Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Any explanation of the religion is based on a worldview. The premise of this paper is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper takes the case of religion and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their certain paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a more balanced and a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon under consideration. In this paper, Part I discusses the four paradigms, and Part II discusses four paradigmatic views of religion.