RS100 - Cummings - Lecture 4 Part 2

and we see how they orbit around it and how that organizing principle
of the sacred,even when it is not recognized as the sacred,but when we see
how,what is centrifugal force it has that becomes a very good way to start to analyze
what is most important and what is really the religion of any
particular people.Now he thought that totem was the most basic form of religion,that you
begin with kind of the affinities with the animals as hunter
gatherers and you and you incorporate them into a kinship group where
these animals and you are kindred and that becomes,that's characteristic of many hunter
gatherer societies,so he thinks that's the most basic form
of religion so religion has this fact of being disciplinary.It
orders the way the individual 's discipline themselves.It's cohesive,in other words, it
makes for social bonds.It's vitalizing and gives you
energy and it also makes you happy,it's euphoric.Your happiness comes from being in harmony with
the very forces of nature in the ultimate realities that you perceived as being
the sacred, so this is his great bumper sticker slogan. God is society[inaudible]
So the concept of the sacred is,what makes a society function and so you can actually
find a societies God, by seeing what their most important value
structures and how the orient discipline and what makes people happy.
Interesting concept huh. OK Max Weber.
also important in terms of doing sociology of religion his famous work is the Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism he says we really don't
have the contemporary world and its capitalistic enterprise without that Calvinistic
or that Protestant work ethic and it's the nature of globalism is to have,is really
inspired by that idea that of industry of being fruitful and multiplying
and basically,with the work of your hands being proud of the
work of you hands being able to render labor as though to service to the Lord or a service
to God, the whole idea of the Puritan work ethic and the idea
of idle hands are the tools of the devil,it's
quite a study and it's really bored out.I just
read a recent work in 2009 called After God by Mark C.Taylor and Mark Taylor says you
cannot underestimate it's hidden in every dynamic of the contemporary 21st-century
multi- cultural globalism that is expanded throughout the world that is the Protestant
ethic and the spirit of capitalism at work.It pervades every
aspect of our being then it's a religious concept.
Ernst Stault I think is important.He was the one that started to think about the differences
within religious dynamics so he called them church,sect and cult.But he really means something
like the overall religion,the divisions within it,and then
the sort of nation beginning little off-shoots that you would call
cult now Cult has a derogatory term when used by journalists
there I talk about that that's another cult it's
a cult[inaudible] it's got cult status.We talk about really
films like the Rocky Horror Picture Show as having a cult following or rock groups like
that there sure has a pajority term, but really if you think about it every
religion basically began as a cult and the word cult
just means worship and it starts small so when you think about
you know,cult leaders like Jim Jones or David Korash or anybody that makes
an appearance in the modern journalistic exposé as a cult leader that basically guys like
the Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed all began with very small
cult groups and so what's the difference between a cult and a church is a cult
extends popularity and becomes big,and it becomes a church.We think in terms
of denominations that's the same term for sect
that cult is using.So it's just a division within
religions to think about how,how they function in terms of their size
and ultimately to their expansion to become, major world religions
Rudolph Otto is very important. I mentioned Rudolph Otto in the The Methods and
Madness exercise. He wrote a famous book called the Idea of the Holy.And this is,he
really is very much concerned with religious experience, which he terms the numinous. And
religious experience, or the numinous experience is
characterized by absolute sense of creatureliness,in a sense it's like Schleiermacher that
total sense of dependence in the face of the radical other which he characterizes in the
Mysterium Tremendom that flashing[word]So he actually suggested in
The Idea of the Holy that horror films can sometimes fill you in that numinous sense
of that Mysterium Tremendom, the scariness of the other but also facinating
in its quality of course he looks at other
components within[word]he looks at other moments within major world religions.
He was a very devout Lutheran, but he also was a very astute anthologist meaning he studied
Sanskrit and Indian religions so he looks at the hebrew bible
and he sees the experience of Moses,he's especially struck by the experience
of Isiah,Isiah is a profit and he's called in to the presence of the throne of God or
into the altar of God and he's told to
speak,his profits are given that divine vocation and he says I am a man of unclean lips and
so the angel goes to the altar of God and takes a coal,
a burning hot coal from the altar and touches his lips with it to make his lips clean and
to inspire his speech and that's kind of a often the ground shakes, the experience
of Ezekiel in,another prophet whose is overwhelmed is
like Eric[name]called this the Chariots of the Gods.UFO's came and surrounded him and
put him into buzz mindstate that lasted eight days.
It's overwhelming,it's awesome so the other thing that
well another great experience that Rudolph Otto talks about is Krishna appearance to
Argentina in the Bhagavad-Gita and that's one of the great theophonies a theophony is
the appearance of God in which it just blows Arga's mind and so those
are examples of the Mysterium Tremendoum at fast notes or the numinous
experience and one of the things that he says about religion is that religion that is soon
the generics and in other words, gen-eris we get the
term genre or, from it and so basically he's saying is to[be mean to tell it suits its
all in a genre. It's a category use a version that the contest means category and so it's
a category all its and cannot subsume a religious experience into other
of the characteristics of the a lot, but
you cannot explain the religious by economics or are simply in terms of the of most of the
social categories he canned peaches soon simply to another aspect of culture
because it is the small selection of"meaning to the experience of human
beings cannot be reduced its irreducible ultimately in its own essence to other category is about
to debate whether the upstream or not the ducks
and their many people who stand in that tradition to have Sigmund Freud to you, even though
he rejects to religion to a large extent that said that we serve outgrow that
he spent a lot of time analyzing and thinking about it with discrete works to them and have
grew up in his analysis August use. The dependence upon her time for
those of the the idea of a news to you in the the idea of ritual purity of
the that spills over into cultural and personal behavior pattern...
very interesting to them he hit the constructor so you from having analyzed the thousands
of patients into the dream analysis of the he thinks there at the core
of culture. There is this primal murder by the primal horde to this quite
interesting. All basically the in the father and a strong offer the mail of the tribe keeps
all the women to install a slew to the limit of the try this in this
been together, which is in the democracy they decide to kill
him because he's not sharing the women and so they be in the kill him in
the key in the service shock, told Peterson away so that there's no evidence of the body
is caused in the and they basically then they share the web and
the but they also been frightened because a father figure was strong and protected them.
So the fact of projection day in the jack of father into a heavenly spirits
and he becomes a guy than those of us, apotheosis of the code in turn means to projections
of that which was human into godliness are intended to pity it's
about the origins of religion for him this. It's good to be in this infantile need for
protection, so that's why he thinks of it is an infantile projection of
the need for the four other of the the fifth circuit
that many of his predictions about religion improving and true
it's interesting to see though that he has to sell them, the religious
mythology going on in psychology to call you a was taken to
some per area in well you could call a kick of waiting till he had a blowout in the spread
and basically call using as a psychologist in terms of the psychology of
religion is has had a tremendous influence he and he thinks and that the you
take the Freudian discovery of the subconscious they make us into this big grin in the area
of the collective unconscious that we also will help dissipate
in the collective unconscious. And we see it up any of the emergence of archetypes
and the architects of the extreme with forums that, would we all
kind of sharing his use of the Cross: choosing the
the the the different manifestations of probably the great a
proponent of this in the news also moved house to wait as Joseph Campbell at the idea of
the hero of the is the the at the euro is really a
particular archetype and a is but the issues manifest in a thousand faces to the hero with
a thousand patients across coach you always have a euro figure and he
fights dragons or he overcomes to all kinds of obstacles he has trial, and she goes to
the ordeal rules to love her and convicted across cultures you find that his
figure was able to emerge victorious. You see a obtrusive cables of the need
to become the hero, but I the
to the that is what you think of that. It goes
in and out of a visit to the had tremendous impact on people, so you basically
all religion is just the big guys at the cultural forms take to the core
this is archetypal reality to the other great book by Joseph Campbell implementing a union
to name in the masks of God to the various cultures of us must do this
in a influential period of many people rejected as well
to a person. A Liotta is probably the most important historian of the legends of the
20th century he's and these are some of his columns to the contrary sheet
like auto is the again to use anti- reductionist in the bit he also does a kid
and he has his idea that symbols are BR to go to come across the consciousness of various
cultures. So really the symbols need to be
realized in the South 's multicultural spectrum or pay and morale, which really move the gives
the whole meaning to you in the individual symbol of July, stumbles
and falls a initiation into the ocean to market. Initiation
liked with the score there are.
So he or she compares Platonic ideas and primitive ontology that means that basically do a load
with our so-called primitive chic as you cannot negate the fact
that they have the basic metaphysical structure