religious belief

Belief in sacred plants or animals is widespread. Common to all of these is the notion that the plant or animal is a manifestation of the sacred and thus possesses the dual attributes of beneficence (in healing, hunting, or agricultural magic) or danger (as expressed…

…interest was related to their belief in God, and virtually every solution to every problem, including the problem of knowledge, contained God as an essential part. Indeed, Anselm himself equated truth and intelligibility with God. As he noted at the beginning of his Proslogion (1077–78), however, there is a tension…

religion based on the veneration of natural phenomena—for example, celestial objects such as the sun and moon and terrestrial objects such as water and fire.

…common with other socialists, regarded religious belief as gross superstition, and they were determined to eliminate it by a combination of repression, ridicule, and scientific enlightenment. A decree issued on January 20, 1918 (February 2, New Style), formally separated church from state, but it went far beyond its declared purpose…

…some people as incompatible with religious beliefs, particularly those of Christianity. The first chapters of the biblical book of Genesis describe God’s creation of the world, the plants, the animals, and human beings. A literal interpretation of Genesis seems incompatible with the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms by…

…game theory to show that belief in the Christian religion is rational. He argued that people can choose to believe in God or can choose to not believe in God, and that God either exists or he does not. Under these conditions, if a person believes in the Christian God…

…involves its dependence upon a belief system that is usually expressed in the language of myth. The third characteristic of ritual action is that it is symbolic in relation to its reference. Agreement on these characteristics can be found in most descriptions of the functions of ritual.

…associated with all forms of religion.

… to represent their statements of belief consistently, to explicate them out of the basis (or fundamentals) of their faith, and to assign to such statements their specific place within the context of all other worldly relations (e.g., nature and history) and spiritual processes (e.g., reason and logic).

…vivid and striking manifestations of religious beliefs, ritual behaviour, and artistic activities. One of the most remarkable phenomena was hoarding. Objects, usually in large numbers, were deliberately hidden in the ground or deposited in water in the form of a hoard. Hoards were known in a modest form during the…

…allows for conjecture concerning the religious beliefs of the Harappans. First, there are the buildings identified as temples or as possessing a ritual function, such as the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro. Then there are the stone sculptures found to a large extent associated with these buildings. Finally, there are the…

…as subverting the rationality of religious belief. The views of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) might briefly be considered in that connection. In contrast to the standard view of the Middle Ages that propositions of faith are rational, Hobbes argued that such propositions belong not to the intellect but to the will.…

…diversity may be based on religion or ethnicity as well as on territory. Such a situation has existed historically in many Islamic countries. In India the laws concerning matters of the family, including succession upon death, are different for Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Buddhists, and other religious groups, and in Lebanon…