This document provides an overview of key concepts in the study of religion including definitions of religion, major world religions, and philosophical arguments regarding the existence of God. It discusses religion as involving a set of beliefs that provide explanations for human existence and purpose. Major universalizing and ethnic religions are outlined, and key terms like monotheism, polytheism, and secularization are defined. Philosophical arguments for God's existence like the cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments are summarized. Objections to some arguments are also presented.

1. Religion
Religions overview
Asif Razzaq
Riphah International University-
Pakistan

2. Geography of Religion
• What is Religion?
• Major Religions & Divisions
• Religious Landscapes
• Religious Conflict and Interaction

3. Religion
• A set of beliefs
– an explanation of the origins and purpose
of humans and their role on earth
– existence of a higher power, spirits or god
– Which involves rituals, festivals, rites of
passage and space (religious landscapes)

4. Key Terms
• Universalizing Religion: attempts to
appeal to all people, not just those living
in a particular location.
• Proselytize: to try to convert people to
one’s belief or opinion.
• Syncretic: Traditions that borrow from
both the past and the present

5. Key Terms
Secularization - a process that is leading to
increasingly large groups of people who
claim no allegiance to any church.
• Some of these people are atheists. Others
simply do not practice. Still others call
themselves spiritual, but not religious.
• Common in Europe and the cities of the
U.S.
• Common in former Soviet Union and
China.

6. Key Terms
• Ethnic Religions: concentrated spatial
distribution whose principles are likely
based on physical characteristics of a
particular location.

7. Fundamentalism - a process that is leading to
increasingly large groups of people who
claim there is only one way to interpret
worship.
• Fundamentalists generally envision a return
to a more perfect religion and ethics they
imagine existed in the past.
Key Terms

8. Key Terms
• Monotheism: existence of only one god.
• Polytheism: existence of many gods.
• Cosmogony: A set of religious beliefs
concerning the origin of the universe.

9. • Branch: A large and fundamental
division within a religion.
• Denomination: A division within a
branch of a religion.
• Sect: A relatively small denominational
group that has broken away from an
established church.
Religious Divisions

10. Major World Religions
• Universalizing Religions
– Christianity
– Islam
– Buddhism
• Traced to actions and teaching of a
man
• Diffused from specific hearths by
followers / missionaries

11. Major World Religions
• Ethnic Religions
– Hinduism
– Judaism
– all Animistic Religions
• No specific founder
• limited diffusion / no missionaries

13. http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm

14. Philosophy of Religion

15. •The Existence of God
– Reason and Faith
– God’s Attributes.
•Chance or Design?
•Cosmological Argument
•Ontological Argument. God: The Necessary Being?
•How is god/God to be conceived?
•What is the nature of God?
•Can reason establish that there is a god/God?
•Are there any reasons, apart form religious faith
itself, to believe in the existence of God?

16. Reason and Faith
• Reason:
– Human intellect abilities
– Our capacity to form beliefs for good reasons, on the
basis of evidence: Empirical or Rational.
• Faith:
– A set of beliefs at least some of which are not
supported by evidence; faith goes beyond available
evidence. Faith is a gift of God- supernatural.

17. • Natural Theology
• The study of God, His
attributes and His relation
to the world.
• Beliefs are established by
reason working
independently of any
revelation.
• Dogmatic Theology
• A belief that is mandatory
for members of a
particular religion

18. • THE ARGUMENT:
• Premises:
– The purposive organization of man-made object is
evidence of the intelligence and purpose of the maker.
– The world contains many natural objects (plants, animals,
human body, etc.) whose organization is clearly purposive
and the world itself is purposely organized.
• Conclusion:
– By analogy, there must be a maker of the universe who has
made it accordingly to a PLAN. The world maker/creator,
is God.
• The argument was elaborated by the Archdeacon of Carlisle
William Paley (1743-1805) in his book Natural Theology.

19. Arguments against the Teleological Proof of
the Existence of a Cosmic Design
• Chaos Theory. Another significant scientific theory that may
undermine the whole Design Argument is the belief that the
universe is not really all that ordered at all! As quantum theory
developed early this century, it became clear that at the
microscopic level, physical processes were indeterminate; they
were not predictable! Over the past thirty years or so it has
become clearer that the motion of many physical systems
(including planets) are not as regular as Newton had suggested. In
other words; nature is not as mechanical as the machines we
make at all, and, therefore, the analogy does not work! Such a
theory also lends support to Hume’s thesis that there is no
obvious sense in which the universe resembles human production.
In fact, it could be argued that human production is ‘better’ than
the universe, which is why we feel the need to produce things in
the first place!

20. Cosmological Argument
• The Cosmological Argument is based on 3 principles:
– 1. Something cannot be the cause of itself.
– 2. Something cannot be come from nothing.
– 3. There cannot be an infinite series of causes and effects.
• The Efficient Cause: (Aristotle)
• Efficient -Material - Formal - Final
• Sculptor/sculpting- marble/wood- characteristics-the object

21. Thomas Aquinas- Summa Theological
• Question II. The Existence of God
• A1.Whether the existence of God, is self
evident?
• A2. Whether it can be demonstrated that
God exists?
• A3. Whether God Exists?

22. Objections:
• Objection 1:
• It seems that God does not
exist:
• God means-infinite
goodness. If God existed
there would be no evil, but
there is evil therefore God
does not exists.
• Objection 2:
• Everything in the world can be
accomplished by a few
principles. The processes of
the world can be accounted by
other principles.
• Natural things can be reduced
to one principle, that is the
principle of nature. All
voluntary things can be
reduced to one principle:
Human Reason and Will.
• There is no need to be
supposed the existence of
GOD.

23. Existence of God can be proved in five ways:
• Argument from Motion
• Efficient Cause
• Possibility and Necessity
• Gradation to be found in things
• Governance of things.

24. • Argument from Motion
• Would not it be much easier to say that there is a beginning?
Let’s be empirical: when we observe the world we see that
everything has a cause: the rain causes the plants to grow, the
plants cause the production of oxygen, oxygen causes animal life
to exist, etc. Does not follow from this that the whole universe,
too, has a cause? Aristotle, rejecting Plato’ concept of the Forms,
believed that everything must have an efficient cause; the
efficient cause was the “Unmoved Mover”
• Efficient Cause
• Aristotle was a major influence on Thomas Aquinas who
developed the causal argument as part of his Christian beliefs.
Basically, Aquinas stated that if A causes B, and B causes C, then
A is the first cause, and C is the last cause. But what happens if A
does not occur? Neither B nor C will occur either. The causal
chain must, therefore, have a beginning, and that beginning is
God.

25. From Possibility to Necessity
• In Nature things that are
possible are either, to be -
they are created, or not to
be, they are destroyed; it
is impossible for them to
always exist, if this is
possible, then at one time
there could have been
nothing in existence.
• For something to exist, its
existence begins by
something already
existing.
• If at one time Nothing was in
existence, it would have been
impossible for anything to have
begun to exist… and now
nothing would be in existence,
but there are things that exist,
therefore, not all being are
merely possible, but must be
something which existence is
necessary.
• Every necessary thing is caused
by another.
• We must admit the existence of
some being having of itself its
own necessity - GOD, causing
others to exist.

26. Argument of Perfection
• Things in the world are in gradation, less or
more, good, noble, hot- therefore there must
be something that is best, noblest, hottest,
and something, which is MOST BEING -
PERFECTION, and that is GOD.

27. Governance of Things
• Things that lack being (imperfect), as
natural bodies act for an end, to obtain the
best result.
• They achieve their goal not by chance, but
by design.
• Who ordered things to their end, directed
them, GOD, in the same way that ‘the arrow
is directed by the archer”.

28. Ontological Argument, God, The Necessary Being?
• Saint Anselm, defines God “is that than which
nothing greater can be thought”. God is the
greatest possible thing we can conceived,
• His logical argument is a Reduction to
Absurdity- the negation of the conclusion leads
to an absurdity.
• The concept of GOD is of a being no greater that
which can be conceived. But a being which
exists is greater than a being which is merely
conceived;if GOD did not exist, GOD would be
a being no greater that which can be conceived,
THEREFORE, GOD exists.

29. • It seems that scientist and mystics sometimes
use a common language to describe what both
agree is in many ways indescribable: the inner
essence of reality. Like Anselm, Aquinas, and
Paley, Christian mystics claim knowledge of
God. Their certainty arises not out of the linear
logic of reason, but intuitively , based on their
experience. What they know cannot be proved,
but then again, much of what we know about
the world cannot be proved either, at least not
using the traditional methods of science.

30. Atheistic Worldview: from “Roots of Wisdom”
• If the God of theism does not exist, then all meaning might be said
to derive from human values. According to Protagoras, without
God, “man is the measure of all things.” Without a personal God,
we might conclude that all creative and technological
accomplishments are monuments to human potential and should be
celebrated as the legacies one generation leave to the next so that
continuous progress is possible. We are responsible to ourselves and
to our fellow travelers to behave reasonably and to be true to our
human nature. The purpose of life is what we bring to it; our dreams
and hopes for a better present and brighter future. The purpose of
my life is whatever I decide it should be. When I die, my
consciousness will die with me; my contributions to human
knowledge and the creative spirit, as well as the people whose lives
I have influenced, will be my immortality. While they live and
while my accomplishments endure, I will not be forgotten. My
children and grandchildren are my legacies to the future.

31. Ethnic Religions

32. The Roots of Religion
Animism (Shamanism) - the belief that
all objects, animals, and beings are
“animated” or possess a spirit and a
conscious life. Also called shamanism
because of the prominence of a Shaman.
• Such beliefs are common among hunter-
gatherers and folk cultures.
• 10% of Africans follow such traditional
ethnic religions.
• These beliefs are losing ground to
Christianity and Islam throughout Africa.
Nigerian Shaman

33. Hinduism
• Origin & Diffusion - unknown
– Hearth: Indus River Valley in present-day
Pakistan 2200-4000 BCE
– Collection of scriptures 1500BCE – 500BC
• Vedas, Upanishads, Sutras, Bhagavad Gita
– Over 800 million followers
• Almost exclusive to India, Nepal,
and Sri Lanka
– Sacred Spaces
• Ganges River

34. Hinduism
• Monistic: One god, many forms
– Brahman: Vishnu (preserver), Shiva (destroyer),
Shakti (mother god)
• Main Beliefs
– Karma- deeds have corresponding effects on the future
– dharma - fulfill moral, social and religious duties
– artha - attain financial and worldy success
– kama - satisfy desires and drives in moderation
– moksha - attain freedom from reincarnation

35. Judaism
• Origin and Diffusion
2000 BCE – Abraham formed covenant
with God as patriarch of Israelites
Moses led people out of Egypt
Diaspora: In 70 A.D., Romans forced Jews
to disperse throughout the world.
Ghetto: During the Middle Ages, a
neighborhood in a city set up by law to be
inhabited only by Jews.

36. Judaism
• Sacred Places
– Synagogues
– Jerusalem
• Divisions
– Orthodox, Reform, Conservative
• Current Diffusion
13-14 million worldwide
Israel, United States – both 5-6 mil

37. Judaism
• Basic Precepts
– Belief in One God
– Torah - original 5 chapters of Christian Bible
– Coming of the Messiah still to come
– Atonement accomplished by sacrifices,
penitence & good deeds
– Differing opinions on afterlife

38. Ethnic Asian Religions
Taoism – The Path or Way
– Founder: Lao Tze
– 500 BCE
– 20 million followers, mainly in China
– Sacred Text: Tao Te Ching
– philosophy of harmony & balance: Tao
– After life: change from being to non-being

39. Ethnic Asian Religions
• Confucianism
– 6-5th
century BCE
– moral code taught by Confucius
• Humanity and striving for perfection
– 5-6 million adherents, most refer
to themselves as more than one
faith
• Most influential in China

40. Ethnic Asian Religions
Shintoism
– Japanese traditional religion
– No founder or origin known
– 3-4 million followers
– Beliefs
• Worship and offerings to kami at shrines and at home
• Simple and harmonious life with nature and people
• Many practices tied with Buddhism

41. Ethnic Asian Religions
Jainism
– 550 BCE
– Founder: Mahavira
– Indian traditional religion
– 4 million followers
– Basic Principles:
• Reincarnation to attain perfection and
liberation

44. Christianity
• Origin and Diffusion
Palestine (modern Israel)
Universalizing
Religion
What are the 3
branches?
• Branches
Roman Catholic
Protestant
Eastern Orthodox

45. Christianity
• Origin and Diffusion
Messiah: Jesus
Universalizing Religion
• Branches
Roman Catholic
Protestant
Eastern Orthodox

48. • Basic Precepts
Belief in One God
Father, Son & Holy Spirit
Covenant (contract) with God
New Testament - salvation to those who believe
in Jesus Christ and his teachings
Salvation is by grace or belief not works
Believers to to heaven with everlasting life
Conversion of others (proselytize)
Christianity

49. • Basic Precepts
Founded in 33 CE, Jesus, Palestine
Bible-Old and New Testament
2 billion followers – largest faith
Europe
North and South America
Christianity

50. • Catholicism - largest branch
Headed by the Pope
Ceremonial - 7 sacraments
ex: baptism, marriage, Eucharist
• Eastern Orthodoxy - 11th Century split-Great Schism
Rivalry between Pope and Patriarch of Constantinople
(Istanbul)
Russian, Greek, Serbian Orthodox, etc.
• Protestantism - (1517) Reformation era
No Pope needed
individual has direct link to God
Grace through faith rather than sacraments
Christianity

53. Islam
• Origin and Diffusion
Mecca, Saudi Arabia
633 CE
Founder-Muhammad
• 1.3 Billion followers
• Branches
Sunni (majority)-Middle East and North Africa
Shiite-Iran, Iraq, Bahrain

55. Islam
• Basic Precepts
Submission to the will of God (Allah)
Lineage - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Jesus, & Mohammed (different lineage)
Holy Book - Quran - built on Old Testament

56. • 5 Pillars of Faith
Shahada: Creed “There is no God but Allah”
Salat: Prayer 5 times a day facing Mecca
Zakat: Giving to the poor
Sawm: Fasting during month of Ramadan
Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca

57. • Origin and Diffusion
Founder: Siddhartha Gautama
520 BCE
Hearth: present day Nepal
• 360 million followers
• Branches
Theravada
Mahayana
Vajrayana (Tibetan-Lamaism)
Zen
Buddhism

60. Buddhism
• Basic Precepts
Buddha - the enlightened one
Nirvana - highest degree of consciousness
4 noble truths
1. All of life is marked by suffering.
2. Suffering is caused by desire and attachment.
3. Suffering can be eliminated.
4. Suffering is eliminated by following the Noble Eightfold Path.

61. Buddhism
• Basic Precepts
8 Fold Path
1. Right beliefs
2. Right aspirations
3. Right speech
4. Right conduct
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right meditational attainment

62. Buddhism
• Basic Precepts
Individuals choose the “Middle Path”
Buddhist believe:
not in any God, blind faith, or savior
what is created is impermanent
True Permanent Absolute Reality
uncreated, unborn, permanent bliss of Nirvana