Historical analysis of religious beliefs
Introduction.
Since antiquity man has had the belief that the world is governed by something beyond the material world in which he lives, the spiritual world. One of the first signs of beliefs is found in primitive hunters, whose convictions were animalists, that is to say that animals and plants were aware so they could communicate with human beings. These beliefs also included intangible beings, that is, the spirits of the dead and gods. Each God was characterized by having a different divine function or work, while agriculture was attributed to another fertility or rain.
Developing
We continue to say that the life of the hunters-gatherers of that time revolved around polytheism (as we were telling at the beginning), compared to other civilizations of the Middle East such as the Hebrew, which was monotheistic. This came as a result when the traditional polytheism of the region is displaced, by Christianity. We can say that it was developed by an eastern average town, the Israelites. This religion is very conservative, and strengthens that God is the only God, that as he is no other. If we look at the naked eye, this contradicts the thought of the polytheists on the different gods that according to these exist.
Despite all this, we must say that unrestricted monotheism is not the usual message of the Bible. If we take as reference the ten commandments, we realize that Jehovah establishes the Israelites that "do not have other gods ahead of him," which means that only he must be his God, not that there are no other gods. This is one of the many passages that can be taken as a reference on the existence of other gods.
According to this notion, the relationship of the Israelites with God is similar to marriage: whoever marks monogamous marriage must renounce all other potential couples, but that does not mean that it has to refute the existence of the same. What we have is not strict monotheism but rather a monolatry, that is, the worship of one God and the exclusion of the rest.
In India, the written testimonies left by this civilization are very scarce, so the knowledge about this is limited. In contrast to the Middle East, he left no clay boards or stone inscriptions.The emergence of Buddhism is a fundamental event that takes place in the 5th century.C., We can say that it was a philosophy aimed at those hermits who, like Buddha, renounced the world and wanted to get rid of all bonds. This showed that renouncing the world becomes a very effective technique to prosper in it.
The person who renounces the world is free to disregard any commitment to society that has decided to leave;The renunchers were not obliged to respect caste links, ethnicity or language. The Buddhists took advantage of this, in order to spread their creed, they transcribed their colossal oral tradition in various Inda Aria languages and, subsequently, translated them into more exotic languages such as Chinese, Tibetan and Mongol. This will allow them to have the advantage of being able to export their religion beyond the borders of India. Buddhism ended up disappearing in India, but the huge collection of sacred books originally written in the subcontinent still survives among Buddhists.
With all this, we should highlight what differs from the Indian religion of others: on the negative side they communicated that life is an infinite cycle of births and reincarnations;The positive side was that if one renounced the world and practiced an appropriate virtue, he could end his participation in that heavy cycle and reach extinction. However, this guy tends to lack emotional warmth. Another of the main contributions in the history of this religion was the appearance of Hindu devotional cults. The followers of this cult loved their God with such passion that they often worshiped any other;and their east corresponded to the point that he forgave his sins and even became flesh for them.
China
The aristocratic domain that had characterized the Bronze Age, China touched its end. Confucian education became the key to entering the imperial bureaucracy. Confucian domain could be threatened from time to time, as happened in the middle of the first millennium D. C. With the rise of Buddhism as a religion, but the confusion, with the help of the emperor, could stop him. From the beginning there has been a usual criticism of the Chinese about Buddhism encouraged men to abandon their parents to become monks. Both the Christian and Buddhist sermon intended to free people from the social ligatures that kept them imprisoned from birth. Confucianism, on the other hand, tried to reconcile faith with those fasteners.
Confucius advised to be respectful of spirits and gods, however to maintain distances with them. The confucianists affirmed that "the gods and spirits do not exist" and at the same time argued that "everyone had to learn to celebrate offerings"; . What was at stake in the cult of the ancestors were not the little ones of the ancient rituals of the spirits, but the family values. Confucius says: «When our parents live, we serve them according to the rites;When they die, we bury them and offer them sacrifice according to the rites ». The great moral touch is the filial piety: «Of those whose father still lives, he watches his intentions. Of the one whose father already died, watches his actions. If after three years he continues to behave as his late parent, he will deserve the qualifier of "subsidiary" ".
Greek culture was characterized, for an interest towards political aspects, never seen in other cultures such as India. The Greeks even though they were polytheistic as well as certain religions, they did not follow the same pattern as these, it was a bit confusing, but for the Greeks, the divinities were not eternal, nor perfect, nor omniscient, nor omnipotent, nor have theycreated the world, but they have been born in it and from it have emerged through successive generations.
The belief of the Greeks was based that between the world and the divine there is no essential cut that separates for us the order of the nature of the supernatural. They considered that the only thing that made them different from the gods was the simple fact that they were immortal and they did not. Therefore, the gods passed the same vicissitudes as human beings, were insecure, suffered certain diseases, etc. Despite all this the Greek man between one of his fundamental rules on wisdom was very clear that he could not match the gods, they did not expect from these that granted them immortality. For them the gods and men inhabited the world but with different levels: from the bottom to the superior, from the finite to the infinite, from the temporal to the eternal.
According to his beliefs since man is born he has a debt, which must settle when paying tribute through rites to divinity. By establishing contact with the gods, it is present in mortals, the cult introduces man in a dimension of fortunate community. For them the world of the gods is far enough so that men have their autonomy however it does not have so much distance so that man does not feel helpless.
Unlike other places, for the Greeks there is no religious environment;be part of a church, being a regularly practicing and believing in truths constituted in a creed with dogma value are religious commitments, which in Greece there are no. There is no clergy, or churches, much less some dogma.
conclusion.
The man is not in a situation to choose between them or not, the believer can manifest extreme credulity or a prudent suspicion or also maintain disbelief despite this participated in ceremonies of worship, since being a religion that was inseparable fromThe civic, excluding it would be as to place to the side of society. The Greeks see the world as a great living being of which it is part and integrates it.
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