Search form. Despite this, religion is not disappearing on a global scale – at least in terms of numbers. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “The Essential List”. As in many traditions, Taiwanese ghosts are seen either as ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’. And indeed, some of the societies with the highest proportions of non-believers are among the most secure and harmonious on Earth. Now there is, comes the reply. Transhumanism, Jediism, the Witnesses of Climatology and the myriad of other new religious movements may never amount to much. * This story is featured in BBC Future’s “Best of 2019” collection. Sociologists argued that the march of science was leading to the “disenchantment” of society: supernatural answers to the big questions were no longer felt to be needed. The idea of punishment as an imperative to cooperate is reminiscent of Norenzayan’s “Big Gods”. Show TV Channels Hide TV Channels TV ; Show Radio Channels A few years ago, members of the self-declared “Rationalist” community website LessWrong began discussing a thought experiment about an omnipotent, super-intelligent machine – with many of the qualities of a deity and something of the Old Testament God’s vengeful nature. Organised religion is waning in the UK, with no real end in sight. New religious movements are born all the time, but most don’t survive long. Even in the US, long a conspicuous exception to the axiom that richer countries are more secular, the number of “nones” has been rising sharply. But in fact, he was being perfectly sincere. A thousand years later, Zoroastrianism, the world’s first great monotheistic religion, was the official faith of the mighty Persian Empire, its fire temples attended by millions of adherents. Doctrine is something that is taught; a principle or creed of principles presented for acceptance or belief; a system of beliefs. Ghost Month, which includes a central Ghost Day, reported sightings on university campuses. Recently, the Witnesses have been looking further afield, including to a ceremony conducted across the Middle East and central Asia just before the spring equinox: purification by throwing something unwanted into a fire – a written wish, or an actual object – and then jumping over it. Such esoteric beliefs have arisen throughout history, but the ease with which we can now build a community around them is new. All Saint’s Day was also known as All Hallows’ Day and the night before became All Hallows’ Evening, or ‘Hallowe’en’. Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired, “God-breathed” Word of God and that its teaching is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21). Allah’s final prophet was Muhammad, to … God gave humans free will so it is up to humans to decide for themselves how to behave, ie in an evil or good way. Women’s Rights. After a decade spent working on engineering solutions to climate change, its founder Olya Irzak came to the conclusion that the real problem lay not some much in finding technical solutions, but in winning social support for them. As these examples suggest, Witnesses of Climatology has a parodic feel to it – light-heartedness helps novices get over any initial awkwardness – but Irzak’s underlying intent is quite serious. So the nones mostly represent not atheists, nor even secularists, but a mixture of “apatheists” – people who simply don’t care about religion – and practitioners of what you might call “disorganised religion”. In response, people have started constructing faiths of their own. We also need to be careful when interpreting what people mean by “no religion”. But without the deep roots of traditional religions, these can struggle: the Sunday Assembly, after initial rapid expansion, is now reportedly struggling to keep up its momentum. Recast as an effort to rid the world of environmental ills, it proved a popular addition to the liturgy. And some people, like AI entrepreneur Anthony Levandowski, think their holy objective is to build a super-machine that will one day answer just as Brown’s fictional machine did. At the other end of the spectrum, the teeming societies of the West are at least nominally faithful to religions in which a single watchful, all-powerful god lays down, and sometimes enforces, moral instructions: Yahweh, Christ and Allah. Is there any substance to the claim that belief in gods and deities will die out altogether? An alternative is to streamline. Again, Woodhead is sceptical. ADTV. God - God is everywhere and knows everything. 2. So, given time and motivation, could something more explicitly religious grow out of an online community? Islam, too, initially attracted followers by emphasising honour, humility and charity – qualities which were not endemic in turbulent 7th-Century Arabia. While the world religions are likely to persist and evolve for the foreseeable future, we might for the rest of this century see an efflorescence of relatively small religions jostling to break out among these groups. HowNiKan. As a mythology scholar at the University of Southern California who has studied and taught ghost stories for many years, I have found that ghosts generally ‘haunt’ for good reasons. But could they also be instructing us in important lessons on how to lead moral lives? In Islam, Muslim doctrine is often summarized in "Six Articles of Faith." Discover more of our picks. “But they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. Early Christianity, for example, was a truly broad church: ancient documents include yarns about Jesus’ family life and testaments to the nobility of Judas. Debates, however, continued about the existence of ghosts and people increasingly turned to science to deal with the issue. In 1994, the sociologist Grace Davie classified people according to whether they belonged to a religious group and/or believed in a religious position. Whether that belief constitutes cause or effect has recently been disputed, but the upshot is that sharing a faith allows people to co-exist (relatively) peacefully. “This is the human animal looking around and saying we don’t agree how we should behave,” Wood says. In 601 AD, to help his drive to convert northern Europe to Christianity, Pope Gregory I directed missionaries not to stop pagan celebrations, but rather to Christianise them. People are created in the image of God and are equal in His sight, which is something affirmed in our nation’s Constitution. And such changes are exactly what the founders of some new religious movements want. About For Books The History of Rome, Books 1-5: The Rise of Rome Review. In 2015, the Pew Research Center modelled the future of the world’s great religions based on demographics, migration and conversion. The Iron Age ended when the Romans invaded Britain and set up their own civilisation and government. “I think it’s pretty clear that we’re entering into a period of non-linear change in social systems,” he says. ...read more. Tell the key points of the story of Jonah from the Bible, and recognise a link with the concept of God. GCSE Bitesize - Religious Studies This site provides good background knowledge to beliefs of the different faiths. But if Big Gods and shared faiths are key to social cohesion, what happens without them? One way being that the person would be dipped right under the water, as Jesus was when he was baptised in the River Jordan. And as our civilisation and its technologies become increasingly complex, could entirely new forms of worship emerge? Developing mental control means being able to reach your potential. This is just a quick overview of what Christians believe. Key beliefs on Christianity (GCSE) https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zdhmtv4/revision/1 Key beliefs on Islam (GCSE) https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z78sjhv In fact, religions, even the defunct ones, can provide uncannily appropriate metaphors for many of the more intractable features of modern life. BBC A History of Christianity 2 of 6 - Catholicism The Unpredictable Rise of Rome. We plan on doing so by keeping track of who has done what (and for how long) to help the peaceful and respectful transition.”, “There are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavours of Christianity, Judaism, Islam,” Levandowski told Wired. Conversely, we might expect similar societies to have similar religions, even if they have developed in isolation. Communist Vietnam, for example, is officially atheist and often cited as one of the world’s most irreligious countries – but sceptics say this is really because official surveys don’t capture the huge proportion of the population who practice folk religion. Christians follow the teachings of the Bible, a holy book divided into the Old and New Testaments. And their tendency to claim we sit at the pinnacle of creation is undermined by a growing sense that humans are not so very significant in the grand scheme of things. (Find out what it would mean if AI developed a "soul". This time it’s different. Ghost stories are common in folklore in countries like Japan and often have a strong moral message (Credit: Science History Images/Alamy). This second key belief of Buddhism leads to wisdom and personal freedom. To answer these questions, a good starting point is to ask: why do we have religion in the first place? Scepticism about practitioners’ motives impedes many new movements from being recognised as genuine religions, whether by officialdom or by the public at large. The 17th-Century French mathematician suggested non-believers should nonetheless go through the motions of religious observance, just in case a vengeful God does turn out to exist. Under this argument, any religion that does endure has to offer its adherents tangible benefits. The first generation of spiritual revolutionaries, coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, were optimistic and universalist in outlook, happy to take inspiration from faiths around the world. That’s most true in rich, stable countries like Sweden and Japan, but also, perhaps more surprisingly, in places like Latin America and the Arab world. There is precedent for this: in the 1700s, Christianity was ailing in the US, having become dull and formal even as the Age of Reason saw secular rationalism in the ascendant. Like many cliches, it’s rooted in truth. But ultimately the question of sincerity is a red herring, Singler says: “Whenever someone tells you their worldview, you have to take them at face value”. 48:10. “And we need authority to tell us.” It’s suggestive that political strongmen are often hand in glove with religious fundamentalists: Hindu nationalists in India, say, or Christian evangelicals in the US. Christianity A History 2 Rome. The widespread belief in ghosts turned the sale of indulgences into a lucrative practice for the church. Once the founders of libraries and universities, they are no longer the key sponsors of intellectual thought. And there is some evidence for that – although when it comes to religion, there are always exceptions to any rule. In suggesting a life after death, they offer a chance to be in contact with those that have passed and therefore a chance for redemption – a way to atone for past wrongs. Perhaps religions never do really die. Yet ghost stories are also hopeful. Christianity, for example, was just one of many religious movements that came and mostly went during the course of the Roman Empire. Tales of the Egyptian, Greek and Norse pantheons are now considered legends, not holy writ. The likes of the New Atheists, on the other hand, argue that religion amounts to little more than superstition, and abandoning it will enable societies to improve their lot more effectively. Other fledgling transhumanist religious movements focus on immortality – a new spin on the promise of eternal life. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism... whatever Western and Eastern religions you've been studying, we've got everything you need to know for tomorrow's Religious Studies GCSE exam on Bitesize. It is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ who lived in the Middle East 2,000 years ago. He cites research showing that people ignore authoritarian pitches until they sense a deterioration of social norms. Many of these Christian beliefs are about: 1. He was arguing that belief in God is necessary for society to function, even if he didn’t approve of the monopoly the church held over that belief. In a landmark study, people directly affected by the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand became significantly more religious than other New Zealanders, who became marginally less religious. According to Wood, it was set apart by its ethos of caring for the sick – meaning more Christians survived outbreaks of disease than pagan Romans. If the town’s Christian churches did not embrace this shift, they concluded, congregations would dwindle into irrelevance while self-guided practices would become the mainstream in a “spiritual revolution”. 0:39. This worldview makes sense for groups too small to need abstract codes of conduct, but who must know their environment intimately. In the 2018 General Social Survey of US attitudes, “no religion” became the single largest group, edging out evangelical Christians. A Russian church in Antarctica, where climate change is playing out (Credit: Getty Images), Consider the “Witnesses of Climatology”, a fledgling “religion” invented to foster greater commitment to action on climate change. The knowledge that Big God is watching makes sure we behave ourselves. The Muslim name for God is "Allah," which is Arabic for "the (al) God (Ilah)." Christians worship in churches and celebrate mass, Communion or Eucharist. Christianity . Woodhead and her co-author found that people were rapidly turning away from organised religion, with its emphasis on fitting into an established order of things, towards practices designed to accentuate and foster individuals’ own sense of who they are. Then there are those who belong but don’t believe – parents attending church to get a place for their child at a faith school, perhaps. Christianity shares a number of beliefs and practices with other religions, particularly Judaism and Islam. Perhaps a new religion will emerge to fill the void? When life is tough or disaster strikes, religion seems to provide a bulwark of psychological (and sometimes practical) support. In interim results released in May 2019, the researchers found that few unbelievers actually identify themselves by these labels, with significant minorities opting for a religious identity. Ghosts, in this light, are often seeking justice from beyond the grave. Communist states like Soviet Russia and China adopted atheism as state policy and frowned on even private religious expression. Religionists say even secular institutions have religious roots: civil legal systems, for example, codify ideas about justice based on social norms established by religions. This might have been expected, because it’s been practised for thousands of years as part of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year – whose origins lie in part with the Zoroastrians. The Understanding Unbelief project at the University of Kent in the UK is conducting a three-year, six-nation survey of attitudes among those who say they don’t believe God exists (“atheists”) and those who don’t think it’s possible to know if God exists (“agnostics”). . Modern societies are multicultural where followers of many different faiths live side by side (Credit: Getty Images). In this way, ghosts reveal the shadow side of ethics. One recurring theme is social cohesion: religion brings together a community, who might then form a hunting party, raise a temple or support a political party. Not all are liberally inclined. Most, although not all, societies have a concept of ‘ghosts’. In 2005, Linda Woodhead wrote The Spiritual Revolution, in which she described an intensive study of belief in the British town of Kendal. Traditional religion is failing to deliver on this, particularly where doctrine clashes with moral convictions that arise from secular society – on gender equality, say. Search “What’s a multi-generational social construct that organises people around shared morals?” she asks. Given all that, there’s a growing consensus that the future of religion is that it has no future. But if history is any guide, no matter how deeply held our beliefs may be today, they are likely in time to be transformed or transferred as they pass to our descendants – or simply to fade away. KS1 Christianity Lesson Plan, PowerPoint and Worksheets. It was such beliefs that contributed to the Reformation, the division of Christianity into Protestantism and Catholicism led by German theologian Martin Luther. Top 10 facts. Paganism also often features divinities that are more like diffuse forces than anthropomorphic gods; that allows people to focus on issues they feel sympathetic towards without having to make a leap of faith to supernatural deities. During the Middle Ages, beliefs about souls trapped in purgatory led to the church’s increasing practice of selling indulgences – payments to the church to reduce penalties for sins. Key beliefs in Islam Muslims believe in one God, Allah, who revealed his word to humanity through a line of special messengers known as prophets. Among other things, she is considering a Sunday School to teach children ways of thinking about how complex systems work. Outlandish though it might seem, Roko’s Basilisk caused quite a stir when it was first suggested on LessWrong – enough for discussion of it to be banned by the site’s creator. In 1968, the eminent sociologist Peter Berger told the New York Times that by “the 21st Century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture”. Join 900,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. You might also like: • The truth about the paranormal • The camera tricks that can summon ghosts • Why science says you need a nap. The Celts lived during the Iron Age, from about 600 BC to 43 AD.This is the time when iron was discovered and used. And, finally, there are those who believe in something, but don’t belong to any group. suggested that people seeing ghosts should say masses. Their grandchildren, however, are growing up in a world of geopolitical stresses and socioeconomic angst; they are more likely to hark back to supposedly simpler times. “The Western consensus on a combination of market capitalism and democracy can’t be taken for granted.”. Give clear, simple accounts of what the text means to Christians. This Halloween, along with the shrieks and shtick, you may want to take a few minutes to appreciate the role of ghosts in our haunted pasts and how they guide us to lead moral and ethical lives. Pontiff travels to Mosul, Qaraqosh and Erbil to pray for war victims on last day of historic visit Levandowski, who made a fortune through self-driving cars, hit the headlines in 2017 when it became public knowledge that he had founded a church, Way of the Future, dedicated to bringing about a peaceful transition to a world mostly run by super-intelligent machines. Their sightings are often a reminder that ethics and morality transcend our lives and that ethical lapses can carry a heavy spiritual burden. They require a certain level of faith as well as the adoption of a particular code of behaviour from all practising Christians. But if your basic needs are well catered for, you are more likely to be seeking fulfilment and meaning. Many religions have syncretistic elements, although over time they are assimilated and become unremarkable. That’s a problem, since that combination has radically transformed the social environment from the one in which the world religions evolved – and has to some extent supplanted them. But over time, they canevolve into more heartfelt and coherent belief systems: Woodhead points to the robust adoption of Rodnovery – an often conservative and patriarchal pagan faith based around the reconstructed beliefs and traditions of the ancient Slavs – in the former Soviet Union as a potential exemplar of things to come. 50:08. today identify themselves as not being White British. A Roman Catholic priest officiates mass on the first day of trading at the Philippine Stock Exchange in Manila (Credit: Getty Images). Official status is irrelevant if you can win thousands or even millions of followers to your cause. A quick look reveals twelve key areas in which our faith has had tremendous influence on our society today. They didn’t see any need to bring God into it – Irzak was brought up an atheist – but did start running regular “services”, including introductions, a sermon eulogising the awesomeness of nature and education on aspects of environmentalism. Five doctrines outline the basic beliefs of Fundamentalist Christians, according to The Thoughtful Christian. This article originally appeared on The Conversation, and is republished under a Creative Commons licence. So to encourage everyone to do everything possible to help to bring into existence, it will perpetually and retroactively torture those who don’t – including anyone who so much as learns of its potential existence. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday. But Woodhead thinks the religions that might emerge from the current turmoil will have much deeper roots. Analysing and evaluating - Analysing and evaluating - GCSE Art and Design Revision - BBC Bitesize. But when the social contract becomes stressed – through identity politics, culture wars or economic instability – Wood suggests the consequence is what we see today: the rise of authoritarians in country after country. A church service in Berlin uses Star Wars to engage the congregation (Credit: Getty Images), Are these movements for real? The Turing Church, founded in 2011, has a range of cosmic tenets – “We will go to the stars and find Gods, build Gods, become Gods, and resurrect the dead” – but no hierarchy, rituals or proscribed activities and only one ethical maxim: “Try to act with love and compassion toward other sentient beings.”. The mechanism may be new, but the message isn’t. Periodically they include rituals, particularly at traditional holidays. He created the world. 0:06 But today, there’s another possible source of support: the internet. Genome BETA Radio Times 1923 - 2009. In the European context, this sets the stage for a resurgence of interest in paganism. Telling tales of ghouls and spectres can have a surprising benefit by encouraging people to change the way they behave. He tweets @sumit. Festivals like Christmas and Easter, for example, have archaic pagan elements, while daily practice for many people in China involves a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. In Taiwan, for example, about 90% of people report seeing ghosts. In poorer societies, you might pray for good fortune or a stable job. And when a religion dies, it becomes a myth, and its claim to sacred truth expires. These beliefs are not just part of the Christian world. Perhaps one of the major religions might change its form enough to win back non-believers in significant numbers. BBC Bitesize celebrates diversity in all its forms: BBC Bitesize has produced a ZDiversity and Inclusion Commissioning Guidelines document to support the attainment of the and itesizes diversity targets. In fact, recognition is a complex issue worldwide, particularly since that there is no widely accepted definition of religion even in academic circles. ; The people who lived in Britain during the … Some branches of Jediism remain jokey, but others take themselves more seriously: the Temple of the Jedi Order claims its members are “real people that live or lived their lives according to the principles of Jediism” – inspired by the fiction, but based on the real-life philosophies that informed it. Accordingly, over time, the celebrations of samhain became All Souls’ Day and All Saint’s Day, when speaking with the dead was considered religiously appropriate. The broad idea that a shared faith serves the needs of a society is known as the functionalist view of religion. Now that we’re actually in the 21st Century, Berger’s view remains an article of faith for many secularists – although Berger himself recanted in the 1990s. None of these are religions, of course, but they do share parallels with nascent belief systems – particularly that key functionalist objective of fostering a sense of community and shared purpose. Free delivery for many products! “The ‘invisible hand’ of the market almost seems like a supernatural entity.”. Human Rights. What’s more, around three-quarters of atheists and nine out of 10 agnostics are open to the existence of supernatural phenomena, including everything from astrology to supernatural beings and life after death. What remains debatable, however, is whether they can afford to be irreligious because they have strong secular institutions – or whether being secular has helped them achieve social stability. What are the key beliefs of Christianity? One God (Allah) The central belief in Islam, and arguably the most important theme of Islam, is that there is one God. In Russia, by contrast, the nationalistic overtones of both Rodnovery and the Orthodox church wins them tacit political backing. When we recognise a faith, we treat its teachings and traditions as timeless and sacrosanct. A new guard of travelling fire-and-brimstone preachers successfully reinvigorated the faith, setting the tone for centuries to come – an event called the “Great Awakenings”. Financial exchanges, where people meet to conduct highly ritualised trading activity, seem quite like temples to Mammon, too. ), A flame burns in a Zoroastrian Fire Temple, possibly for more than a millennium (Credit: Getty Images). While his vision sounds more benevolent than Roko’s Basilisk, the church’s creed still includes the ominous lines: “We believe it may be important for machines to see who is friendly to their cause and who is not. Throughout history, people’s faith and their attachments to religious institutions have transformed, argues Sumit Paul-Choudhury. Those faiths that endure are “the long-term products of extraordinarily complex cultural pressures, selection processes, and evolution”, writes Connor Wood of the Center for Mind and Culture in Boston, Massachusetts on the religious reference website Patheos, where he blogs about the scientific study of religion. Levandowski is not alone. A woman dances as druids, pagans and revellers gather at Stonehenge (Credit: Getty Images). Religion will continue to grow in economically and socially insecure places like much of sub-Saharan Africa – and to decline where they are stable. Social change undermines religions which don’t accommodate it: earlier this year, Pope Francis warned that if the Catholic Church didn’t acknowledge its history of male domination and sexual abuse it risked becoming “a museum”. Some groups are performing or “hacking” religion to win support for transhumanist ideas, says Singler. can be seen in the ‘ghost hunters’ of today. Even the technological trappings aren’t new. Belief in “Big Gods” allowed the formation of societies made up of strangers (Credit: Getty Images), Hunter-gatherers, for example, tend to believe that all objects – whether animal, vegetable or mineral – have supernatural aspects (animism) and that the world is imbued with supernatural forces (animatism). Not the one? And perhaps the next great faith is just getting started. When someone tries to start a new religion, it is often dismissed as a cult. Indeed, Luther’s 95 Theses, nailed to the All Saints Church in Wittenburg on 31 October 1517, was largely a protest against the selling of indulgences. With Judaism and Islam, Christians believe in one God, who created the universe and all that is in it. GCSE Bitesize - Religious Studies. These must be understood and respected; human morality generally doesn’t figure significantly. “Religions do well, and always have done, when they are subjectively convincing – when you have the sense that God is working for you,” says Woodhead, now professor of sociology of religion at the University of Lancaster in the UK. Halloween is a time when ghosts and spooky decorations are on public display, reminding us of the realm of the dead. New religious movements often seek to preserve the central tenets of an older religion while stripping it of trappings that may have become stifling or old-fashioned. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for GCSE BITESIZE COMPLETE REVISION GUIDE RELIGIOUS STUDIES by Jon Mayled, Libby Ahluwalia (Paperback, 2004) at the best online prices at eBay! Their case was not helped by the fact that many Rationalists are strongly committed to other startling ideas about artificial intelligence, ranging from AIs that destroy the world by accident to human-machine hybrids that would transcend all mortal limitations. Save Teachers' Sundays provides lesson plans and teaching resources for the current primary curriculum. The full proposition is a complicated logic puzzle, but crudely put, it goes that when a benevolent super-intelligence emerges, it will want to do as much good as possible – and the earlier it comes into existence, the more good it will be able to do. Since then, Christianity has continued both to grow and to splinter into ever more disparate groups, from silent Quakers to snake-handling Pentecostalists.