Religions alienation appears in numerous forms due to humans desire to overcome limitations and life failures. People use some nonreligious means such as human techniques and science to handle social and nature relations. Though there are diverse attempts to eliminate this estrangements, areas such as moral arena cannot be rectified by the application of scientific measures.
There are some mysteries that are threatening, but it is impossible to solve them like any nature problem. Religion helps people to view these mysteries as a promise instead of seeing it as a threat.
Religion is therefore defined as a response to the mystery as a numinous reality with power to provide salvation from estrangement (Barnes). Although salvation is used, not all forms of salvation provide life after death, but all religious traditions acknowledge life has some limitations.
Primitive religious people accept the world systems with its imperfections. They acknowledge that the world has powers that cause diseases and hunger, but accept these as realities by thinking that the world would provide a comfortable and safe life. According to primitive people, salvation consists of a defense of stable orders in the world against disruptive forces (Barnes).
Life can be disrupted by an interruption that causes the breakdown of set tribal orders, which were established at the beginning of times. These orders consist of customs, roles, laws, and other behavioral patterns that describe tribespersons.
Violation of these orders result in chaos, confusion, fights, and sometimes the community can receive punishment from supernatural powers according to their belief. The orders are preserved by passing information about them to generations through ritual telling.
Disruption can also originate from activities or influences of spirits and other supernatural forces (Barnes). Besides maintaining roles and order, the primitive religion believes that the spirits must be happy or be kept away. When proper orders are broken, there are chances of intrusion of dangerous supernatural powers that cause a threat, which people seek to be saved from, hence, a need for primitive salvation.
Archaic salvation is for people that are more informed about the world. Archaic people have relevant knowledge about different cultures and the complexity of society (Barnes). They look beyond life situations by envisioning for a better future. They have different cultural beliefs, some simple and another complex. These cultural beliefs are passed to generations through stories and myths that connect the facts of life by showing that life is seriously flawed.
These stories provide evidence that life is flawed by disconcerting facts of errors or evil deeds that occur in origin resulting in current miseries. Most of the cultures have a story of how society lived in healthy and with a lot of comforts until an occurrence that changed the situation.
Most of religions belief in life after death, but less is expected in it. There is no certainty about what will be happening. Religious thinkers envision a perfect existence in paradise, which is expected to be a place of comfort and rewarding for those who followed faithfully rules of the supreme deity when living in a flawed life. Those who failed to obey the commands of the numinous will go to hell, which is assumed to be a place of tormenting and suffering.
Following an understanding of different religious beliefs particularly for primitive people and archaic religions, there are numerous assumptions that arise. Primitives accept the world the way it is without considering the changes that result from eruption of time. Their faith is based on the issues that have always been there without expectations of changing the things that affect society.
The minds of primitive religious people are static to their cultures respecting only the issues that concern them without considering others. They only believe in the supremacy of their numinous. Archaic religion, on the other hand, embraces the diversity of the cultures respecting different beliefs from different religions and cultures.
They have expectations of experiencing changes as time progresses; thus they are not limited to the statics beliefs. Their belief of the erroneous life continues to expound on how they can correct it by living according to the expectation of the supreme deity thus believing in life after death.
All the religions belief of powers that are beyond the human ability that needs to be pleased to avoid misfortunes in society. Whether the primitive religion or the archaic acknowledges that these powers when aggrieved can cause disaster and therefore, they make an effort to make peace with these spirits. When these spirits are unhappy, the society can be punished through the intrusion of dangerous powers by punishment after death.
In conclusion, there are different religious perceptions, which need to be respected. There are those who believe in life after death while others assume that life ends at death. People are threatened by the beliefs especially those involving supernatural powers.
There is a need for salvation, which is the way to save the people from estrangements in life. Salvation is the only way in, which people can live freely without fearing the forces of punishment from the spirits.
Works Cited
Barnes, Michael H. In the Presence of Mystery: An Introduction to the Story of Human Religiousness. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 2003. Print.