome to our first lesson in the religions of the world course today we want to investigate what religion is when you think about religion and I will ask you the question how many religions they are before you saw the introduction to this course how many did you think there were maybe 10 maybe 15 it's amazing that there are 4000 religions in the world and you might actually ask what are they right because when we think about religion the thing the religions that come to mind most are the ones that are the largest Christianity Islam Buddhism Hinduism those are the ones that most people would mention at some point but did you know Jainism like this one here for example or have you heard about Sikhism before he is the symbol for Sikhism Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world or have you heard about Zoroastrianism an ancient religion that has greatly influenced Judaism Christianity and Islam and yet not many people practice it anymore of course they are not only ancient religions they're also newer ones like the Mormons have not been are not that old or you might have seen the Amish before or have you heard of pastafarians before not Rastafarians pastafarians well that is kind of a spoof actually about religion somebody came up with the idea and he created a God called the great spaghetti monster and you know look it up on Wikipedia it is actually a fully recognized religion in Australia I think and they try to make it a fully recognized religion in in Holland they tried it in the United States but the IRS they rejected their claim but then you probably also heard of religions like the People's Temple of Jim Jones and Jonestown in Guyana or maybe the Branch Davidians or maybe you even heard of the World Mission Society those we might consider cults which then also would be a question what is a cult how do we determine whether something is a valid religion and when do we claim it to be a cult that is dangerous well there is a good way to recognize whether something is actually a cult by the bite model cults are usually controlling behavior of their worshippers or adherents and so bite stands for behavior control information control thought control and emotional control people that are in a cult oftentimes feel like they have been sucked in at some point and that they can't really extract themselves where is it very easily anymore and often often times are damaged afterwards but you can also ask the question whether religion is even relevant today still today at a time when science has a great important place in our life the question is whether religion is still important and science gets pitted against religion but when you really think about it science is certainly trying to investigate many as many questions that we have and the answers are based on solid evidence and then by putting the evidence together and developing a hypothesis and out of the hypothesis we can develop the how our understanding of the world ultimately even in science we have to believe that the evidence that we see really fits together the way we believe it fits together and that then the models we create out of that that we can trust in them and most of them we can trust right when Newton developed the idea of of gravity and you can I can take an object and drop it and we know what happens right we know that ahead of time because of the experience that we have and therefore we can have a conclusion that we can rely upon when I sit on this chair I'm not going to check it every time before but I will trust that it that it that it holds me that's based on scientific evidence I don't need religion for that right I don't need to have faith although I am putting faith in my chair when I sit on it when I don't check it out ahead of time but there are deeper questions that science cannot answer for example what did I come from yes you can scientifically answer that there was an egg and experiment that I was born but where did others come from originally when science talks about the Big Bang for example what was there before and maybe even more importantly why or what is your purpose in this world yes I can describe how I function here how I age and how I will die at some point but why do i why am I here or even more importantly the question that we all asked at one point or another what will happen when I die is everything over is there a place I will go after this what happens when I die those are deeply religious questions and so for me there is really no debate between science versus religion but there are certain things in my life that I now know and understand through scientific discovery and then there are other questions that science cannot answer where I have faith or I believe something there's no way that I can live in this world without believing certain things right the worldview that I have or the image of the world is based on what I believe do I believe that people are basically good or do I have mistrust people do I believe that certain things should be done and other things shouldn't be done or does everything go there are so many different ways that that I act on faith rather than scientific knowledge their religion becomes really important [Music] but then how do we define religion what actually is it I consult the the dictionaries I looked online the one the first one that you find is from the Oxford Dictionary and there that says the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power especially a personal god or gods well you might say yes but that doesn't fit all religions there are some religions who do not have a personal god or gods all right so then let's look Marion Webster what does merriam-webster say Marion Webster says it's a state of religious stat1 I don't quite get to says this like a nun in the twentieth year of religion don't know what that actually supposed to mean but then here it says the service and worship of God or the supernatural and second would be commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance then it also says a personal set or institutionalized system of religion attitudes beliefs and practices or it says a scrupulous conformity or a cause principle or system of beliefs held to with order and faith I don't really know that I know much more with that definition of what religion is it's kind of confusing right then let's go to the dictionary com what that says that's an even longer thing so many things here let's let's see what it says it's a set of beliefs concerning the cause nature and purpose of the universe especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies usually involving devotional and ritual observance and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs boy cool that was only the first thing now the second a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects like Christian religion or Buddhist religion all right the person at the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices number four the life or state of a monk or nun for six not five the practice of religious beliefs ritual observances of faith and six something one believes in and follows devoutly the point of matter of ethics or conscience why does it need six points to try to define religion and by the way are you much smarter now about what religion is if I were to define a chair it will make it easy right merriam-webster for example is much easier on the chair it says set as seats typically having four legs and the back for one person yeah that makes sense right it also says in official seat or a seat of authority state or dignity that of course is like a chair of a department and so but that's not what we're talking about so the chair is very easy legs a seat a back to lean against and for one person when we go to dictionary.com a seat especially for one person usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms although that doesn't have to be right we know exactly that a stool is not a chair or because it doesn't have a back or we also know as so far is not a chair right more than one person can sit on it well there are two types of definitions one is the essential definition that tries to identify some universal quality that makes something what it is so that's easy for the chair right universal qualities are four legs a seat a back one person those are essential qualities and it makes it easy to try to define what a chair is but the other one for that fits better for religion is a cluster definition that assigns a number of attributes traits to a religion the more of them that a system has the more likely it is what it is so for a religion for example here are some possible traits that can fit most of the religions if not all they believe in the sacred a distinction between the sacred and the profane rituals moral codes prayer a unique sentiment structured around the sacred an overarching view of the world and the individuals placed within it the community group that centers on the off on everything that went before those are attributes they don't all fit for everything for example the belief in the sacred what kinds of religions are there while you are familiar with monotheism probably Christianity Islam the belief in only one God you probably heard about polytheism right the belief in many gods and we can identify certain religions with that maybe even a religion that is non-theistic there are religions that do not believe in any particular God like Buddhism for example the non-theistic religion or you might have heard about panty pantheism pantheism is the belief that gods are everywhere and inside every every living thing that's pantheism but have you heard of he new theism before it is belief that there are many gods but you are compelled to pray to only one God and that you are not supposed to venture off to gods while you are adhering to your God or then they are agnostics right you know what an agnostic is someone who doesn't really know whether there is a god or not someone who keeps their options open and keeps the possibility for the existence of God open but is not making a commitment and then of course there are atheists who definitely believe that there is no God oftentimes atheists would say that there are not religious right the way theism is not a religion but on the other hand isn't that also a belief that you do not believe in the God that there is no God you're right you cannot prove the existence of God but can you disprove the existence of God so in some ways atheism is also a religious belief now most atheists won't gather together in community which is another important aspect of many other religions so the aspect of gathering together and practicing certain rituals and things like that that wouldn't be part of atheism even though it is a belief but that could then lead us to ask the question what is the difference between religion and philosophy doesn't philosophy also deal with in some ways with beliefs the difference between religion and philosophy would be that religion answers all those questions out of faith by believing a set of things and philosophy has the mandate that you have to have reason behind it that you can that you have to prove your point and if you can disprove your point then your philosophy is not valid all in all as we get started on this adventure through the 11 religions that we will touch on in course let us make sure we do one thing let us not laugh about somebody else's belief let us not say mean things about somebody else's belief because they may do the same about what we believe watch this little cartoon for a moment what is it that you see yeah in this first frame there seem to be some Europeans that make fun of the type of worship that maybe a native African tribe is doing and they're laughing about it because they think it's primitive right but then as we move on with this little cartoon there we have the natives doing the same thing about the European colonizers because they are praying to a body on the cross now the body on the cross and the devotion of Jesus may be totally normal to you but it may be very strange to somebody who's looking at it from the outside and then ask yourself the question what seems to be totally normal to you that you fall down to pray to a body on the cross because you believe that Jesus is the Son of God it is just as unreasonable in some ways based on faith as it might be to fall down to a totem pole and to worship the spirits that might be in that and so because of that let us be open to what we learn in this in this class nobody has to believe anything specifically here this is an investigation of the faiths and beliefs around the world no one is saying that you have to believe at every single thing and so let's start our course [Music]