Questions Regarding Religion

Today in history class we all came up with questions that could be asked and fit into the religion unit. All of the questions were based off of common themes that we came up with as a class. We read articles about religion around the world and that is how we came up with the common themes. My article was about how in South Africa, there was a billboard that indicated that atheists are stupid and that they "consider themselves a mistake." This caused the atheists to get angry and take action. So one of the common themes that we found was that action is taken when two religions oppose each other. Other themes that we found were Discrimination, so groups/religions treating people like they are not as good as them. Government and politics and how this can contrast with religion. Monotheism vs. polytheism is another theme that we came up with because polytheism was a lot more prominent a long time ago then it is now. The questions that my group came up with were as follows:

"How has the corruption of society effected religion?" We thought this question was relevant to the themes that we discussed because taking violent action is within the theme of taking action and violent action can corrupt society.

"What causes religious to change in certain areas?" This is more of a question regarding the development of religions and how they can evolve and shape around the environment that the people are living in. So this is probably a good question when talking about different sections of Christianity (Catholic, Lutheran etc.).

"How have monotheism and polytheism effected the development of the world differently?" This is also a question that is about the idea of how religion and ideas can change over the years based on environment or leadership. Different peoples views have changed the relevance of polytheism in society.

"How has religion clashed with government and politics?" This question has to do with how religion can have an effect on politics and people's opinions of those politics. Like an example is Mitt Romney, he is a Mormon and a lot of people are against him just because of his faith. All they see is that he is a Mormon, they don't see his values or his ideas for the country. This is an example of how religion can interfere with politics. Religion can interfere with government because maybe a political leader's religion's values tell him that he should do something but the values of the country and the people might tell him to do something else. This leaves this politic in a dilemma because he/she might not know what to do.

"How has tradition in religion cause conflict?" This is kind of like the the corruption question where violence plays a role. Different people's traditions and beliefs in their religion may conflict and make other religions angry. Like Mormons are allowed to have multiple wives but that is highly frowned upon by other religions.