Question

Why are experiences of the sacred and the holy referred to as deep structures and how do they affect the role of myth and ritual spiritually and reason in ethics? Do you believe that your religious belief has affected your morality?

Answer 1

What is sacred ? sacred means connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration. Something which is religious rather than secular. What is holy ? dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred.

Basically SACRED and HOLY are synonyms of each other. Deep Structure can be defined as the conscious and unconscious assumptions that a culture makes about the world and the source of insight by which they base life.

1. Experiences of religious affiliation of sacred and holy embodiment is one of the deep rooted aspects of religion. Religion, being a concept derived from the principles and morality of human life and divinity gives an inherent hope to human civilization to enshrine itself to the audacity to reach its zenith and save itself from extinction. When in moment of despair, humans look for a ray of hope that will guide them through it and they will survive. It is then and there religion gives a sense of hope and comfort that eventually everything will be alright. Religion is that sense of security that ties a community and a civilization together. Religious experiences, though not proven and at the same time not entirely disproven creates a vacuum and to that also reaffirms faith in yourselves through the medium of religion.

Role of myth , spirituality , ,rituals and religious ethics are often foreshadowed , but at the same time enhanced when it comes to religion. These experiences may or may not set a standard for ethical solution through religion . for eg :- many instances throughout the crusades/jihad often dealt with religious experiences from a divine source that often empowered the quest for power which foreshadowed the rerasonal aspect of reason in ethics and ritual spirituality was taken through as a medium to enhance this concept .

    (b) It is simply impossible for people to be moral without religion or God.

—Laura Schlessinger (quoted in Zuckerman, 2008)

The three most important of the organizations are: Family, State and Religion.The institutions work together in harmony to maintain the wisdom, traditions and customs that make a the culture unique.

The question of whether or not morality requires religion is both topical and ancient. In the Euthyphro, Socrates famously asked whether goodness is loved by the gods because it is good, or whether goodness is good because it is loved by the gods.The notion that religion is a precondition for morality is widespread and deeply ingrained. One obstacle to a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between religion and morality is the tendency of researchers to privilege their own cultural perspective on what counts as a “moral concern.” Opposing such ethnocentrism is not the same as advocating cultural or moral relativism: We need take no stand here on whether absolute moral standards exist, or whether it is appropriate for citizens of one society to judge the moral standards of another. Our concern is with descriptive rather than prescriptive ethnocentrism. The relationship between religion and morality is a deep and emotive topic.Many contemporary investigations employ parochial conceptions of “religion” and “morality,” fail to decompose these categories into theoretically grounded elements, and/or neglect to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. The tendency to adopt a sanitized conception of prosocial behavior has hampered efforts to test theories of the extraordinary cultural dominance of “moralizing god” concepts—as we have seen, behaviors that allow religious groups to survive and expand may be anything but “nice.”

In every major religion, a divine influence is proposed as inspiration for texts that dictate our moral principles. Whether it is the Ten Commandments, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Eightfold Path, or the Hindu Purusharthas, each decree guarantees a pleasant afterlife because each is endorsed by the god(s). The justice system is derived from our conclusions on morality, and the actions of those who deviate from moral norms can only be understood once the root of our acceptable behavior is delineated. The dismissive quality of religious thought has prevented this understanding by attributing our good nature to supernatural beings.

Morality is seen as a gift from the gods; a piece of their ultimate perfection that can be assimilated. In so doing, we become more like a god, and less like the animals beneath us. We become special, superior, and closer to our archetypal image of perfection. All other life becomes inferior, immoral, imperfect, and immaterial. Through religion we display our propensity for attributing the most perfect aspects of our lives to something that is perfect in origin. Morality and love are deemed to be sent from the gods because we want these human traits to be perfect. It is our way of enhancing ourselves; a form of self-apotheosis.