H O U R 4

COMPARATIVE

RELIGIONS

FINAL EXAM

• 12/9 (Wed), 9:15-11:15 am

• Bring Blue/Green Book

• Bring Scantron & # 2 Pencil

• Worth 20% of your grade.

• Final Exam Worksheet Review

REVIEW

• Final Exam MC Review

• Final Exam Essay Review

• Misc Questions?

THE COURSE (IN GENERAL)

What is a Religion?

Religio:

• Religare: “to bind,” “to tie together” as in a ligament. • “bond between man and man?• “bond between man and the

sacred?”

• Re-Legere: re- “again” + legere- “read” • Religion = “to read again”?

• Later �

• Respect for what is sacred. Reverence for awe.

THE COURSE (IN GENERAL)

What are the humanities?

Report on the Commission on the Humanities:

Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: what does it mean to be human?

The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer.

They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope and reason.

(IMAGE OF PERSON’S PLACE IN

SOCIETY)

THE COURSE (IN GENERAL)

Comparing ReligionsWhat we Will Learn About them?

1. How they Make Sense of The World and Our Place in It.

2. What they Say About How to Best Live our Lives.

THE ISLANDERS READING

What is This Parable About?

One interpretation: A story about trying to understand religions.

4 Key Elements to the Story:

1. An island exists beyond our normal, experienced (conditioned) island.

2. This island can be accessed through certain techniques and forgotten / secret knowledge.

3. It’s hard to understand these techniques from the outside.

4. Most on the island are “asleep”.

THE ISLANDERS READING

What is This Parable About?

Another interpretation: A story about all religions; about reality.

4 Key Elements to the Story:

1. An island exists beyond our normal, experienced (conditioned) island.

2. This island can be accessed through certain techniques and forgotten / secret knowledge.

3. It’s hard to understand these techniques from the outside.

4. Most on the island are “asleep”.

WHAT IS A MYTH

“Myth” Comes from Greek word “Mythos”

Mythos:Divinely inspired, poetic utterance.

SO WHY DO WE STUDY RELIGIONS?

#1

To Learn of the Heart & Big Picture of Each

Can find the right context/mythos to understand a religion and it’s beliefs, symbols, rituals, etc…

SO WHY DO WE STUDY RELIGIONS?

#1

Huston SmithReligious Studies Professor U.C. Berkeley

All Major Religions Share…

1. The same ethics:

• Avoid murder, thieving, lying, adultery…

2. The same virtues:

• We should be selfless/humble,

compassionate/charitable, strive for truth/reality.

3. The same vision:

• Everything is more connected than it appears.

• Everything is better than it appears.

• Everything is more mysterious than it appears.

SO WHY DO WE STUDY RELIGIONS?

#2

Campbell:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for

life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think

that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive,

that our life experiences on the purely physical plan will

have resonances within our own innermost being and

reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

..Myth are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human

life.

“Myth tells you what the experience (of being alive) is.”