Religion Sleep Facts

Tonight, Benjamin Boster gently guides you through the unfolding story of religion—how early spiritual practices shaped human culture and thought. With a calm look at ancient traditions and the role of belief across civilizations, this episode offers a peaceful journey into timeless themes. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast, Where I help you drift off one fact at a time. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster, And today's episode is about religion. Religion is a range of social cultural systems, Including designated behaviors and practices, Morals, Beliefs, Worldviews, Texts, Sanctified places, Prophecies, Ethics, Or organizations that generally relate humanity to supernatural, Transcendental, And spiritual elements, Although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. It is an essentially contested concept. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, Sacredness, Faith, And a supernatural being or beings. The origin of religious belief is an open question, With possible explanations including awareness of individual death, A sense of community, And dreams. Religions have sacred histories, Narratives, And mythologies preserved in oral traditions, Sacred texts, Symbols, And holy places that may attempt to explain the origin of life, The universe, And other phenomena. Religious practice may include rituals, Sermons, Commemoration or veneration of deities or saints, Sacrifices, Festivals, Feasts, Trances, Initiations, Matrimonial and funerary services, Meditation, Prayer, Music, Art, Dance, Or public service. There are an estimated 10, 000 distinct religions worldwide, Though nearly all of them have regionally based relatively small followings. Four religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, And Buddhism—account for over 77% of the world's population, And 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as non-religious, Meaning that the vast majority of remaining religions account for only 8% of population combined. The religiously unaffiliated demographic includes those who do not identify with any particular religion, Atheists, And agnostics, Although many in the demographic still have various religious beliefs. Many world religions are also organized religions, Most definitely including the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam, And Judaism, While others are arguably less so, In particular folk religions, Indigenous religions, And some eastern religions. A portion of the world's population are members of new religious movements. Scholars have indicated that global religiosity may be increasing due to religious countries having generally higher birth rates. The study of religion comprises a wide variety of academic disciplines, Including theology, Philosophy of religion, Comparative religion, And social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for its origins and workings, Including the ontological foundations of religious being and belief. The term religion comes from both Old French and Anglo-Norman 1200s CE, And means respect for sense of right, Moral obligation, Sanctity, What is sacred, Reverence for the gods. It is ultimately derived from the Latin word religio. According to Roman philosopher Cicero, Religio comes from religere, Re meaning again, Plus lego meaning read, Where lego is the sense of go over, Choose, Or consider carefully. Contrarily, Some modern scholars, Such as Tom Harper and Joseph Campbell, Have argued that religio is derived from religare, Re meaning again, Plus legare, Bind, Or connect, Which was made prominent by St. Augustine following the interpretation given by Lactantius in Divine Institutiones 4. 28. The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like those of monastic orders. We hear of the religion of the Golden Fleece, Of a knight of the religion of Awas. In classic antiquity, Religio broadly meant conscientiousness, Sense of right, Moral obligation, Or duty to anything. In the ancient and medieval world, The etymological Latin root religio was understood as an individual virtue of in mundane contexts, Never as doctrine, Practice, Or actual source of knowledge. In general, Religio referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, Neighbors, Rulers, And even towards God. Religio was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards God, But as a range of general emotions which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context, Such as hesitation, Caution, Anxiety, Or fear, As well as feelings of being bound, Restricted, Or inhibited. The term was also closely related to other terms like scrupulus, Which meant very precisely. And some Roman authors related the term superstitio, Which meant too much fear or anxiety or shame, To religio at times. When religio came into English around the 1200s as religion, It took the meaning of life bound by monastic vows or monastic orders. The compartmentalized concept of religion, Where religious and worldly things were separated, Was not used before the 1500s. The concept of religion was first used in the 1500s to distinguish the domain of the church and the domain of civil authorities. The Peace of Augsburg marks such an instance, Which has been described by Christian Reu Smyd as the first step on the road toward a European system of sovereign states. Roman general Julius Caesar used religio to mean obligation of an oath when discussing captured soldiers making an oath to their captors. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder used the term religio to describe the apparent respect given by elephants to the night sky. Cicero used religio as being related to cultum deorum, Worship of the gods. In ancient Greece, The term threskeia was loosely translated into Latin as religio in late antiquity. Threskeia was sparsely used in classical Greece, But became more frequently used in the writings of Josephus in the 1st century CE. It was used in mundane contexts and could mean multiple things, From respectful fear, To excessive or harmful distracting practices of others, To cultic practices. It was often contrasted with the Greek word decidaimonia, Which meant too much fear. Religion is a modern concept. The concept was invented recently in the English language and is found in texts from the 17th century due to events such as the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and globalization in the Age of Exploration, Which involved contact with numerous foreign cultures with non-European languages. Some argue that regardless of its definition, It is not appropriate to apply the term religion to non-Western cultures, While some followers of various faiths rebuke using the word to describe their own belief system. The concept of ancient religion stems from modern interpretations of a range of practices that conform to a modern concept of religion, Influenced by early modern and 19th century Christian discourse. The concept of religion was formed in the 16th and 17th centuries, Despite the fact that ancient sacred texts like the Bible, The Quran, And others did not have a word or even a concept of religion in the original languages, And neither did the people or the cultures in which these sacred texts were written. For example, There is no precise equivalent of religion in Hebrew, And Judaism does not distinguish clearly between religious, National, Racial, Or ethnic identities. One of its central concepts is halakha, Meaning the walk or path sometimes translated as law, Which guides religious practice and belief and many aspects of daily life. Even though the beliefs and traditions of Judaism are found in the ancient world, Ancient Jews saw Jewish identity as being about an ethnic or national identity and did not entail a compulsory belief system or regulated rituals. In the 1st century CE, Josephus had used the Greek term iodismos, Judaism, As an ethnic term and was not linked to modern abstract concepts of religion or a set of beliefs. The very concept of Judaism was invented by the Christian church, And it was in the 19th century that Jews began to see their ancestral culture as a religion analogous to Christianity. The Greek word threskeia, Which was used by Greek writers such as Herodotus and Josephus, Is found in the New Testament. Threskeia is sometimes translated as religion in today's translations, But the term was understood as general worship well into the medieval period. In the Quran, The Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations, But up to the mid-1600s, Translators expressed din as law. The Sanskrit word dharma, Sometimes translated as religion, Also means law. Throughout classical South Asia, The study of law consisted of concepts such as penance through piety and ceremonial as well as practical traditions. Medieval Japan at first had a similar union between imperial law and universal or buddha law, But these later became independent sources of power. Though traditions, Sacred texts, And practices have existed throughout time, Most cultures did not align with Western conceptions of religion, Since they did not separate everyday life from the sacred. In the 18th and 19th centuries, The terms Buddhism, Hinduism, Daoism, Confucianism, And world religions first entered the English language. Native Americans were also thought of as not having religions and also had no word for religion in their languages either. No one self-identified as Hindu or Buddhist, Or their similar terms before the 1800s. Hindu has historically been used as a geographical, Cultural, And later religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion, Since there was no corresponding Japanese word, Nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, Among other things, Freedom of religion, The country had to contend with this idea. According to the philologist Max Muller in the 19th century, The root of the English word religion, The Latin religio, Was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods, Careful pondering of divine things, Piety, Which Cicero further derived to mean diligence. Muller characterized many other cultures around the world, Including Egypt, Persia, And India, As having a similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religion today, They would have only called law. Scholars have failed to agree on a definition of religion. There are, However, Two general definition systems, The sociological-functional and the phenomenological-philosophical. The concept of religion originated in the modern era in the West. Parallel concepts are not found in many current and past cultures. There is no equivalent term for religion in many languages. Scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition, With some giving up on the possibility of a definition. Others argue that regardless of its definition, It is not appropriate to apply it to non-Western cultures. An increasing number of scholars have expressed reservations about ever-defining the essence of religion. They observe that the way the concept today is used is a particularly modern construct that would not have been understood through much of history and in many cultures outside the West, Or even in the West, Until after the Peace of Westphalia. The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religion states, The very attempt to define religion, To find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the religious from the remainder of human life, Is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, Intellectualistic, And scientific disposition. It is also the product of the dominant Western religious mode, Which is called the Judeo-Christian climate, Or more accurately, The theistic inheritance from Judaism, Christianity, And Islam. The theistic form of belief in this tradition, Even when downgraded culturally, Is formative of the dichotomous Western view of religion. That is, The basic structure of theism is essentially a distinction between a transcendent deity and all else, Between the Creator and his creation, Between God and man. The anthropologist Clifford Gertz defined religion as a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, Pervasive, And long-lasting moods and motivations in men, By formulating conceptions of a general order of existence, And closing these concepts with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. Alluding perhaps to Tyler's deeper motive, Gertz remarked that, We have very little idea of how, In empirical terms, This particular miracle is accomplished. We just know that it is done annually, Weekly, Daily, For some people almost hourly, And we have an enormous ethnographic literature to demonstrate it. The theologian Antoine Vergaud took the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of nature or human agency. He also emphasized the cultural reality of religion, Which he defined as, The entirety of the linguistic expressions, Emotions, And actions and signs that refer to a supernatural being or supernatural beings. Peter Mandeville and Paul James intended to get away from the modernist dualism or dichotomous understandings of immanence, Transcendence, Spirituality, Materialism, And sacredness, Secularity. They defined religion as a relatively bounded system of beliefs, Symbols, And practices that addresses the nature of existence, And in which communion with others and otherness is lived, As if it both takes in and spiritually transcends socially grounded ontologies of time, Space, Embodiment, And knowing. According to the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Religions, There is an experiential aspect to religion which can be found in almost every culture. Almost every known culture has a depth, Dimension, And cultural experiences towards some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, This structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience, Varied in form, Completeness, And clarity in accordance with the environing culture. Anthropologists Lyle Stedman and Craig T. Palmer emphasize the communication of supernatural beliefs, Defining religion as the communicated acceptance by individuals of another individual's supernatural claim, A claim whose accuracy is not verifiable by the senses. Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, Commonly translated as the feeling of absolute dependence. His contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel disagreed thoroughly, Defining religion as the divine spirit becoming conscious of himself through the finite spirit. Edward Burnett Taylor defined religion in 1871 as the belief in spiritual beings. He argued that narrowing the definition to mean the belief in a supreme deity or judgment after death or idolatry and so on would exclude many peoples from the category of religious, And thus has the fault of identifying religion rather than with particular developments than with a deeper motive which underlies them. He also argued that the belief in spiritual beings exists in all known societies. In his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, The psychologist William James defined religion as the feelings, Acts, And experiences of individual men in their solitude, So far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. By the term divine, James meant any object that is god-like, Whether it be a concrete deity or not to which the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and gravity. Sociologist Emile Durkheim, In his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Defined religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things. By sacred things, He meant things set apart and forbidden, Beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community, Called a church, All those who adhere to them. Sacred things are not, However, Limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, A sacred thing can be a rock, A tree, A spring, A pebble, A piece of wood, A house. In a word, Anything can be sacred. Religious beliefs, Myths, Dogmas, And legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things and the virtues and powers which are attributed to them. Echoes of James's and Durkheim's definitions are to be found in the writings of, For example, Frederick Furet. He defined religion as one's way of valuing most comprehensively and intensively. Similarly, For the theologian Paul Tillich, Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned, Which is itself religion. Religion is the substance, The ground, And the depth of man's spiritual life. When religion is seen in terms of sacred, Divine, Intensive valuing, Or ultimate concern, Then it is possible to understand why scientific findings and philosophical criticisms, E. G. Those made by Richard Dawkins, Do not necessarily disturb its adherence. The origin of religious belief is an open question, With possible explanations including awareness of individual death, A sense of community, And dreams. Traditionally, Faith, In addition to reason, Has been considered a source of religious beliefs. The interplay between faith and reason, And their use as perceived support for religious beliefs, Have been a subject of interest to philosophers and theologians. The word myth has several meanings. One, A traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the worldview of a people or explain a practice, Belief, Or natural phenomenon. Two, A person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence. Or three, A metaphor for the spiritual potentiality of the human being. Ancient polytheistic religions, Such as those of Greece, Rome, And Scandinavia, Are usually categorized under the heading of mythology. Religions of pre-industrial peoples or cultures in development are similarly called myths in the anthropology of religion. The term myth can be used pejoratively by both religious and non-religious people. By defining another person's religious stories and beliefs as mythology, One implies that they are less real or true than one's own religious stories and beliefs. Joseph Campbell remarked, Mythology is often thought of as other people's religions, And religion can be defined as misinterpreted mythology. In sociology, However, The term myth has a non-pejorative meaning. There, Myth is defined as a story that is important for the group, Whether or not it is objectively or provably true. Examples include the resurrection of their real-life founder, Jesus, Which, To Christians, Explains the means by which they are freed from sin, Is symbolic of the power of life over death, And is also said to be a historical event. But from a mythological outlook, Whether or not the event actually occurred is unimportant. Instead, The symbolism of the death of an old life and the start of a new life is most significant. Religious believers may or may not accept such symbolic interpretations. The practices of a religion may include rituals, Sermons, Commemoration or veneration of a deity, God or goddess, Sacrifices, Festivals, Feasts, Trances, Initiations, Funerary services, Matrimonial services, Meditation, Prayer, Religious music, Religious art, Sacred dance, Public service, Or other aspects of human culture. Religions have a societal basis, Either as a living tradition, Which is carried by lay participants, Or with an organized clergy, And a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership. A number of disciplines study the phenomenon of religion. Theology, Comparative religion, History of religion, Evolutionary origin of religions, Anthropology of religion, Psychology of religion, Including neuroscience of religion, And evolutionary psychology of religion, Law and religion, And sociology of religion. Daniel L. Pauls mentions eight classical theories of religion, Focusing on various aspects of it, Animism and magic, By E. B. Taylor and J. G. Fraser, The psychoanalytical approach of Sigmund Freud, And further Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Marcia Elliot, E. E. Evans Pritchard, And Clifford Gertz. Michael Stausberg gives an overview of contemporary theories of religion, Including cognitive and biological approaches. Sociological and anthropological theories of religion generally attempt to explain the origin and function of religion. These theories define what they present as universal characteristics of religious belief and practice. The origin of religion is uncertain. There are a number of theories regarding the subsequent origins of religious practices. According to anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Just, Many of the great world religions appear to have begun as revitalization movements of some sort, As the vision of a charismatic prophet fires the imaginations of people, Seeking a more comprehensive answer to their problems than they feel is provided by everyday beliefs. Charismatic individuals have emerged at many times and places in the world. It seems that the key to long-term success, And many movements come and go with little long-term effect, Has relatively little to do with the prophets, Who appear with surprising regularity, But more to do with the development of a group of supporters who are able to institutionalize the movement. The development of religion has taken different forms in different cultures. Some religions place an emphasis on belief, While others emphasize practice. Some religions focus on the subjective experience of the religious individual, While others consider the activities of the religious community to be most important. Some religions claim to be universal, Believing their laws and cosmology to be binding for everyone, While others are intended to be practiced only by a closely defined or localized group. In many places, Religion has been associated with public institutions, Such as education, Hospitals, The family, Government, And political hierarchies. Anthropologists John Monaghan and Peter Jess state that, It seems apparent that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human life that are significant, Persistent, And intolerable. One important way in which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune.

Reviews

Very interesting and informative. Thanks for sharing this with me.

Excellent as always Benjamin. And by excellent, I mean that you bored me right to sleep. 👏🏻👏🏻
Thanks! 😻

This one put me to sleep right away. Then I had a nightmare and dreamed of hands choking me. Highly unusual. I will have to listen to it when I am awake to figure out why I didn't sleep as well as I always do after listening to your Podcast. It probably had nothing to do with the content, but I like to track down my dreams. Thanks for the sleep. It wasn't all the dream. 🥰👍🏻

Thank you, Benjamin. You've managed to make the subject of religion into a relaxing bedtime story. Amazing!