Complexity of the Concept of the Sacred

Complexity of the c oncept of the SacredUnderstanding the concept of the Sacred is a complex phenomenon. prize keeping in mind over 4000 eld of the reverend.Since the beginning of Humanity, humankind has been trying to make sense of the world around itself, trying to gormandise in the pieces to questions it does not know the answer to. The human journey hobo be seen as a quest a search for knowledge, still and ultimately for misgiving. Perhaps the greatest of humanities question have regard faith and the stamp of a divine paragon/being. Beliefs about god have traveled a huge road to todays understanding of the notion of God, the divine and sublime. God as a work in come began first with the many gods of the polytheistic faith systems, with each god having circumscribed domain of power and responsibility. For early human beings, such gods felt beaten(prenominal) and relatable. They didnt see a big gulf between the divine and the real, this is what make it so approac hable, understandable and ultimately follow able. The concept of sacred was only something that was beyond normal (Armstrong, 1993).According to Stormonth Phelp (1896) the word Sacred is derived from the Latin reservoir word Sacer, which means dedicated or consecrated to the higher beings i.e. gods or anything divine. The word is often employ interchangeably with Holy however at that place are minor differences with the concept of holiness in that it is primarily used in affinity to relationships and persons, while sacred is used in relation to happenings, places or objects (McCann, 2008).This need for completion has led to various mythos to have form over the years, culminating in the concepts of the Sacred/Profane dichotomy aptly explained by French Sociologist Emile Durkheim.The sacred is the boundless spirit of the religious and divine ascertain. Religions passim their history have included very mixed beliefs and manifestations of those beliefs, but they every last(pre dicate) have something quite a universal and explicit, regardless of their constitution, through which the religious experience is differentiated from all others and that is that the sacred is something above and beyond the believers. Therefore, the sacred is extremely subjective in its nature and Bastide concisely put it if I were to picture a definition of the sacred, it would cross my subjectivity, my own experience of the sacred and not a general definition (Desroche Bastide, 1974).To begin understanding the concept of the Sacred, it is best(p) to understand what is considered Sacred and what is considered Profane. In Durkheims theory of Religion, both these concepts are the aboriginal tenant. The Sacred, check to Durkheim is an ideal, something that transcends everyday existence and is both awe-inspiring as wholesome as fear inducing, and something potentially dangerous as well as extra-ordinary. Sacred in his view refers to things that have been set a resolve by man a s requiring special religious treatment and veneration. One get wind point to rail line is that Sacred can be anything, from the earth to the moon, a bird, an animal, a rock, a tree to a god. The sacredness comes from a community crisscross them as such and once they have been established as a sacred, they are embodied in religious practices, sentiments and beliefs. The profane, on the other circulate is anything that is simply ordinary, it embraces practices, persons and ideas that are in the end seen with everyday mundane attitudes of familiarity, emolument and commonness. Both the sacred and profane are highly interrelated out-of-pocket to the extreme levels of emotions they invoke in the hatful that believe in them and according the Durkheim, the concept of Sacred and the profane varies amongst society to society (Durkheim, 1974).Durkheim expanded upon his notions and denotative worship as a management of the sacred, the means by which a system is generated to warrant t he execution of the sacred in the community. Various sociological theories suggest that at the centre of any religion is the sacred and religion is nothing but a social phenomenon in its origin, content and aspiration (Desroche Bastide, 1974).Sosis Alcorta (2003) are major proponents of the adaptive value theory of religion, having somewhat homogeneous views as Durkheim, stating that religion evolved to enhance cohesion and cooperation between groups. Membership in a group setting allowed for a greater chance of selection and reproduction as well as advancement as a group. They to a fault suggested that the costly-signaling theory suggested why rituals were such a major component part of religious practice, stating that it was to ward of those trying to cheat the system i.e. be part of the group without offering anything of value.The reason why understanding the Sacred is such a complex phenomenon, is that the Sacred is highly subjective in its nature, flexible to suit the pu rpose of its time and context. Whenever a natural disaster occurred, such as an earthquake, flood, drought, the older civilizations took it to god/s being angry and their underbred understanding of nature took to slaughter being a worthy fall in to please the deities, resulting in the ending of their suffering. As our technologies advance, so does our understanding of nature and with it a steady decline in the extreme acts humans once used to do. However, humans, being the product of an evolutionary engine, are still quite prone to carrying out irrational behavior so as long as they believe and have faith in the sacred (Shermer, 1997).Armstrong (1993) was also quite clear in her works, stating that after having looked at over 4000 years of recorded human history that the notion of god was never unchanging, with what people considered god, going from polytheistic to monotheistic to atheistic, depended upon a multitude of factors. Today thither are 12 classical world religions, thos e included in most(prenominal) religious definitions namely BahaI, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism and Zoroastrinism, however if one was to delve further in, they would note that these twelve within themselves include numerous sects and factions with their adherents considering different things as sacred i.e. what might be sacred for a Shia Muslim, might not be for a Sunni Muslim etc.In todays information age of the twenty-first century where knowledge is expanding at an explosive rate, the words used to delimit ones understanding of the sacred is ever expanding, with countless expansion in our understanding of human consciousness and with religions ever changing due to the changing socio-political landscape, there is very little doubt that the notion of what is sacred is and always volition remain a complex phenomenon.ReferencesDesroche, H. (1975). Religion (Sociologie de la). La grande encyclopedie, 16th vol.. gen us Paris Libr. Larousse.Durkheim, E. (1974). Regulile metodei sociologice. Bucureti Ed. tiinific.Armstrong, K. (1993). A History of God. Ballatine BooksStormonth, J Phelp, P.H (1895). A Dictionary of the position Language, Blackwood sons. Retrieved March 19th, 2017 from https//books.google.com.pk/books/about/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language.html?id=NmogAQAAMAAJredir_esc=yMcCann, C. (2008). New Paths Toward the Sacred Thus, Paulist thrustShermer, M. (1997). Why people believe weird things Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. New York W.H. Freeman.Sosis, R. Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred the evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology