PHIL 337-450

Quiz 1
1. What are the definitions of culture and religion and how are they related?

Answer: Culture is the social heritage of a man which is acquired knowledge to interpret
experience and generate their behavior. It is a tradition of a human group. The tradition includes
the way of living their life and sharing that life by that specific human group. It is not inherited
through genetic, but through communication from one generation to another.

Religion is cultural knowledge about supernatural that people use to cope with the ultimate
problems of human experience. The knowledge is to believe in supernatural power which can
solve the ultimate problems such as meaning of life existence, the fear of death and the existence
of evil.

These two are related in a sense that religion is a cultural knowledge which is taught by the
generations of his/her people. Religion like culture itself only when a systematic patterns of
beliefs, values and behavior, acquired by man as a member of his society. The patterns are
systematic because their occurrences and expressions are shared by a member of a same group.

2. What are some of the basic features of a scientific approach to the study of religion?

Answer: Universality, empiricism, comparison and objectivity.

3. What was Emile Durkheim’s perspective on the study of religion?

Answer: The perspective was that the man classifies religion things into two categories. Which
are the sacred and the profane. The sacred is prohibitions, prescriptions and dispensations which
inspires great respect and admiration on the part of society and what is set apart and keeps us at a
distance. The profane is everyday world dealt with in a practical and matter-of-fact manner.

4. Why do most anthropologists consider magic part of religion?

Answer: Because magic refers to methods that somehow interface with the supernatural and by
which people can bring about particular outcomes. Magic, as anthropologists use the term, refers
to activities, usually rituals, by which a person can compel the supernatural to behave in certain
ways. Closely related to magic are ways of gaining information about the unknown, be it what
will happen in the future, what is happening in some faraway place, or the cause of an illness.
The magic part of religion itself has no meaning to them, but the anthropologists believe the
magic part will help them recognize the different meaning in cultural settings.
5. What is animism?
Answer: The origin of the religion is in the impulse that we see spirits in the world. According
to Edward B. Tyler, all of nature is possessed, pervaded, and possessed by spirits. Animism
means that there are spirits in everything, such as- plants, rocks, mountains, rivers and stars.