Humanities Homework Help

1) This course was designed to introduce you to the ways of thinking about religion that you likely had never encountered before. Reflect on how your understanding of religion has changed over the course of the semester. What are some of your biggest takeaways? Which of the readings (if any) struck you the most?

2) In our final unit, we’ve looked at the problem of religious freedom. Using material from any point in the semester, explain why religious freedom is a problem (or, at least, a potential problem.) You could, for example, explain the vagaries of the “invented” religions we discussed (the science fiction religions, anti-religion religions). You could show how most Western conceptions of religious freedom center “belief” and, therefore, tend to not protect practice-centered traditions that well (e.g. Vodou, Santería, or a tradition that you grew up in or are more familiar with). You could also explain how governments are regularly put in a position of defining “religion” even as they are defending the anti-establishment of religion. Finally, you could look at the case of Japan and how idiosyncrasies in their understanding of “religion,” “secular,” and “superstition” demonstrate the difficulty or impossibility of a universal conception of religious freedom.