Just HOW important WAS religion?

Question

Does anyone know just how important religion was before the nation state was formed? I know it performed many things that the welfare state does now, but to what extent was it central to everyones lifes..its hard to understand when i only know how it is today in my culture and im studying fundamentalism at the moment and feel it would really help in my understanding of that to know why religion is so important in some countries. How can you base life just around religion? Please help me xx

Answer 1

It was so central that it was not even discussed! It was the air, the food, the water, and the grave.

Before the division of science and religion, about the time of Copernicus, religion was the way the world was understood to work. Science dwelt inside the realm of religion, and the church was among its chief defenders.

In the west, the Church began to squelch science when the astronomers theorized that the earth was not the center of the universe. As they gathered more and more evidence that the earth was simply another planet that orbited the sun, they silenced Copernicus and Galileo.

Since then, religion and science have traveled a tense two lane road. Science has taken on the task of learning about the way the universe works, while Religion follows the path of describing how life has meaning and should be lived. However, the more science learns and can predict, the thinner the ice on which religion skates. This has led to different philosophies that defy the religious arguments from authority ("God said it.") and instead promote a more relativistic, self-defined existence.

Still among the less educated and more troubled segments of the world, religion has an ongoing stronghold. Its ability to comfort by offering absolutes helps to ease the anxiety surrounding death and disorder. Unfortunately, most religions have offered an "us vs. them" view of life, and so ultimately have contributed to ongoing conflicts.

Answer 2

Men need a sense of identity. Whoever holds power know that and uses that to control the masses.
There are other ways to achieve that. For instance the thought of our nation as being the best is also a form of religion which is manipulated by the ones who govern a nation.
Only individual awareness can break the cycle.

Answer 3

I think that religion provides the "moral" context of a society. It is the underpinning of a society's "sense" of the boundaries of moral and immoral behavior. Religious rules are accepted by the community because they are perceived as genuinely deriving from divine decree rather than from the mere whim of some person or group that wishes to impose his or its will on everybody else. As the influence of a particular religion wanes, the vacuum is usually either filled with other religions, or with some other comprehensive ideology that fulfills this same role (such as Marxism, whose rules derive not from divine decree, but from the laws of dialectical materialism). In the absence of such a religious or ideological worldview, a society becomes more nihilistic and atomistic. The notion that there is an obligatory code of right and wrong which derives independently of one's own individual fancy is supplanted by a reliance on a cost/benefit analysis of one's possible courses of action in fulfilling an one's own needs and desires. For example: a person who believes that a religious edict against murder is genuinely dictated by God might refrain from killing his annoying neighbor out of fear of divine retribution, whereas a person who does not believe in Divine Law might think instead about the earthly consequences of killing his annoying neighbor (such as being killed by the neighbor's equally annoying family, or being punished by the even more annoying authorities), and then decide whether suffering those consequences is either:

1) not likely even to occur (e.g. "everybody else hates him too and will revere me as a hero" or "nobody could possibly know that I killed him because my murder plan is perfect")

or

2) acceptable to him (e.g. "I have terminal cancer and will die in a month anyway, so screw him. I hate his guts and killing him will be worth it").

Since such "Law of the Jungle" thinking leaves society on shaky footing at best, people will fight, kill and die to preserve the religious or ideological tenets that protect a society from plunging into that abyss.

At least, that's how I see it.

Answer 4

The importance of religion derives from the comparison between this life and eternal life after death. Earthly life is too short comparing to billions and billions of light years. So what is the way of life that will help you have a good position in the eternal life? Religion

Answer 5

Religion knows no borders, in that aspect it needs no nation. One is wrong to base his life around a religion, as God as I know Him exists in each one of us spiritually and needs no building or set religion. But, if we did not begin with religion we would not have acquired the knowledge to advance on our own. Your question would depend on which sect of religion you are referring to and it's location. In most nations that began as a colony, the church building was a central location and one of the first public buildings.Communities were often built around a church/mission.

Answer 6

All one has to do, is look at the unrest on this Religion and Spirituality column, and
see how important some kind of "belief" in something IS important still today.

Answer 7

In usa, the main useful may well be Christianity. No president that has been elected so far hasn't be Christian (alongside with Catholicism). there is not any "maximum severe" faith interior the US as we've the 1st modification wherein persons are unfastened to chosen which faith to stay with. @ Scooter: And the dark a protracted time have been what now?

Answer 8

Just as important as it is now. It 's just overlooked more these days
partly due to the government MAKING us overlook it


Our life reflects more and more each day our turning our backs on God too.........

Answer 9

this is how important it is to Muslim

Say: Verily, my Prayers, my sacrifice, my living,
and my dying are for Allah (God), the Lord of all that exists. [Qur’an 6: 162]

Answer 10

just like when inventors create something new, there should b an instruction book
so do religion god created us then gave us an instruction book ( bible , koran , ...... etc