Reflection On Religion

Reflections:

(August 7)

What is religion? How is religion distinguishable from culture or ideology? Answer these questions and make a personal connection.

Before the reading assigned, I thought that religion, culture and ideology were all the same thing. However, I have changed my opinion based on the various examples and explanations provided by the book. Religion is a system of symbols, which means that, it includes not only one specific religion but all the others as a whole, as an unique group with its own personal followers. It establishes motivation for people in life and they usually are based on four pillars ( discourse, practice, community, and institution) that sustain and help it continue spreading its concept. Culture, in

I think that each follower should learn the theory behind its own religion, however religion isn’t based on reason but how much faith and hope people put into, in other words, the amount of dedication people give. As proof, the majority of the Gods that people believe in have never had evidence of really being alive or scientific reasons/proofs of existing. Also, most of the times, what brings people to look for a certain religion is the emotional connection with that religion's teachings, their founder, or the rituals associated with that religion, which is part of the emotional concept .In other words, people use emotion as a big part of a religious belief because, most of it, was never proven to really

Both reason and emotion work together to form a religion. Without reason, people wouldn't have in what to believe in and wouldn't know why to believe it while, without emotion, people wouldn't actually believe in something since there is no need to believe in anything, due to the fact that the major objective of religion is to make people feel somehow and connect to it. For example, the woman that cleans my house is a very religious women. Every night she tells me that she prays and reads the bible before going to sleep, which shows how the reason (bible) and emotions (her prayers) work together into making her follow Christianity as her