Reviews for Pren.hall Gde....rsrch ...religion 'o4

The average rating for Pren.hall Gde....rsrch ...religion 'o4 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-12 00:00:00 Kenneth Porath The narrative J. Samuel Preus provides in his study Explaining Religion is a fine description of the development of Religious Studies from the theological traditions to the ‘critical methods’ of the various authors Preus uses. Sociology, psychology, as well as synchronistic accounts of universal scientific paradigms, remain persuasive hermeneutics with which religion can be understood in comprehensive fashion. The approaches in Preus’ book, even in light of his conclusions, are nevertheless ‘theological’ in construct, but not necessarily in practice or belief. The very plurality of the contradictory interpretations is enough to conclude that, without the absolutely ‘final’ (non-refutable) consensus regarding universal religious methodology, Religious Studies (as Preus explains it) is then just one among other distinct traditions that run parallel to (while at times intersecting with) more explicitly ‘theological’ lines of thought. When religion is understood in the sense of that which the human animal uses to interpret the life he or she leads, then the ‘anthropocentric turn’ of the Religious Studies discipline (since Hume) does in fact use the same means to interpret what religion was or is that ‘theology’ once used to interpret what religion was or is too. Religion interpreted thus to mean the essential quality of all human behavior, religion then becomes (by definition) every attempted answer provided by means of ‘cult’, ‘code’, ‘creed’ or science to ‘theological’ questions that arise from within the human condition. Is there God? Is there an afterlife? What is moral? How to eat, dress, speak, behave, worship, think, communicate, act, believe, etc., remain important practical considerations regardless of whether ‘traditional’ religious habits are discarded or not. Should the reader of Preus conclude that religion is the reaction of fearful animals to a ‘meaningless’ world of sublimated sexual urges (Freud) or pre-determined class-interests (Marx) then, for example, the reader may very well stop wearing clothes, copulate at every opportunity irrespective of consent, murder the helpless for no apparent reason, patricide fathers, incest mothers, sacrifice children, cease being intelligible in thought, word or action, and decorate structures, buildings, edifices, with the most ‘ghoulish’ artifacts or images possible. The violation of every ‘taboo’ that there is or ever was is and will remain distinctive human behavior relative to that which is not human (i.e. animal behavior), whether or not the behavior is called ‘theological’, ‘religious’, or whatever. The term ‘religion’ is loose enough to include every evidential (empirical) or speculative (metaphysical) quality that sets the human person apart from the animal kingdom, plant-life, or lifeless-matter. Even when the conclusions to questions raised first by ‘theology’, interpreted historically by ‘religion’, conclude that the ‘religious’ answers to ‘theological’ questions are inconclusive or historically ‘false’ by the ‘critical method’ of Religious Studies, the questions of ‘religion’ were nevertheless raised by human beings capable of theological questioning, not other animals without the said capacity for ‘religion’. The human ‘mode of understanding’, namely, signs, symbols, rituals, beliefs, myths, cultural ‘trappings’, manners, behavior, art, scientific ‘know-how’, or otherwise, is and remains the sole means by which religion was and is traditionally practiced in human life. Every conclusion in Religious Studies, therefore, is concluded in the ‘human mode of understanding’. Concluding that ‘theology’ is impossible (there being no God) is arrived at by ‘theological’ means, i.e. from within the human animal for which the possibility of God is an issue. The conclusion that religion then (Historical Theology) is not ‘religion’ now (Religious Studies) is concluded by means of what religion once was: that is, meanings with words, symbols, culture, rituals, customs, traditions, morals, values, reason, revelation, etc.. More often than not, the deracinated atheist, say, continues to live in ways directly attributable to the remnants of one religious practice or another. At the very least, the person who thinks that all religion is this or that (and nothing else) will not in most cases live without the 'means' by which the admission was reached that this particular religion was or is ‘false’, another ‘true’, every religion ‘false’, or every religion ‘true’ insofar as the said religion in question is by definition ‘religious’. For example, reading a book about the impossibility of reading a book, then concluding that the book is correct that the words of books are meaningless and cannot be read, will not and cannot eliminate the book from the bookshelf as the sign that signified that books do not signify. The book can be discarded, but not forgotten. Should the customary belief attributed to the book that the tradition of book-reading is ‘false’ or ‘outmoded’ develop into another ‘tradition’ (past on generation after generation) probably no new books will be written or read and the book where the thought was first written down will soon be forgotten. Concluding that religion is not what it was, rather, that it is what it is now understood as (whatever it is understood as) is, even when ‘traditional’ religion is forgotten, a religious tradition of sorts nonetheless.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-10-02 00:00:00 Justin Wittmann Provides an overview of the development of the social scientific method of studying religion, but Preus slants the represented theorists to fit his narrative and ignores a lot of complexities, contexts, and evidence.