Religious Diversity Midterm

MIDTERM EXAM
NAME: Kiva Hewett
USERNAME: lilwisegirl
WEBSITE ADDRESS:
1. LIST ALL OF YOUR POSTINGS (copy and paste them or provide direct links to
each specific post)

2. Attendance:
How many times late? 3 (but for good reason, not cause I was just messing around.)
How many classes missed? 0

3. 1st Digital Film: Name and Describe (how long? how did you edit it? in what
format? on what day did you show it?) Provide your youtube or google video link
here. Sent to you already

4. To read or not to read, that is the question: Be honest. How much of the
following book did you read? Not a Genuine Black Man? Required readings from the
Reader?
I have read quite a bit of the textbook, but not all of it. I have made a point to read the one’s for this exam. Surprisingly enough, I have finished Copeland’s book, despite my significant other’s protests because he knows of Copeland, and grew up in the Bay Area, is black and said “that I’m-not-that-kind-of-black-guy attitude doesn’t fly with us.” (I told him he should read it, he might be able to relate.)

5. Give an example of a "consilience" explanation to one specific religious
phenomenon (e.g., why do people worship snakes, etc

Why do people dance as a form of worship?
At the religious level, some people use dance as way to worship or communicate with their god(s) because they want to please them. These “dancing religions” believe that the dancers enter a state of religious ecstasy induced by the music and movement.
When you take it down the sociological level, you’ll find that the exact manner and expected outcome of the dance differs from one society to the next. In some cases the dance can be performed by anyone and is all improvisation. In others, the dancer must be deemed sacred and has rigid instruction before performing the dance. People in that society have learned to perceive these dances as sacred.
At a biological/biochemical level, chemicals the body releases when it feels good can induce a euphoric feeling during the dancing. What the dancer feels during the dance is sometimes referred to as an altered state of reality.

6. How can the theory of memetics help in understanding WHY certain religions
are more successful than others (in terms of popularity) in the USA? Be sure to
explain how memes are different than genes.
Memetics is Richard Dawkins’ view on the cultural information transfer from one generation, and even one geographical region, to another. The theory states that cultural behavior is stored in the brain as a piece of information, waiting to “infect” another person. It is passed on to the next simply by being exposed to that idea or behavior.

7. Describe how evolutionary theory (via natural selection as first presented by
Charles Darwin and later by Richard Dawkins) helps in understanding human
migration, cultural development, and social identity. (Think of evolutionary
psychology).
Humans migrated and developed social identities all because of our advanced brains and the ability to think, “I don’t feel like I belong here” or even as simple as “it’s kinda crowded here.” So people moved around, and they had to adapt to where they moved to, so they developed new practices and passed those on to the next generation.

8. Why is the notion of "race" biologically obsolete, yet culturally viable?
(hint: difference between "nature" and "nurture"... or biology vs. sociology)

Replace “race” with “ethnicity” and it is no longer an obsolete idea. People are attached to the term as being a negative thing (oh, you’re a racist) and so there is a whole camp of people who’ve been trying to prove it does not exist. When you look at race or ethnicity from a biological perspective you see differences in what people look like and in how they do things. This is not saying that we are a different species as many of the past arguments for race have tried to say. So, we are all human, we can all have babies together but we look different based on what paths our ancestors traveled. We do things differently based on the activities and social norms we grew up with. I like to think of it as “breeds” of people. Most people hate it when I say that cause they don’t like feeling like I’m calling them a dog…. But we are just animals.

9. Explain how a religious idea/ritual/practice gets transformed in American
soil. For ex: I described how circumcision evolved from a religious ritual (from
Egyptian to Judaic to Islamic) into a routinely performed medical procedure.
This is a tougher question than you might suspect. Think before you leap. You
want to describe how a religious idea/ritual/practice CHANGES in a North
American environment. You can draw from ANY religion for your developmental
example. Be sure, though, that it is YOUR example.
The Celtic celebration Sahmein is known here in the states as Halloween. The Celts celebrated the lighter half of the year meeting the darker half (for us this is why we turn our clocks), when the days are shorter from the way Earth rotates. On this night they believed that the barrier between the mortal world and that of spirits is thin and that spirits can pass through. So they wore costumes to trick bad spirits and hoped they wouldn’t cause harm.
Later, Catholics took over the holiday and meshed it with their own All Saints Day, which is actually the day after Halloween, where they pay homage to their favorite saints by dressing up as them. Hispanic cultures celebrate the Day of the Dead, where they invite the spirits of their dead loved ones to come back home and entice them with treats and feasts.
All this somehow got all mixed together in the U.S. as Halloween and is pretty much a capitalist venture. People dress up for reasons they don’t know, kids go from house to house demanding candy (they don’t even say “trick-or-treat” anymore, the Celt kids had to do a little performance), we carve pumpkins to ward off spirits that we (the general Christian-American population) supposedly don’t believe in. All this production just for someone somewhere to make money.


10. Explain Peter Berger's concept of the "heretical imperative" (hint: think of
class lecture: deductive, reductive, inductive) and how it applies to religious
pluralism in general.
There access to so much more information nowadays, that people can choose to look at religion with eyes and brains that know more than just how they were raised. That said, a person now can decide how literal or right they think their religion is. On a level of reasoning, a person can decide that they have all the answers, regardless of evidence, and reject anything opposing their religion (deductive, like my father). One can decide that the evidence of evolution is so overwhelming that there is definitely no “real” religion (reductive, like atheists). And last, a person can decide that they just don’t know and keep themselves open to whatever (inductive, like I was for years). With this arises an array of beliefs that are on kind of a spectrum.

13. Take ONE new religious movement (any religion founded after the 16th century
CE) and describe, in brief, its influence in North America. Use hypertext when
necessary.
Scientology is an interesting religion. I notice that the people who choose to follow it are very caught up in the material manifestation of their faith. For most of us it has become the faith of the stars. There are “normal” people who follow as well, but those that I have spoken with are just as caught up in the material aspect.
A few years ago I went into one of the scientology centers on Melrose in L.A. I took the personality quiz and it listed all these generic issues that I think most people in Los Angeles possess. After I even took it a step further and went through on of the sessions that is supposed to “clear” you. I really can’t knock it. This was one of the best therapy sessions I have ever had. They usually make people pay a lot of money for these sessions, I got off with only $10 since they were trying to recruit me and I haggled.
Since the “religion” is a spin off of L. Ron Hubbard’s self help regimen, I think the appeal to people is that it serves as an alternative to getting therapy. In a sense it helps you avoid the humility of saying that you are in therapy. It also goes hand in hand with The Secret, a self initiated process of healing and manifestation of your goals.
That The Secret and Scientology are becoming so popular is indicative of people moving away from faiths that rely on arbitrary and invisible beings and moving toward taking destiny into their own hands.


14. How would Nietzsche describe the "death" of God and the rise of new
religions?
Nietzche is an interesting philosopher. I happen to really love him, despite his beliefs being used by Hitler, because he didn’t really mean what Hitler twisted it into (perhaps another example of the ‘breaking off of a religion’ at it’s founder,) Nietzche says that even if people “kill off” their god, eventually a new one will rise up because humans seem to need the guidance that a higher power provides. So even if you stop following the Christian god, another will come in its place. In some ways this is indicative of the phrase “you need to stand for something or you will fall for anything.”

15. How does Stephen Wolfram's "new kind of science" support Stephen Jay Gould's
notion of spandrels or unintended consequences/complexities? Hint: think of how
complexity is the result of simpler computational-like programs.

“New kind of science” supports the notion of spandrels or unintended consequences/complexities in that Wolfram discovered that there was randomness in repetitive behaviors; which one would think would lead to predictability or order. If one follows complex repetitive laws then predictability should result. Jay Gould’s notion of unintended consequences could be supported due to the fact that randomness still results using repetition. This randomness then produces results that were not the goal of the one causing the repetitive nature, leading to unintended consequences and outcomes that were not being sought. I suppose a good example might be the way we celebrate Christmas, that it has become so attached to the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ even though lighting up a tree is a pagan ritual. Since Catholics allowed this practice for so long, it is now just the way it is.


16. Why does religious "diversity" almost always start with its founder? Explain
in detail your answer.
Religious diversification at the level of the founder happens, as lane says, when the founder dies. But this is not the only time. When someone speaks, different people hear all sorts of different things. Or the message hits them in a certain way, or they have selective hearing, or they don’t agree and decide that they don’t believe everything just as the founder taught it.
So diversification begins the moment the founder opens his mouth. Most followers are never going to get the opportunity to meet and speak and learn from the person who started the belief they follow. So usually followers are relying on some follower to pass down the message. Here’s my question--- I wonder how often the people that carry the torch of a religion have some point of contention with their teachers?

17. What was the tipping point in Brian Copeland's life which prompted him to
want to commit suicide?
After Copeland’s 35th birthday, a few things came to a head and caused him to actually try to commit suicide. The three events the immediately led up to that were his son’s little request to not get the black doll family, hearing old classmates say “he’s still a nigger,” and a phone call from his grandmother to visit his mom’s grave. However, there are a couple examples in his young life where, while he doesn’t make an attempt to kill himself, he feels like he doesn’t want to live.
Anytime that a person expresses that they don’t want to do anything, especially at eight years old, there is something wrong. So I think the first time Copeland ever thought about suicide was with the incident with the police officer when he was eight and he said he didn’t want to do anything ever again.

18. What were the more "subtle" forms of racism that Brian encountered when
growing up in San Leandro?
First of all, I don’t think any of these were subtle. They all seemed out and out nasty and those people knew what they were doing. All of these, from not cutting his hair, to stopping him, to the nun hitting him, to the incident with the Scout’s fishing badge were racist acts. And not one of them was subtle.

19. How does Brian's experience of racism dovetail with the experiences of
Malcolm X? How are they different?
Malcolm X and Copeland both experience serious incidents of racial profiling. Where they differ is that Copeland just wanted to fit in and X didn’t want anything from the white population but for them to leave black people alone.

20. In what ways did certain North American Indian religions ABSORB and
INTEGRATE Christianity into their own religious ideas and rituals?
More than anything, I think the North American Indians saw that Christian beliefs were not so far off from what any good person would do, so they could easily incorporate Christian teachings alongside of theirs. Just take the “god” out of it.

21. In Laverne Jacobs' narrative he speaks about how he felt conflicted about
his Native American religious identity and his newfound faith in Christianity.
How did he attempt to reconcile the two beliefs?
Jacobs tells of his reluctance to engage in any of his native practices for fear of demeaning his now Christian self. It took him some time and being very alone before he realized that his two beliefs were not in opposition, that his native rituals were more about bonding and honoring the land, yourself and truth than about worshipping some evil being.

22. What is the Native American Church of Jesus Christ? How did it evolve?
The church evolved within an already-existing Sioux church. It wasn’t a Christian church. It was a peyote-based church. The cactus fruit is used to induce an altered state of mind. Traditional Christian churches were known to oppress the practices of native people (think Hawaii, and any where else Jesus-following people landed and took over) but the Mormon’s Latter Day Saints church allowed the natives to practice spirituality as they saw fit. The Mormons taught that it is all the same god and so it doesn’t matter how they worship, so long as they do.
Given this, the Mormon Church was an easy blend for many native people who enjoyed the Christian ideology, but also wanted to practice their native rituals. And so the Native American Church of Jesus Christ was formed.

23. Detail Frederick Douglass' critique of slavery by via his autobiography? In
what specific ways is it a critique of conventional religion?
Fredrick Douglas felt much the way I do about the relationship of Christianity and African Americans. Being white gave you the right to enslave and abuse other people. In many ways being Christian does the same.

24. What are the major differences between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King,
Jr., when it comes to liberating blacks from oppression?
Malcolm X and Dr. King had two very conflicting views on oppression. Their styles would be the first that you notice between them; King being articulate, calm but still powerful and carrying the message of his dream of harmony between all people, regardless of their skin tone or creed. Malcolm X, on the other hand, was abrasive, mean sounding, almost scary. He spoke more of blacks taking their rights. Instead of coming to an understanding, he proposed that we continue to have separations, almost like the Native Americans and the reservations. He did not want any mutual respect; he wanted whites to leave blacks alone all together.
How they delivered their message was only one factor in how each was received. There was also a difference in what “god” was backing them up. King was devoutly Christian; something that white America could understand and get behind and understand. Malcolm X, on the other hand, considered himself Muslim and preached that Islam was the original religion. Not only was he cramming down the throats of white Americans the idea that they should drink from the same water fountains and use the same bathrooms, but now you have this big, mean black man screaming that their religion is wrong.
The last factor in the differences in the message of these two men comes from which direction they are looking at. Malcolm X wanted blacks to look at their history for empowerment, while King spoke of his dream of a future. King’s message went over well with progressive thinkers. It’s hard to sell a new idea while talking about the past.

25. Why is genealogical dissociation a key factor in understanding the emergence
of new religions in America?
Humans have a tendency to want to make sense of things and to need a purpose to live. People who can think of a good enough reason to survive win and get to pass on their genes, in turn possibly passing on those great imaginations, and then the next generation can make up good reasons to survive.


EXTRA CREDIT:

27. Write your own analysis (in 300 words or more) of the "arc" (or overall
theme) in the Reader for either the American Indian experience or the African
American experience. Be sure to substantiate your interpretation.

28. Compare and contrast one reading from the American Indian section with the
African American section. Be sure to illustrate the differences and the
commonalities.

29. Make a film based on one of the readings provided in the reader. MORE EXTRA
CREDIT FORTHCOMING.