Portal:Religion

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The Religion Portal

Religion is the adherence to codified beliefs and rituals that generally involve a faith in a spiritual nature and a study of inherited ancestral traditions, knowledge and wisdom related to understanding human life. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to faith as well as to the larger shared systems of belief.

In the larger sense, religion is a communal system for the coherence of belief—typically focused on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, traditions, and rituals are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion can also be described as a way of life.

The development of religion has taken many forms in various cultures. "Organized religion" generally refers to an organization of people supporting the exercise of some religion with a prescribed set of beliefs, often taking the form of a legal entity (see religion-supporting organization). Other religions believe in personal revelation and responsibility. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system," but is more socially defined than that of personal convictions.

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In Tibet, many Buddhists carve mantras into rocks as a form of devotion.
A mantra (Devanagari मन्त्र) is a religious or mystical syllable or poem, typically from the Sanskrit language. The Sanskrit word mantra- (m. मन्त्रः, also n. मन्त्रं) consists of the root man- "to think" (also in manas "mind") and the suffix -tra meaning, tool, hence a literal translation would be "instrument of thought". The Chinese translation is zhenyan 眞言, 真言, literally "true words", the Japanese on'yomi reading of the Chinese being shingon.

Their use varies according to the school and philosophy associated with the mantra. They are primarily used as spiritual conduits, words or vibrations that instill one-pointed concentration in the devotee. Other purposes have included religious ceremonies to accumulate wealth, avoid danger, or eliminate enemies. Mantras originated in the Vedic religion of India, later becoming an essential part of the Hindu tradition and a customary practice within Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. The use of mantras is now widespread throughout various spiritual movements which are based on, or off-shoots of, the practices in the earlier Eastern religions.

Mantras are interpreted to be effective as sound (vibration), to the effect that great emphasis is put on correct pronunciation (resulting in an early development of a science of phonetics in India). They are intended to deliver the mind from illusion and material inclinations. Chanting is the process of repeating a mantra.

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Prometheus (1868 by Gustave Moreau)
Credit: Gustave Moreau

Prometheus. The Greek myth of Prometheus was first attested by Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus, consisting of Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Pyrphoros.

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Paul of Tarsus
Paul of Tarsus, the Apostle to the Gentiles was, together with Simon Peter, the most notable of Early Christian missionaries. Unlike the Twelve Apostles, Paul did not know Jesus in life; he came to faith through a vision of the resurrected Jesus. As he wrote, he "received it (the Gospel) by revelation from Jesus Christ"; according to Acts, his conversion was on the Road to Damascus.

Paul's influence on Christian thinking has, arguably, been more significant than any other single New Testament author. His influence on the main strands of Christian thought have been massive, from St. Augustine of Hippo to the controversies between Gottschalk and Hincmar of Reims, between Thomism and Molinism, Martin Luther, Calvin and the Arminians, Jansenism and the Jesuit theologians and even to the German church of the twentieth century through the writings of the scholar Karl Barth, whose commentary on the Letter to the Romans had a political as well theological impact.

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  • ...that Islam is the fastest growing religion worldwide?
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The syllable gu means shadows

The syllable ru, he who disperses them,
Because of the power to disperse darkness
the guru is thus named.

Upanishads, Advayataraka Upanishad, 14—18, verse 5
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Gnostic Cross
The Gospel of Thomas is a New Testament-era apocryphon completely preserved in a papyrus Coptic manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Unlike the four canonical gospels, which combine narrative accounts of the life of Jesus with sayings, Thomas is a "sayings gospel". It takes the less structured form of a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, brief dialogues with Jesus, and sayings that some of his disciples reported to Didymus Judas Thomas. Thomas does not have a narrative framework, nor is it worked into any overt philosophical or rhetorical context.

The work comprises 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Some of these sayings resemble those found in the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Others were unknown until its discovery, and a few of these run counter to sayings found in the four canonical gospels.

When a Coptic version of the complete text of Thomas was found, scholars realized that three separate Greek portions of it had already been discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in 1898. The manuscripts bearing the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas have been dated to about AD 200, and the manuscript of the Coptic version to about 340. Although the Coptic version is not quite identical to any of the Greek fragments, it is believed that the Coptic version was translated from an earlier Greek version.

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