Essay Example on Types of Religion: Deism, Theism, Pantheism, Animism, Monot

Religion is a social-cultural system that incorporates labeled practices, views, prophecies, and ethics that connect people to supernatural or spiritual features. "There are different types of religions, such as Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Islam, Buddhism, and Confucianism" (Herbert, 2016). All these forms of religion differ in their beliefs, rituals, social structures, and organizations. The types of beliefs that exist in religion include deism, theism, pantheism, animism, monotheism, humanism, dystheism, and agnosticism. Religiosity is correlated to numerous advantages that include promoting happiness, encouraging charity, and ensuring quality health on individuals. However, it is also known to have adverse effects on society. This essay aims at elaborating on the various ways in which religion has negatively impacted the community.

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Religion has encouraged individuals to value and seek power instead of maintaining ethical leadership skills to guide the followers. The ideology that beliefs are human-made institutions has changed individuals' perceptions to conclude that they are just like any other profit-linked organization. Therefore, to ensure survival in religions, most people have decided to build power, wealth, and compete for market share for personal gain. The largest religious institutions, such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, are the most affected in wielding power and wealth. The leaders in these religious institutions and willing to wield wealth and power in the name of self-perpetuation regardless of whether it harms the society at large. The spiritual practitioners have decided to use all means possible to ensure the survival of the religions' strategies for them to achieve a high level of attractiveness even if the approaches applied to entail damaging society.

Religion is disrupting unity among people by turning them against each other. The primary cause of this disruption is the unrealistic demands and teachings that religion is placing. For instance, religion wants individuals to believe that they were born sinners. Thus, whatever people engage in is bound to be corrupted in various ways. Again, religion teaches individuals to achieve moral behavior as much as possible to avoid engaging in sins.

Nonetheless, humans are comfortable when they behave naturally. Setting strict measures about human behavior has resulted in severe consequences, which include self-hate and feeling unworthy (Morgan, 2016). In most instances, when people fail to behave as per the spiritual needs, they hate themselves and acquire the perception of how wicked they are. Therefore, their minds are filled with bitterness and resentment, which translate to hating others. Moreover, a religious person accepts that he or she is a sinner; an assumption arises that other people are also sinners. In such instances, people start to view each other as enemies who are likely to hurt each other at any time. Those who are from different religious ideologies do not tolerate each other. Therefore, disunity within the society has resulted due to the religious groups fighting each other and religious people fighting the non-religious ones.

The invention of religion has significantly contributed diversion of generous and good intentions within the society. In this regard, religion has achieved the diversion through redirecting generosity for the essence of perpetuating religion itself. Religious leaders encourage their followers to continue giving, and this hurts because individuals see themselves promoting the church itself instead of enhancing their general welfare. For the missionaries, they are more involved in saving souls instead of saving lives and supporting the planetary life system to improve people's lives. Financial and human capital is gobbled as the missionaries strive to accomplish their religious goals. The exploitation of positive moral energy linked to acts of generosity and kindness is being redirected to righteous indignation and disgust whereby these emotions are being attached to arbitrary religious regulations instead of connecting them to queries of real harm. For example, in different forms of religion, individuals are forced to select between righteousness and love. Others kick their teens out onto the streets when they identify severe violations of religious beliefs. Moreover, righteous rules are imposed in hospitals and operation rooms when religious people are admitted while other religious directives are against any form of treatment when the followers experience different types of ailments. All these events create negative implications towards the welfare of society.

Religion has taken a better part of individuals' anxiety, whereby they are afraid of the consequences of failing to adhere to the rules (Sellers, 2019). Therefore, people have become sensitive and unable to discover their full potentials to support the achievement of the highest states of being. Additionally, people are afraid of engaging in any religion as it is unclear about which form of religion is likely to lead to a happy ending. The fact that religion is founded on the notion of sin and societies are expected to redeem themselves from sin as often as possible, and fear is exerted on the impure souls. Both the religious and non-religious individuals are informed that if they fail to purify themselves, the supernatural being will condemn them, whereby they will experience eternal suffering at the end. Thus, to evade being condemned, religion demand people to live ethically and often check their ways to prevent falling into sinful temptations. Naturally, when individuals are given such strict religious measures, they are exposed to a continuous state of fear. People become afraid and end up questioning every action to determine whether it is right according to religion or not. In every step that individuals make, they are certain that they are always being watched and thus must act in particular ways that please the supernatural being. Therefore, all these situations have resulted in the creation of an anxious society that is not living spontaneously.

Religion has made society to be in a state of helplessness. The phrases made by most religious leaders hinder the followers in deeply recognizing the connection between religiosity and resignation. For instance, women are perceived as more virtuous, and they are advised to let the supernatural being manage their family planning, especially in religion such as Islam, Judaism as well as Christianity. Other aspects, such as poverty, drought, and serious diseases such as cancer, are increasingly being attributed to the will of the supernatural being. Regardless of whether these aspects result from unemployment, bad weather conditions, or intake of poor diet, religion redirects the occurrences to supernatural powers. In this perspective, people refuse to make their contributions in solving problems at the request of the supernatural being to solve them, and this attitude damages the development of the society. The knowledge and power that people currently have can change the present social structure via technological innovation as compared to ancient times. However, religion is failing to advocate for social responsibility. People are thus ignoring structural problems as they believe they are kind to friends as well as generous to the tribal community of believers, and that is what matters most to them.

Religion has made people ignorant of seeking more knowledge to prove how valid religious directives are (Dumsday, 2018). Individuals grow up when being conditioned to believe the right and wrong things according to various religious dogmas. Moreover, people are informed that violating ethical rules will result in a bitter ending. These guidelines prevent people from wanting to seek more information that reveals the extent of truth within religious practices. Individuals fail to educate themselves to promote personal growth as they believe that knowledge and wisdom are irreconcilable with directives of religious principles. The few courageous people who attempt to search for the light of truth, they are judged by religion and threatened that they would face the rathe of supernatural powers. Therefore, religion is keeping individuals blinded by all kinds of beliefs and discouraging research to achieve any factual or experiential evidence that approves the truth about the existing religious dogmas.

Religion has contributed significantly in making a virtue out of faith (Stark & Finke, 2000). People are informed that supernatural beings work in mysterious ways when they are faced with severe ailments such as cancer and natural disasters such as tsunami. Religion encourages people to stay strong and practice self-deception as they shut out contradictory evidence that mostly comes from scientists. The authority is now becoming a fight between competing dogmas instead of a quest to promote wellbeing by figuring out practical solutions.

Conclusion

In summary, religion has negatively affected the society by making a virtue out of faith, encouraging people to become ignorant in seeking more knowledge about the existing forms of religion, making the society to be in a state of helplessness, causing people to become anxious, diverting generous and good intentions within the society into immoral acts, turning individuals against each other, and encouraging people to value and seek power instead of maintaining ethical leadership skills to guide the followers. Religion should work towards improving people's health and create a conducive environment in which people can acquire happiness instead of promoting anxiety as well as restricting individuals' freedom.

References

Dumsday, T. (2018). Origen on Demonic Ignorance: And Why It Might Still Matter for the Theology of World Religions. Philosophia Christi, 20(2), 463-479.

Herbert, D. (2016). Religion and civil society. In Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics (pp. 212-230). Routledge.

Morgan, R. (2016). Does religion cause war?. Issue, 24, 3-5.

Sellers, T. B. (2019). The Relationship Between Religious Background of those who Disaffiliate from Religion and the Presence of Anxiety.

Stark, R., & Finke, R. (2000). Acts of faith: Explaining the human side of religion. Univ of California Press.