Topic summary
Religious cosmology
Religious cosmology is an explanation of origins, evolution, and the eventual fate of the universe from a religious perspective. Such an account may include beliefs on origin in the form of a creation, subsequent evolution, current organizational form and nature, and eventual fate or destiny. Various traditions in religion or religious mythology assert how and why everything is the way it is and the significance of it all. Religious cosmologies describe the spatial lay-out of the universe in terms of the world in which people typically dwell as well as in terms of other dimensions, such as Ninian Smart's seven dimensions for the study of religion:
- ritual
- experiential and emotional
- narrative and mythical
- doctrinal
- ethical
- social
- material
Religious mythologies may include descriptions of an act or process of creation by a creator deity or by a larger pantheon of deities, explanations of the transformation of chaos into order, or the assertion that existence is a matter of endless cyclical transformations. Religious cosmology differs from a strictly scientific cosmology informed by contemporary astronomy, physics, and similar fields, and may differ in conceptualizations of the world's physical structure and place in the universe, its origins, and forecasts or predictions on its future.
The scope of religious cosmology is more wide-ranging and speculative than a strictly scientific cosmology (physical cosmology and quantum cosmology) in that religious cosmology is not limited to experiential observation, testing of hypotheses, and proposals of theories; for example, religious cosmology may explain why everything is the way it is or seems to be the way it is and prescribing what humans should do in context. Various religious cosmologies include Zoroastrian cosmology; those from India (Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain); the religious beliefs of China (Chinese Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism); Japan's Shintoisim; and the beliefs of the Abrahamic faiths (such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Religious cosmologies have often developed into the formal logics of metaphysical systems, such as Platonism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Taoism, Kabbalah, Wuxing or the great chain of being.