archeologia: Religion

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, ethics, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. It is an essentially contested concept. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings. The origin of religious belief is an open question, with possible explanations including awareness of individual death, a sense of community, and dreams. Religi…

Evidence: 43 • authority: 72

A majority of South Koreans are irreligious. Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism) and Buddhism are the dominant confessions among those who affiliate with a formal religion. According to the results of the 2025 edition of the Korea Research "Public Opinion in Public Opinion" survey, 51% of South Koreans report having no religion; 31% identify with Christianity (20% with Protestantism and 11% with Catholicism); 16% identify with Buddhism; and 1% identify with other religions. Buddhism was influential in ancient times, while Christianity influenced large segments of the population in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the two traditions grew most rapidly in membership in the mid-20…

Evidence: 36 • authority: 88

Jewish Views of World Religions. This chapter discusses four models that past and present Jewish thinkers have adopted in understanding other religions and urge Jews to hold on to multiple models in tension with each other. Jewish inclusivism affirms the uniqueness of Judaism, but rejects the idea that non-Jews lack religion. Jewish universalists accept a universal truth available to all humanity, beyond revelation but not against it. However, religious universalists remain close to the inclusivists in that everything is grounded in the teachings of Judaism. In contrast, religious pluralism is a modern philosophical approach that accepts that one's religion is not the sole and exclusive sou…

Evidence: 29 • authority: 72

Growth of religion involves the spread of individual religions and the increase in the numbers of religious adherents around the world. In sociology, desecularization is the proliferation or growth of religion, most commonly after a period of previous secularization. Statistics commonly measure the absolute number of adherents, the percentage of the absolute growth per-year, and the growth of converts in the world. Studies in the 21st century suggest that, in terms of percentage and worldwide spread, Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world. A comprehensive religious forecast for 2050 by the Pew Research Center predicts that the global Muslim population will grow at a faster…

Evidence: 21 • authority: 88

Being Nonreligious in Croatia: Managing Belonging and Non-Belonging. Catholicism in the Croatian context has been one of the most powerful sources of collective belonging for centuries. Since the fall of socialism, desecularization tendencies have manifested as homogenization, collectivization, and deprivatization of religion. (Non)religiosity became a contested issue, which not only implied belonging (ethnic, national, historical) but was also highly politicized. This paper aims to explore how living in a society with a dominant collective religion influences the experience of nonreligious people. The conducted research was based on 30 semi-structured interviews with people who self-identi…