What features are inherent in religious consciousness? Society 10. Religious consciousness
Religious consciousness is an illusory reflection of reality; it is characterized by understanding not real reality, but fictitious reality. Religious consciousness, both of an individual and a group, cannot exist outside of certain myths, images and ideas that are acquired by people in the process of their socialization. Therefore, attempts to present religious experience as a purely individual phenomenon that arises independently of the social environment are fundamentally untenable. In no way can we agree with the desire to tear away the mental processes that characterize religious experience. (eg, intense emotional experiences) from ideas and beliefs specific to religion. This groan is especially important methodologically for understanding the relationship between the functional and ideological aspects of the psyche of believers.
In general, religious consciousness is distinguished by high sensory clarity, the creation of various religious images by imagination, the combination of content adequate to reality with illusions, the presence of religious faith, symbolism, dialogism, strong emotional intensity, the functioning of religious vocabulary and other special signs.
Religious consciousness, like social consciousness as a whole, includes two components: religious ideology and religious psychology, the relationship and interaction of which determine the diversity of specific types of religion. The specificity of the very content of religious consciousness (and the ideology and psychology functioning within it) is given by the unity of its two sides - the content and the functional.
The substantive side of religious consciousness forms the specific values and needs of believers, their views on the world around them and otherworldly reality, contributing to the targeted introduction of certain ideas, images, perceptions, feelings and moods into their psyche. It reveals not only and not so much ideology, as it may seem at first glance and as some scientists believe, but also the features of the psychology of believers themselves, expressing the qualitative characteristics of their motivational, intellectual and behavioral processes.
The functional side of religious consciousness
The functional side of religious consciousness in a unique form satisfies the needs of believers, giving the necessary direction to the manifestations of their ideology and psychology, shaping their specific moral and psychological state, moods and experiences, contributing to an effective impact on their psyche. The functional side of religious consciousness includes the specifics of cult actions and rituals, religious consolation, catharsis of religious feelings and moods, etc.
Features of religious consciousness are:
· Close control of religious institutions over the psyche and consciousness of believers, their behavior and actions;
· Clear thought out ideology and psychological mechanisms for its implementation in the consciousness of believers.
The presence and dialectical manifestation of the content and functional aspects of religious consciousness determine not only the inextricable connection of ideology in its structure, but also their closer interpenetration into each other:
· Religion not only develops certain values and needs of believers, but also complements them with the formation of faith based on certain norms of behavior (confession), cult and ritual actions;
· Not only forms faith in the supernatural, but also complements it with consolation, which orients towards a false, illusory solution to problems (contradictions) of real life and which finds manifestation in the sacraments;
· Forms religious ideas and beliefs through religious catharsis of feelings, during which negative experiences are replaced by positive ones;
· Cementes and transforms ideology and psychology into a single whole through religious experience, which is, on the one hand, the result of an individual’s assimilation of religious beliefs and ideas drawn from his surrounding social environment, and on the other hand, is a consequence of direct psychological contacts and forms of communication believers.
Religious faith unites the content and functional aspects of religious consciousness. It cannot be identified with any faith. Psychological science believes that faith is a special psychological state of people’s confidence in achieving a goal, in the occurrence of an event, in their expected behavior, in the truth of ideas, subject to a lack of accurate information about the achievability of the goal, about the result of testing ideas in practice. It is a fusion of intellectual, volitional and emotional elements.
Faith should be distinguished from conviction, i.e. way of accepting certain principles, views, ideas. It includes rationally reasoned and substantiated knowledge, the truth of which has been proven and tested in practice.
A socio-historical analysis of non-religious faith shows that its impact on society was determined, first of all, by the content, the subject of faith. If the subject of faith was imposed by the ideology of the reactionary classes, if it was based on the darkness and ignorance of the people, if wishful thinking was presented as reality, then such faith interfered with social progress. If the object of faith was determined by the interests, goals and ideals of the advanced classes, if it corresponded to the objective course of social development, then faith contributed to the progressive solution of pressing social problems.
Religious faith this is faith: a) in the truth of religious dogmas, texts, ideas, etc.; b) into the objective existence of beings, properties, connections, transformations (which are the product of the process of hypostatization, i.e. attributing independent existence to abstract concepts, considering general properties, relationships and qualities as independently existing objects), which constitute the objective content of religious images; c) the ability to communicate with seemingly objective beings, influence them and receive help from them; d) in the actual occurrence of some mythological events, in their repetition, in the occurrence of an expected mythological event, in participation in such events; e) to religious authorities - “fathers”, “teachers”, “saints”, “prophets”, “charismatics”, church hierarchs, clergy, etc.
When we talk about faith (both religious and non-religious), we should keep in mind some of its features.
Firstly, the object of faith evokes an interested attitude in a person, and it is realized in his emotional sphere, causing feelings and experiences of varying degrees of intensity. Without an emotional attitude, faith is impossible.
Secondly, and most importantly, faith is impossible without a personal assessment of its subject.
Thirdly, it presupposes an active personal attitude towards its subject, which is manifested to one degree or another in the behavior of the individual.
Any faith is a socio-psychological phenomenon, characterized both by the interaction of the people participating in it, accompanied by various psychological processes, and by the special attitude of the subject of faith to its subject, an attitude that is realized not only in consciousness, but also in behavior.
The religious faith of a true believer is very strong. It serves as the main motive for their cult and non-cult behavior. It determines the emergence and existence of religious needs, interests, aspirations, expectations, the corresponding orientation of the believer’s personality, and his activity. In religious faith, a dominant role is played by various mental processes, and, above all, imagination. Deep religious faith presupposes the existence in the human mind of ideas about supernatural beings (in Christianity, for example, Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, saints, angels, etc.) and their vivid images that can evoke an emotional and interested attitude. These images and ideas are illusory and do not correspond to real objects.
But they do not arise out of nowhere. The basis for their formation in the individual consciousness is, firstly, religious myths, which tell about the “actions” of gods or other supernatural beings, and secondly, cult artistic images (icons, frescoes), in which supernatural images are embodied in sensually visual form. On the basis of this religious and artistic material, the religious ideas of believers are formed. Thus, the individual imagination of an individual believer is based on those images and ideas that are propagated by one or another religious organization. That is why the religious ideas of a Christian differ from the corresponding ideas of a Muslim and a Buddhist.
For the church, the uncontrolled activity of the imagination is dangerous, because it can lead the believer away from orthodox dogma. This explains the fact that, for example, the Catholic Church in Western Europe has always treated representatives of Christian mysticism with a certain distrust and wariness, seeing them, not without reason, as potential heretics.
If we are talking about the degree of participation of certain mental processes in religious faith, then in it a lesser role than in non-religious faith is played by logical, rational thinking with all its features and attributes (logical consistency, evidence, etc.). As for other mental processes, the specificity of religious faith lies in the direction of these processes, their subject. Since their subject is the supernatural, they concentrate the imagination, feelings and will of people around illusory objects.
The specificity of the object of religious faith as something supernatural, located “on the other side” of the sensually comprehended world, also determines the place of religious faith in the system of individual and social consciousness, its relationship with human cognition and practice. Since the subject of religious faith is something not included, according to the beliefs of religious people, in the general chain of causal relationships and natural laws, something “transcendental”, since, according to the teachings of the church, it is not subject to empirical verification, is not included in the general system of human knowledge and practice.
A religious person believes in the exceptional appearance of supernatural forces and beings, unlike everything else that exists. This faith of his is nourished by the official dogmas of the church. Thus, from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, “God is an unknown, inaccessible, incomprehensible, ineffable mystery. Any attempt to express this mystery in ordinary human concepts, to measure the immeasurable abyss of the deity is hopeless.”
A religious person does not apply the usual criteria of empirical validity to the supernatural. Gods, spirits and other supernatural beings, in his opinion, in principle cannot be perceived by human senses unless they take on a “bodily” material shell and appear before people in a “visible” form accessible to sensory contemplation. According to Christian doctrine, Christ was just such a God who appeared to people in human form. If God or another supernatural force resides in its permanent, transcendental world, then, as theologians assure, the usual criteria for testing human ideas and hypnosis are not applicable to them.
Deep faith presupposes the concentration of the entire mental life of an individual on religious images, ideas, feelings and experiences, which can only be achieved with the help of significant volitional efforts. The will of the believer is aimed at strictly observing all the instructions of the church or other religious organization, and thereby ensuring his “salvation.” It is no coincidence that exercises that trained the will were mandatory for many newly converted monks and nuns. Only constant training of the will, its concentration on religious ideas and norms, is capable of suppressing natural human needs and desires that hindered monastic asceticism. Only volitional efforts can turn a convert away from non-religious interests, accustom him to control his thoughts and actions, preventing any “temptation,” especially the “temptation” of unbelief.
With the help of volitional efforts the behavior of a religious person is regulated. The deeper and more intense the religious faith, the greater the impact the religious orientation of the will has on the entire behavior of a given subject, and in particular on his cult behavior, on his compliance with norms and regulations.
It has already been noted that the following were accepted as signs of religious consciousness: animism, animatism, the idea of the numinous, belief in the gods or in God, in the immortality of the soul, the experience of meeting the sacred, etc. In Russian literature, the most common point of view is that the “specific,” “main,” “defining,” “universal” feature of religious consciousness is “belief in the supernatural,” and the supernatural is characterized as follows: “The supernatural, according to believers and theologians, is it is something that does not obey the laws of the material world, falling out of the chain of causal dependencies.”
There is no reason to consider belief in the supernatural to be inherent in all religions, at any stage of their evolution. At the early stages of development, consciousness was not yet able to form ideas and, accordingly, distinguish between “natural” and “supernatural”. “Belief in the supernatural” is not inherent in religious consciousness in developed Eastern religions (Buddhist, Taoist, etc.). The division into natural and supernatural was developed in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but even in Christianity this dichotomy, as sociological studies show, often does not “reach” the everyday consciousness of many believers. Accepting “belief in the supernatural” as a universal, specific sign of any religious consciousness does not correspond to the facts.
One should not assume that religious consciousness has only some characteristic characteristic of it. The originality of this consciousness is in the totality, combination, correlation and subordination of features.
Religious consciousness is characterized by: faith, sensory clarity, images created by the imagination, the combination of content adequate to reality with illusions, symbolism, allegory, dialogism, strong emotional intensity, functioning with the help of religious vocabulary (and other signs). The named features are characteristic not only of religious consciousness. Sensual clarity, fantasy images, emotionality are characteristic of art, illusions arise in morality, politics, social sciences, unreliable concepts and theories are created in natural science, etc.
Religious faith. An integrative feature of religious consciousness is religious faith. Not every faith is a religious faith; the latter “lives” thanks to the presence of a special phenomenon in human psychology. Faith is a special psychological state of confidence in achieving a goal, the occurrence of an event, in the expected behavior of a person, in the truth of an idea, subject to a lack of accurate information about the achievability of the goal, about the final outcome of the event, the implementation of foreseeable behavior in practice, the result of verification. It contains the expectation that what you want will come true. This psychological state arises in a probabilistic situation when there is a known degree of success of an action, a real possibility of a favorable outcome and knowledge of this possibility. If an event has occurred or it has become clear that it is impossible, if a behavior has been implemented or discovered that it will not be carried out, if the truth or falsity of an idea has been proven, faith fades away. Faith arises in relation to those processes, events, ideas that have a significantly significant meaning for people. It cannot be reduced to a feeling: of course, emotions play a big role in it, but still it is a fusion of cognitive, emotional and volitional aspects. Since faith arises in a probabilistic situation, a person's action in accordance with it involves risk. Despite this, it is an important fact of integration of the individual, group, mass, and a stimulus for the determination and activity of people.
Religious faith is faith: a) in the objective existence of hypostatized beings, attributed properties and connections, as well as the world formed by these beings, properties, connections; b) the possibility of communicating with hypostatized creatures, influencing them and receiving help from them; c) the truth of the corresponding ideas, views, dogmas, texts, etc.; d) in the actual occurrence of some events described in the texts, in their repetition, in the occurrence of an expected event, in involvement in them; e) religious authorities - “fathers”, “teachers”, “saints”, “prophets”, “charismatics”, “bodhisattvas”, “arhats”, church hierarchs, clergy.
Within the framework of this religious system, material objects, persons, actions, texts, linguistic formulas are endowed with certain properties, acquire religious meanings that express certain relationships between people, receive the social property of being signs, expressors of religious meanings - a property that has nothing to do with their physical, chemical nature, and therefore become sensual-supersensible. The appearance of such a property supports the idea that objects have attributed properties. Sacred things are often made of gold, silver, diamonds, and, therefore, accumulate property and wealth. In this case, the fetishism of goods, money, capital determines religious fetishism and merges with it. A typical biblical story tells of John's vision of a “new heaven” and a “new earth.” John saw “holy Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven from God... Its wall was built of jasper, and the city was pure gold, like pure glass. The foundations of the city wall are decorated with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation is jasper, the second is sapphire, the third is chalcedon, the fourth is emerald, the fifth is sardonyx, the sixth is carnelian, the seventh is chrysolite, the eighth is virill, the ninth is topaz, the tenth is chrysoprase, the eleventh is hyacinth, and the twelfth is amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls... The street of the city is pure gold, like transparent glass” (Rev. 21:10; 18-21).
Religious faith animates the entire religious complex and determines the uniqueness of the process of transcendence in religion. Transitions from limitedness to unlimitedness, from powerlessness to power, from life before death to life after death, from this worldliness to otherworldliness, from unfreedom to liberation, etc., that do not occur in the empirical existence of people. with the help of religious faith are achieved in terms of consciousness.
Symbolism and allegory. The content of faith determines the symbolic aspect of religious consciousness. A symbol (Greek - sign, identifying mark) represents contents and meanings that are different from the direct content of its bearer. A material object, action, speech text, or some image of consciousness can have symbolic properties; things and actions that are located and performed outside consciousness acquire the indicated properties only in relation to consciousness. A symbol presupposes the fulfillment by consciousness of acts of objectification of conceivable content, focus on an object (being, property, connection) posited as objective, and designation of this object.
Objects, actions, words, texts are endowed with religious meanings and meanings. The carriers of these meanings and meanings are equivalents - substitutes for what is symbolized, form a religious-symbolic environment for the formation and functioning of the corresponding consciousness, and are included in the ritual. Every religious system has its own set of symbols, which outside of this system are not such. There are many religious symbols, the most common are those that represent the corresponding religion: the cross is a symbol of Christianity, the chakra (a wheel with eight spokes) is a symbol of Buddhism, the crescent is Islam, etc. In addition to the main symbol of a given religion, there are symbols of a certain confession, regional ethno-confessional symbols, symbols of a certain community, as well as individual characters, events, transformations, etc.
Visual imagery and emotionality. Religious consciousness appears in sensual (images of contemplation, ideas) and mental (concept, judgment, conclusion) forms. The significance of the latter increases significantly at the conceptual level of consciousness; in general, sensory formations predominate in it, and representation plays a particularly important role. The source of figurative material is nature, society, and man; accordingly, religious beings, properties, and connections are created in the likeness of phenomena of nature, society, and man. Essential in religious consciousness are the so-called images of meaning, which are a transitional form from representation to concept. The content of religious consciousness most often finds expression in such literary genres as parables, stories, myths, and is “depicted” in painting, sculpture, attached to various kinds of objects, graphic designs, etc.
The visual image is directly related to experiences, which determines the strong emotional intensity of religious consciousness. An important component of this consciousness is religious feelings. Religious feelings are the emotional attitude of believers to recognized objective hypostatized beings, attributed properties and connections, to sacred things, persons, places, actions, to each other and to themselves, as well as to religiously interpreted individual phenomena in the world and to the world as a whole. . Not all experiences can be considered religious, but only those that are fused with religious concepts, ideas, myths and, because of this, acquired the appropriate orientation, meaning and significance. Having arisen, religious feelings become an object of need - a craving for their experience, for religious and emotional saturation.
A variety of human emotions - fear, love, admiration, reverence, joy, hope, expectation - can be fused with religious ideas and receive the appropriate direction, meaning and meaning; sthenic and asthenic, altruistic and egoistic, praxic and gnostic, moral and aesthetic emotions. As a result of such fusion, “fear of the Lord”, “love of God”, “a sense of sinfulness, humility, submission”, “joy of communion with God”, “tenderness with the icon of the Mother of God”, “compassion for one’s neighbor”, “reverence for the beauty and harmony of created nature” are experienced ", "expectation of a miracle", "hope for otherworldly reward", etc.
Connection of adequate and inadequate. In theology and religious studies (confessional and secular), the possibility or impossibility, legality or illegality of raising the question of the truth - untruth of individual religious judgments and their totality, as well as religious-economic, religious-political, religious-legal and other concepts are discussed. In Christian, Islamic theology, and in the teachings of other religions, this issue is resolved positively, and in favor of recognizing the truth (often absolute) of judgments, provisions of a given religious system and the untruth or incomplete truth of judgments, provisions of other religious systems. It is argued that only theology itself, the teaching, has the right to consider this problem. Confessional religious studies proceeds from the same premises, recognizing its incompetence in resolving the issue of the truthfulness or untruthfulness of religious statements. In secular religious studies, the possibility of epistemological analysis of religious judgments is recognized by some researchers and denied by others.
In religious consciousness, adequate reflections are combined with illusions and delusions. There is no reason to approach such a connection “axiologically”, with a deliberately “positive” or “negative” assessment. Of course, in everyday consciousness, as well as in ideologemes, the words “truth”, “illusion”, “misconception” can and do acquire an evaluative load, and in history the defense of “truth” or “error” was fraught with dire consequences for defenders. But for science, truth and error are moments in the development of human consciousness, thinking, and cognition. People have never been free from illusions, without delusions there was no search for truth, they are not “guilt”, but inevitable (we are not talking about conscious deception with bad intentions and falsifications in this case). At certain historical situations and points of individual existence, people need illusions, and illusions satisfy this kind of need.
It is wrong to assert that religious consciousness is “absolutely false”: it has content that is adequate to the world. For example, in the Christian conjugation of God as a Creator, Almighty, All-Good, Omnipresent, etc. being. and man as a creature, weak, sinful, limited, relations of unfreedom and dependence are reproduced. Religious images as components have data from sensory experience corresponding to reality (astromorphism, zoomorphism, phytomorphism, anthropomorphism, psychomorphism, sociomorphism). In religious narratives and parables, real phenomena and events are recreated in the same way as this happens in art, in artistic images, in literary narration. In addition, the named elements do not exhaust the entire content of the consciousness of religious systems. Under certain conditions, natural science, logical, historical, psychological, anthropological and other knowledge developed in them. Interacting with other areas of spiritual life, religion includes economic, political, moral, artistic, and philosophical views. They were misconceptions, but among them there are also those that provided reliable information about the world, were value-significant, and expressed objective trends in the development of society. Religions produce spiritual content that is adequate to reality. And yet, it is legitimate to take into account that this content in religious concepts, concepts, ideas, narratives is merged with images of the imagination, as a result of which the holistic picture can hide objective connections. “Fundamentals”, “premises”, “doctrinal axioms”, “main Truths” have not received justification using the methods of scientific knowledge; ultimately, they are an object of faith.
Linguistic expression and dialogism. Religious consciousness exists, functions and is reproduced through religious vocabulary, as well as other sign systems derived from natural language - objects of worship, symbolic actions, etc. Religious vocabulary is that part of the vocabulary of natural language with the help of which religious meanings and meanings are expressed. The names of religious vocabulary can be divided into two groups: 1) meaning actual objects, persons, actions, events with attributed properties or components - “icon”, “cross”, “vajra”, “mandala”, “black stone”, “cardinal” ", "worship", "jihad" etc.; 2) naming hypostatized beings, areas of existence, attributed properties and connections - “God”, “Holy Spirit”, “Angel”, “soul”, “heaven”, “hell”, “purgatory”, “Providence”, “Buddha in body of Dharma", "Karma", "reincarnation", etc. Words (names), compound names, sentences have a subject orientation, indicate the corresponding things, persons, beings, properties, events, name them, and also refer to concepts and ideas about them, thereby implicitly assuming the existence of what is called.
Linguistic expressions of religious consciousness are characterized by a certain syntagmatics (Greek - together constructed, connected), which is a set of syntactic intonational and semantic units. In such units, words, combinations of words, sentences and phonation, alliteration using techniques of sound expressiveness (articulations, modulations, recitation, refrains, utterances) are combined into a certain semantic integrity. In the language of religion, words are often used in a figurative sense, texts are full of metaphors, analogies, allegories, archaisms, historicisms, exoticisms, and antonyms are widely used.
Thanks to language, religious consciousness turns out to be practical, effective, becomes group and social, and thereby exists for the individual. Through language, religious ideas, narratives, norms, etc. transmitted from individual to individual, from group to group, from generation to generation. Historically, along with the evolution of religions, their language also became more complex.
In the early stages of development, language existed in sound form, religious consciousness was expressed and transmitted through oral speech. Then various types of writing appear - pictography, ideography, ideographic-rebus, syllabic, alphabetic - which are also used to record religious meanings and meanings. Both audio and various types of written speech were subject to sacralization. Language has a strong impact on people's consciousness, behavior and relationships. The power of the word found expression in religion: magical properties were attributed to words, speech formulas, various graphic images, and texts. The ineffectiveness of the word is recorded, for example, in the Christian teaching about the Logos: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... Everything began to be through Him, and without Him nothing began to be that began to be” ( John 1:1, 3).
During the period of language formation, the combination of the sound complex and meaning led to their identification. The suggestive factor of the sounding speech determined the unconsciousness and inevitability of the transmission and acceptance of the message. There was a belief that knowledge and pronunciation of a name had an impact on a given object, person, creature. This is associated with the emergence of speech magic, as well as verbal taboos: in many tribes it was completely or in most cases forbidden to pronounce the names of leaders, totems, spirits, and gods.
Levels of consciousness. Religious consciousness has two levels - ordinary and conceptual. Ordinary religious consciousness appears in the form of images, ideas, stereotypes, attitudes, mysteries, illusions, moods and feelings, drives, aspirations, orientation of will, habits, and traditions, which are a direct reflection of the living conditions of people. It appears not as something whole, systematized, but in a fragmented form - disparate ideas, views or individual nodes of such ideas and views. At this level there are rational, emotional and volitional elements, but the dominant role is played by emotions - feelings and moods, the content of consciousness is expressed in visual and figurative forms. Among the components of everyday consciousness, one can distinguish relatively stable, conservative and mobile, dynamic ones; The first includes traditions, customs, stereotypes, etc., the second - moods. At this level, traditional methods of conveying ideas, images of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, etc. predominate. Religion is always directly connected with the individual and always appears in a personal form.
Religious consciousness at the conceptual level - conceptualized consciousness - is a specially developed, systematized set of concepts, ideas, principles, reasoning, argumentation, concepts, a product of the professional activity of thinkers. It includes: 1) a more or less ordered doctrine about God (gods), the world, nature, society, man, purposefully developed by specialists (creed, theology, theology, creeds, etc.); 2) interpretation of economics, politics, law, morality, art, etc., carried out in accordance with the principles of a religious worldview, i.e. religious-ethical, religious-political, religious-legal, religious-ethnic, religious-aesthetic concepts (theology of liberation, theology of progress, theology of labor, political theology, feminist theology, theology of culture, etc.); 3) religious philosophy, located at the intersection of theology and philosophy (neo-Thomism, personalism, Christian existentialism, Christian anthropology, metaphysics of unity, etc.).
In the process of growing up, a person strives to self-identify and become aware of himself in society. He inevitably faces the question of what is characteristic of religious consciousness. From childhood it becomes clear that there are different religions. There are also those who do not believe in anything. How to define religious consciousness, how does it differ from national consciousness, for example? Let's figure it out.
Religious public consciousness has existed as long as humans. Gods began to be invented when, so to speak, they came down from the branches. Of course, it is not worth understanding what is characteristic of religious consciousness based only on the experience of the ancient world. But we also cannot reject the deep roots on which this consciousness is formed. The fact is that the process of human self-awareness is eternal. It is constantly developing and improving, based on the knowledge gained. Jesus articulated the depth of the problem when he revealed the meaning of the temple. According to him, a church is a community of believers who perform rituals together. That is, a religious person builds around himself a certain reality in which certain rules apply. All his actions and thoughts are consistent with the latter. In order to understand what is characteristic of religious consciousness, it is necessary to reveal the meaning of the formation of an individual’s worldview. It consists of traditions, rules, behavioral models accepted in a given society. Religion is part of this world. With its help, a person learns to communicate with a reality that lies beyond ordinary experience. There is a space in which we live, and rules of behavior in it. Religious consciousness concerns the second, influencing through man the first.
Forms of religious consciousness
It should be noted that beliefs have changed during the progressive development of mankind. In ancient times, people deified phenomena and animals, water and the sky. The directions of ancient beliefs are divided into fetishism, totemism, shamanism and others. Later, so-called national religions began to emerge. They reached more people, uniting them. For example, Chinese, Greek, Indian religions. Each of them has its own characteristics. The essence remained the same. Religion created certain behavioral rules that were mandatory for all members of society. In this way, an understanding of one’s place in the world was introduced into the human psyche. He seemed to rise above his semi-animal existence. A different reality was revealed to him, conducive to the development of intelligence and the creative process. Monotheism arose about two thousand years ago. It further limited human animal instincts by introducing the concepts of sin and conscience into society. It turns out that religious consciousness is an intellectual superstructure over the physical world, an artificially created reality with which a person must coordinate his actions.
What is characteristic of religious consciousness
If you look carefully at all the beliefs known to us, you can identify what they have in common. These will be behavioral restrictions recognized by the community. That is, religious consciousness is characterized by the perception of moral norms. These are unwritten rules accepted by all members of the community. They are so deeply embedded in people’s consciousness that violating them is an out of the ordinary act. Religious consciousness includes centuries-old traditions, rules, norms that are useful for the development of humanity. For example, the commandment “thou shalt not kill” is accepted by people because it helps population growth. It may look mundane and not spiritual, but any religion developed laws that contributed to the preservation of the society that it united. Otherwise, it was difficult to survive in ancient times. And even today, with the development of science and technology, moral norms have not lost their progressive meaning. Unfortunately, they undergo changes, not always useful. An example is the recognition of same-sex marriage in Western countries. This is an attitude towards the reproductive function that is artificially introduced into consciousness as unnecessary, not sacred.
Conclusion
Issues of religious consciousness are very complex and important for society. Without their understanding, harmonious development of personality is impossible. And even though it exists in some unreal, mythical world, it allows different people to interact normally, avoiding confrontation and disasters.
Levels of Consciousness
The language of religion and the dialogical nature of consciousness
Connection of adequate and inadequate
Visual imagery and emotionality
Symbolism and allegory
Evolution, forms, features
Plan
Religious consciousness
Lecture 5
In all areas of spiritual life, the corresponding type of consciousness acts as a systematizer - first of all, it is he who draws the relative boundary of each of these areas. This applies entirely to religion as well.
Religious consciousness is considered not only in the philosophy of religion, but also in sociology, psychology, phenomenology, and the history of religion. In the philosophy of religion, it is studied from the angle of its evolution and forms in the context of the development of consciousness as the highest spiritual function characteristic only of man; The features of religious consciousness are identified, and epistemological analysis is carried out.
The formation of religion as a relatively independent spiritual sphere was preceded by a long process of formation and development of beliefs within the framework of primitive mythology. Historically, the first way to master the world was mythological consciousness.
Mythology is formed by a set of myths, and myth (Greek - speech, word, story, narration, legend, tradition) is a spiritual reproduction of reality in the form of a message, a narrative, the characters and events of which are recognized as objectively existing or existing. Mythology arose spontaneously in the conditions of a communal tribal system as a result of collective creativity and mastered the world in the form of visually sensual images. Generalization, the general, takes the form of the individual-typical. The myth combines the intellectual, emotional and volitional attitude towards the world - comprehension, empathy, volition. Myths found expression in visual form, singing, dancing, pantomime, and ritual.
In mythology there is no awareness of the difference between man and external nature; individual consciousness is not isolated from the group; Image and object, subjective and objective are not distinguished; principles of activity are not separated from activity; what happens in consciousness is accepted as what happens objectively. The undivided collectivism of primitive society is transferred to nature, natural properties and connections are constructed by analogy with the characters, roles and relationships in the tribal community, through personification and anthropomorphization. And vice versa - a person, ancestral connections appear in a natural-morphic form (zoomorphism, phytomorphism, etc.). The ability of thinking to fix the properties of things and assign these properties to a given thing is poorly developed. The logical structures of mediation, justification, and evidence are not sufficiently formed. These features of thinking are found in language. There are no names that fix generic concepts, but there are many words that designate a given object according to its properties, stages of development, location in space, and perspectives of perception. The same thing has different names, and different objects and creatures (living and nonliving, natural objects and people, etc.) are assigned the same name. This is associated with polysemanticism and the metaphorical nature of mythological consciousness and language. A significant place in the mythological consciousness is occupied by binary oppositions and their destruction: sky - earth, light - darkness, right - left, male - female, life - death, etc. Dual oppositions are removed in the course of mediation - replacing the original opposition with some derivative formations involving random facts and constructed arbitrarily, using associations of relations. The content of thinking expressed in words acquires the character of immediate reality. The suggestive factor of speech determines the unconsciousness and inevitability of the transmission and assimilation of the myth. In the early stages of the development of consciousness, mythology was the only possible universal way of spiritual exploration of the world and syncretically combined realistic knowledge, artistic images, religious beliefs, social norms and patterns. Within the framework of the primitive mythological complex, beliefs and rituals associated with them arose and developed, forming a kind of proto-religion. These beliefs include fetishism, totemism, magic, animatism, animism, etc. Fetishism (port, feitico - enchanted thing) is the belief that real objects have properties that are not actually inherent in them, and the corresponding veneration of these objects. A wide variety of natural things became fetishes - a stone, a piece of wood, an animal's fang, etc., and subsequently artificially made objects; fetishes are designed to heal, protect from enemies, diseases, damage, help in hunting, etc. Totemism (from the word “ototeman” - in the language of the North American Indians “his kind”) is the belief in the existence of kinship between a clan, phratry, tribe and a certain species of animals or plants and the behavior and rituals arising from this belief. The appearance of corresponding ethnonyms is associated with totemism - “clan of the lion”, “tribe of the eagle”, “clan of the bear” - etc.; Thus, totemism set a sign of ethnicity. Magic (Greek mageia - witchcraft, sorcery) is the belief in the presence of a causative (causing) connection between certain real actions of people and certain events, real or unreal, and the ritual procedures arising from this belief. The types of magic are diverse: industrial, meteorological, protective, harmful, military, healing, love, etc. Animatism (Latin animatus - animate) is a belief in a single impersonal force manifesting itself in nature, controlling events in it and influencing human life . In different regions and among different tribes, ideas about this power vary and, naturally, receive different names - mana, orenda, wakan, etc. Animism (Latin anima - soul, animus - spirit) is a belief in certain spiritual phenomena - souls , spirits contained in material objects or existing separately from them.
In the course of social differentiation, with the division of labor, the formation and evolution of class society, consciousness also develops, moving from the non-separation of man from nature to separation, from the non-separation of individual consciousness from the collective to separation, from the non-separation of image and object ͵ subjective and objective to be separated, etc. The mythological stage of the development of consciousness ends, myth ceases to be a universal and the only way to explain reality. Instead of the original - diffuse, syncretic, mythological - complex, religion, philosophy, art, morality, politics, law, and scientific knowledge appear.
Some mythological subjects give rise to folk epic tales, others serve as material assimilated by religion, art, etc. However, the myth itself does not disappear. The mechanisms of mythological consciousness are also reproduced at subsequent stages of history, especially at the everyday level. In the conditions of the late tribal system, previously impersonal souls are endowed with names, the functions of certain types of activities and their management are assigned to them. Polydemonism takes shape (Greek polu - many, daimon - deity, lower deity, spirit), within which a hierarchy of spirits is gradually formed, a priority spirit is identified, usually the patron of initiation, acquiring the features of a tribal god. Tribal gods were limited in range and limited each other. The formation of tribal alliances around the most powerful tribe led to the advancement of the figure of the god of a given tribe. He became intertribal, turned into the head of the pantheon, which included the gods of other tribes as subordinates. Polytheism is born (Greek polygod (teos), literally polytheism) - the religious idea of the existence of several or many gods, the penetration of polytheism is associated with the development of the ability of thinking to associate, generalize, analyze, distinguish between classes of phenomena, and grasp the multitude. Having reached the level of individual ideas - concepts, consciousness gained the opportunity to create images of spirits and, accordingly, gods of individual natural elements and spheres of human activity. When the ability to form general specific and generic ideas - concepts appeared, the figures of gods acting in the areas of nature and society emerged. But the image of God, whose field of activity extended to several spheres of reality, presupposed the recognition of the existence of other gods, with the help of which other areas of reality were explained. Today, the polytheistic religions are Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Confucianism.
With the division of labor, differentiation of society, the formation of nationalities and monarchical states, polytheistic systems develop. Supremotheism takes shape (Latin supremus - above, above; Greek teos; - god) - the veneration of many gods, with the primacy of one; henotheism (Greek ev - one, teos; - god) - recognition of the existence of many gods, but veneration of one. Among some peoples, supremotheism and henotheism developed into monotheism (Greek monos - one, only, teos - god, literally - monotheism) - the idea of the existence of a single god. Monotheism appears as a result of a long evolution of beliefs. Before others, ideas about the spirits and gods of individual natural regions and spheres of division of labor were formed; gradually formed images of gods governing several sectors of nature and society (species and generic ideas - concepts); finally, the figure of God was emerging, controlling all the diverse natural and social phenomena. In the course of mental development, from many more or less limited and limiting gods, the idea of the one and only God of monotheistic religions arose. These are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism.
Many representatives of the Judeo-Christian tradition, as well as secular foreign and domestic religious studies, consider faith in the supernatural to be a specific/main, defining, universal sign of religious consciousness, and are characterized as follows: the supernatural, according to believers and theologians, is something that does not obey laws material world, falling out of the chain of causal dependencies. There is no reason to consider belief in the supernatural to be inherent in all religions at any stage of their evolution, since this does not correspond to the facts. At the early stages of development, consciousness was not yet able to form ideas and, accordingly, distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Belief in the supernatural is not inherent in religious consciousness in developed Eastern religions (Buddhist, Taoist, etc.). The division into the natural and the supernatural was developed in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but even in Christianity this dichotomy is not accepted by all thinkers and, as sociological studies show, it often does not reach the everyday consciousness of many believers.. One should not assume that the religious consciousness is some kind of characteristic characteristic only of it. The uniqueness of this consciousness is the totality, combination, correlation and subordination of features. Religious consciousness is characterized by: faith, sensory clarity, images created by the imagination, the combination of content adequate to reality with illusions, symbolism, allegoricality, dialogism, strong emotional intensity, functioning through the language of religion . The named features are characteristic not only of religious consciousness. Sensory clarity, images of fantasy, emotionality are characteristic of art, illusions arise in morality, politics, social sciences, unreliable concepts and theories are created in natural science, etc. Let us consider how these properties are related to each other in religious consciousness, what is their correlation and subordination in him. An integrative feature of religious consciousness is religious faith. Often faith is generally identified with religion. Moreover, not every faith is a religious faith; the latter lives thanks to the presence of a special phenomenon in the human psyche. The word “faith” is correlated with lat. veritas - truth; reality, essence; truth, truth; truthfulness, frankness, straightforwardness, honesty, impartiality; and also - from lat. verus; - true, based on truth or reality; stvelyshy, real; genuine, unfeigned, sincere; based on reason, morality, reasonable, fair; truthful, trustworthy, honest. Similar meanings are preserved in Romano-Germanic languages. The Old Russian meaning of the word is close to those indicated - belief, truth, oath, oath, fidelity. Belief in whom - what or in whom - what is a special state of the psyche of an individual, group, mass (believing subjects), expressed in firm conviction, undoubted trust and hope. The objects of faith can be: the achievement of goals in certain types of activity and the meaning of life in general, the occurrence of some event, the implementation of certain behavior of the “I” and others, the truth of perception, ideas, hypotheses, theories, etc., provided lack of accurate information about the achievability of the set goal and the meaning of life, about the final outcome of the development of events, about the implementation in practice of the expected behavior and relationships of people, about the results of testing the adequacy of the put forward hypotheses and theories, etc. Faith contains the expectation of the fulfillment of what is desired. This psychological state arises in a probabilistic situation, in the presence of an alternative, the possibility of directing the “movement” of the indicated (and other) objects of faith, when there is a certain degree of reality of achieving the desired. If the set goal is achieved, the predicted event has occurred, the desired behavior has been realized, the truth of the hypothesis has been proven, etc., or it has become clear that all this is not feasible, or the result turned out to be negative, then faith fades away. It arises on the basis of material and spiritual interests, needs, motives, regarding those processes, events, ideas, other “I”s that have a significantly significant meaning for people. Faith is a value-based attitude towards its subject and forms a fusion of cognitive, emotional and volitional aspects, although, of course, feelings play a big role in it. Faith combines the conscious and unconscious, rational and irrational, elements of “apex” and “deep” psychology; it is closely related to intuition and insights. Various methods can be used to substantiate faith, but it is not fully rationally argued and practically, experimentally tested. And in many cases, the subject of faith believes that it does not require proof or verification at all. Since faith arises in a probabilistic situation, a person's action in accordance with it is accompanied by risk. Despite this, it is an important factor in the integration of the individual, group, and masses, and an effective incentive for their determination and activity. The content of faith is different in different areas of its functioning and is associated with the subject of a specific action. It finds expression in essentially any sphere of people’s life: economic (in the success of selling a manufactured product), political (in a charismatic political leader), moral (due to moral ideals, models, norms), artistic (in the accomplishments in real life shown on the screen events), scientific (in the beneficial consequences of human cloning), religious (in a miracle), philosophical (in the existence of the World Mind) and, of course, in everyday existence. In the history of philosophy and theology, faith was also considered in the context of problems of its relationship with reason (reason), knowledge, truth, opinion, doubt - with different solutions to these problems. Religious faith is a special state of the psyche of a religious individual, group, community (believing subjects), expressed in the phenomena of confidence, reverence, and professing corresponding views. Within the framework of religious systems, doctrines about religious faith and its content (in whom - what or in whom - what to believe) are formed and developed; In different religions, these teachings acquire originality. Religious faith is the basis and prerequisites for relations of unfreedom and dependence and at the same time includes the desire to overcome these relations. It provides purpose and meaning and has value for believers. Religious faith combines cognitive, emotional and volitional elements, but, as a rule, feelings prevail. The cognitive component is formed by ideas, images, concepts, doctrinal statements, dogmas of the corresponding religion: Buddhism, Christianity (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism), Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. With all the diversity of the content of the cognitive element in different religions and denominations, one can share something in common in religious faith. It is faith: a) in the objective existence of hypostatized (Greek wcootamc; - support, foundation, essence) creatures, attributed (Latin attribuo - to give, endow, give) properties and connections, as well as the world formed by these creatures, properties, connections ; b) the possibility of communicating with hypostatized creatures, influencing them and receiving help from them; c) the truth of the corresponding ideas, views, dogmas, texts, etc.; d) in the actual occurrence of some events that the texts tell about, in their repetition, in the occurrence of an expected event, in involvement in them; e) religious authorities - fathers, teachers, saints, prophets, charismatics, bodhisattvas, arhats, church hierarchs, clergy. Religious faith animates the entire religious complex and determines the uniqueness of the process of transcendence in religion. The transitions from limitation to unlimitedness, from powerlessness to power, from life before to life after death, from this-worldliness to other-worldliness, from unfreedom to liberation, etc., that are not realized in the empirical existence of people. d. with the help of religious faith are achieved in terms of consciousness. In the history of religions, there have been constant debates about the relationship between faith and reason, faith and knowledge. Thus, in Christian theology, the following ideas have developed about the relationship between faith and reason in the comprehension of religious truths: 1) “I believe because it is absurd” (unreasonably attributed to Tertullian); 2) “I believe in order to understand” (Augustine Aurelius); 3) “I understand in order to believe” (P. Abelard); 4) harmony of faith and reason with the priority of faith (Thomas Aquinas); 5) “smart doing” (Simeon the New Theologian).
Religious consciousness is one of the types of social consciousness - a certain way of understanding by society and the individual of the surrounding world, its characteristics, laws, history, as well as the place of man in this world. Religious consciousness is very closely connected with mythological consciousness; moreover, historically it “took shape” precisely within the framework of mythology - as its further development (more about mythological consciousness -). For example, Christianity as a religion is largely based on Jewish mythology as outlined in the Old Testament; Islam borrowed a lot from the same Old Testament and the mythology of the ancient Arabs. As a matter of fact, it is in monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - that religious consciousness is presented in its most “pure” form. Buddhism appears to be a unique phenomenon, which, although called a religion, is fundamentally closer to philosophy and individual psychological practice.
It should be noted that the term “religious” is conditional, and the features that are characteristic of this type of consciousness appear in other spheres, not only in the religious, in which they are most clearly expressed. A person who is not a follower of any religion can also be a bearer of this consciousness. Even an atheist scientist can realize and perceive the world religiously. Therefore, this type of social consciousness can be more correctly described as dogmatic.
Without getting into disputes regarding the definition of what religion is, let’s define it for ourselves this way. Religion is a worldview based on the recognition of the existence of a supreme, absolute and unchangeable truth, confidence in the possession of this truth (or part of it) and a willingness to follow this truth and a way of life associated with it For a person who relies on myth, such a style of perceiving the world is alien. The mythological world does not have an absolute supertruth. For example, in Ancient Egypt there were several myths about the creation of the world that coexisted well with each other. Ancient peoples could easily worship not only their own, but also foreign deities. Fanaticism is a very rare phenomenon in the mythological world. Religious perception offered a different picture of the world and a different model of behavior. This is the next historical stage in man’s understanding of the world around him, an attempt to understand the laws by which this world exists. As is the case with the mythological explanation of this Universe, the main psychological goal of the religious picture of the world is to reduce the level of existential anxiety in front of the unpredictability, chaos of our existence and in front of the huge, unknown world.
1. The emergence of the supernatural.
The mythological world, in which everything is natural and everything is subject to a special and impersonal cosmic law, outside of which no one can place themselves (even the gods), has been replaced by the world of religion. The cosmic law of the mythological world can be likened to gravity - it is everywhere, influences everything, but at the same time does not have any will of its own. This law is replaced by the figure of God as the creator of the world out of nothing, an absolute and omnipotent figure who herself establishes the laws of the world, but does not obey them at all. God is supernatural, he is above nature, and not in it. In fact, instead of the mythological idea of a fully known world (myths explain everything, there is a suitable story for every occasion, even if it may contain many mysterious and frightening things), a picture of the world appears as divided into three categories: what has already been known by man; that which has not yet been known; and that which can never be known (God). God does not live, like the gods of myth, in our world - he is somewhere in heaven, although, as a relic of mythological ideas, hell has long been located by people in our world - underground.
The emergence of the supernatural brought about a whole revolution in man's understanding of the world. Relationships with God cannot be built in the same way as with mythological deities or spirits that behave like people. No one can predict or “calculate” God’s behavior; he is beyond our understanding. Such an image invariably causes strong psychological stress, caused by the same anxiety before uncertainty and the unknown. The means of getting rid of anxiety is no longer a deal with a deity or magic (as a way to influence the world), but unquestioning submission to the Highest Truth, which God personifies. The truth is conveyed by God through special people, prophets and saints. Truth is not discussed, it cannot be doubted and it cannot be reflected upon (because reflection gives rise to doubt, and doubt leads to error and rebellion against the Truth). Therefore, in any truly religious tradition, a developed system of dogmas- the foundations of faith, which cannot be questioned. Of the three largest “classical” religions, Islam is the most consistent in affirming the Absolute Truth, since the Koran represents, according to Muslim beliefs, direct speech from God(neither the Torah nor the New Testament claims this). The Prophet Muhammad did not invent anything - God put his own words into his mouth.
Thus, religious worldview is based on admiration for and adherence to the Supreme Authority. The commandments of the Supreme Authority, which are, of course, the truth, are recorded in the corresponding religious books. Because God cannot make mistakes and contradict himself, so over time, an extensive tradition of interpreting “dark” and contradictory passages in the holy books is formed (Holy Tradition among Orthodox Christians, tafsir among Muslims, Talmud among Jews).
2. Denial of disorder and randomness.
Religious consciousness is intolerant of chaos and disorder. If a person of mythological consciousness does not particularly strive for answers to the questions “why” and “why”, the direct emotional experience of contact with the world of spirits/gods was enough for him, then for a religious person these questions acquire greater significance. The idea of an omnipotent God invariably leads to the idea that everything that happens in the world has its own clearly defined purpose, which, of course, was determined by God. Religious mythology differs from "mythological mythology" in its orderliness and coherence (or at least attempts to give it coherence). The worldview in religion can well be called systemic, but it is a system completely built around one single foundation. If you remove the figure of God, then the entire worldview will collapse, whereas mythological consciousness is much more flexible and mobile. Dostoevsky’s words that “if there is no God, then everything is permitted” precisely reflect this systematic perception, tied to one figure. Therefore, in the speech of people with a religious consciousness, everything that happens in the world, with themselves and loved ones - everything sooner or later comes down to God.
A vicious circle is formed: I believe in the Authority, therefore they follow its Laws, and the Laws are true because the Authority gave them. If a believer reflects on the commandments, allows himself to doubt them and deviate from dogmas, then we cannot call him a “pure” representative of religious consciousness. Let us immediately distinguish between a religious person and a simple believer. The believer recognizes the existence of God, but he builds an intimate-personal contact with him, only to a very small extent mediated (if at all) by dogma. A religious person is much more consistent and systematic in his submission to the Highest Authority.
A religiously-minded atheist scientist can put Science or faceless Nature in the place of God, but in his passionate denial of the hypothetical disorder or chaotic nature of nature, he is not inferior to a religious Christian or Muslim. A “religious” scientist forgets that science is a tool that would be good to apply to his own theories (and often defends his theories in the same ways and techniques that a religious person defends his faith).
3. The emergence of absolute moral and ethical concepts and dogmas.
Where there is absolute truth, absolute moral and ethical norms and dogmas are formed. Moreover, there is a very clear conviction that adherents of “their” religion possess this truth. Religious consciousness does not recognize relativity in anything, it thinks only in black and white categories, “sin” - “holiness”, “God-devil”, “truth - lie”. In Christianity, there was a rethinking of the Ten Commandments of the Jews. Now “thou shalt not kill” is an absolute prohibition on any killing of a person, regardless of his affiliation. However, here we are faced with a fundamental contradiction characteristic of religious consciousness: the idea of absolute norms common to all collides with the idea of one’s own exclusivity. If I possess the Truth that God told me through the prophets, then by definition I stand higher than those who are not familiar with this Truth or have rejected it. For many religious It is very common for Christians or Muslims to say that they pity atheists as people deprived of grace. It is impossible for a person with a religious consciousness to recognize an atheist or a representative of another religion as a person who has his own truth. By definition, they are mistaken. And from this situation follows perhaps the most pronounced feature of religious consciousness:
4. Messianism.
Messianism is the desire to spread one's views and beliefs as only faithful, among other people, communities and nations, as well as conviction in their own special mission to spread the truth. This phenomenon is, in principle, not typical for representatives of mythological consciousness.
The conviction that you are the one who possesses the truth motivates you to preach or to instill your views (not necessarily religious) and values among other people. In the 20th century, messianism was characteristic of both the USSR (with its mythological and religious communism) and the USA, which arose in the 17th century as the “city of God on a hill” for the edification and envy of peoples vegetating in the darkness of ignorance and paganism. Intolerance to another point of view and difficulty in dialogue are integral features of religious consciousness based on faith in authority. The majority of Christian missionaries in Africa, New Guinea and other primitive areas were characterized by intransigence and disrespect for local customs and traditions that ran counter to the Supreme Truth. Fanaticism is the logical consequence of the belief in the possession of Truth and the conviction that this Truth must be disseminated. At any cost. If necessary, then over the corpses.
Thus, religious consciousness is the next step, after the mythological one, in eliminating uncertainty and chaos from the world. The world is no longer explained through fickle and chaotic gods and elements, but through a single Deity (or Truth), which has the purpose and meaning of the development of the world. Overcoming existential anxiety and filling life with meaning is achieved through submission to the Truth and the delight of self-denial in favor of values higher in relation to oneself (it is not for nothing that “Islam” means “submission”, and the Pope calls himself “a slave of the servants of God”). The world is filled with meaning - explicit or hidden, and, moreover, the meanings are already fixed, they do not need to be invented or found.
Religion does not contradict myth, myth is the foundation, religion is the building. Therefore, even the most consistent monotoeistic traditions have not escaped contradictions and inconsistencies. For example, people began to pray to the saints and ask them to put in a word before God, attributing to God the purely human traits of some king with his entourage, favorites and disgraced ones, and ignoring the idea that the only source of a miracle is God, but not objects or relics ( and this is typical for mythological/magical thinking). Religion is not alien to rationality, but it is limited by dogmas, beyond which reason should not go. Odanko, it was within the framework of Catholicism and, later, Protestantism that the third way of understanding and understanding the world around us gradually emerged - rational (and science as its clearest embodiment).
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