Details

Subject(s)

• Religion—Study and teaching [Browse]

Series

McGraw-Hill publications in psychology. [More in this series]

Summary note

It is the purpose of this book to present religion as a normal product of man's conscious processes: his desires, his fears, and especially his planning for future contingencies. In order to understand the role a religion may or may not play in the civilization of the future, it is necessary to understand the roles that the religions of the past, from which religions of the present day have developed, have played in the cultures of which they were integral parts. Only through the study of these roles is it possible to discover what religion really is. This historical or genetic method is only one part of the full comparative method that is essential for a complete study of religion. The other part of the comparative method is the comparison of religions that exist contemporaneously and which have little, if any, genetic relation to one another. The religions of civilized peoples can be understood by tracing them back to their foundations in religions of ancient cultures from which our civilization developed. This genetic method at least gives a primary understanding of the nature and functions of religion, which suffices for the purpose of this volume; the religions of civilized peoples having borrowed little from either the religions of present-day savages or those of semicivilized peoples, the full comparative method is not essential for our purposes. That the psychological problems of religion are primarily problems for group psychology and that the problems of personal religion are secondary in importance should be evident from the principle that is now generally accepted by scholars in the field of the history of religion. This principle, which is explained and illustrated in the text, is that faith develops from ritual, rather than ritual from faith.

Source of description

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Contents

• Religions and religion
• Further concepts applied to religion
• Concepts involved in religion
• The evolution of divinities
• The role of desire in religion
• Religion and the food supply
• Protective and other primary desires in religion
• Religious symbolism
• Funerary praxes and rituals
• Sin
• Religious organization
• Initiation, proselytism, and conversion
• Changes in the functions of religion
• The future of religion in civilization.

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Other title(s)

Religion

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