Chapter 1 | Student Practice Quizzes

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:

According to this textbook, why should we learn about religion in the past?
a) So we do not make the same mistakes that previous religious leaders made
b) In order to pass exams
c) To understand the role of religion in our world today
d) So we can become superior to primal society

Question 2:

In Japan today, a person could be ________.
a) Buddhist only
b) Shintoist only
c) Buddhist and Shintoist only
d) Buddhist, Daoist, and Shintoist at same time

Question 3:

According to religious scholar Rudolph Otto, a defining and universal mark of religious experience is ________.
a) only a feeling of deep love
b) the ambivalent feelings of fascination and dread
c) the desire to worship in a church
d) being obedient to the will of God

Question 4:

A ritual (symbolic re-enactment), such as the Passover Seder, is experienced as having the power to ________.
a) heal
b) destroy
c) make one believe the event happened once upon a time
d) make one an actual participant in the original event

Question 5:

The authors argue that myth is ________.
a) a naive story that is true
b) a naive story that is not true
c) an imaginative story conveying the essential truths of life
d) a children’s story that has a moral lesson

Question 6:

Which of the following is NOT necessarily a component of religion?
a) God
b) ritual
c) narrative
d) ethics

Question 7:

Acting in the manner prescribed by a tradition is called ________.
a) orthopraxy
b) orthodoxy
c) orthopaedics
d) orthodontics

Question 8:

Sacredness means ________.
a) of God
b) ethical behaviour
c) what is universal
d) what matters most to a given community

Question 9:

Religious language is ________.
a) literal
b) symbolic
c) neither literal nor symbolic
d) usually false

Question 10:

The agricultural skill that brought about urban life started to develop around ________.
a) 8,000 BCE
b) 6,000 BCE
c) 2,500 BCE
d) 1,000 BCE

Question 11:

The three great centres of civilization in the ancient world where the great world religions emerged are ________.
a) Japan, China, and India
b) China, India, and the Middle East
c) China, India, and Korea
d) India, the Middle East, and South America

Question 12:

The first written expression dealing with the crisis of death that came about as a result of urbanization was ________.
a) the Bhagavad-Gita
b) i Ching
c) the Epic of Gilgamesh
d) the Rig Veda

Question 13:

A myth of nature ________.
a) is the earliest type of religious story
b) is the latest type of religious story
c) has no religious stories
d) is theistic

Question 14:

The two religions that emerged in China to deal with disharmony were ________.
a) Daoism and Confucianism
b) Confucianism and Buddhism
c) Buddhism and Daoism
d) Shintoism and Buddhism

Question 15:

Two embodiments of the myth of liberation are ________.
a) Judaism and Christianity
b) Hinduism and Buddhism
c) Islam and Buddhism
d) Islam and Judaism

Question 16:

In the myths of history, the central metaphor of religious expression is ________.
a) story
b) the Way
c) nature
d) heaven

Question 17:

The first religious tradition to spread its beliefs, practices, and critiques of non-believers globally was ________.
a) Judaism
b) Christianity
c) Islam
d) Buddhism

Question 18:

The act of colonialism is not new to the world, but modern Western colonialism differs from all other periods of colonialism in that ________.
a) it has come the closest to achieving global domination
b) it has imposed its religious and cultural beliefs on other societies
c) it has dominated other societies
d) it has disrupted the other religious worlds it encountered

Question 19:

The original meaning of the Greek word for ‘heretic’ is ________.
a) to rebel
b) to choose
c) to believe what is false
d) heroic

Question 20:

In this textbook, the authors consider ‘fundamentalism’ to be ________.
a) rigid
b) orthodox
c) a reaction to modernity
d) pre-modern

Question 21:

The most important step in the study of world religions is to understand how different religions are similar.
a) True
b) False

Question 22:

The separation of church and state was an expression of the privatization of religion that took place in the modern era.
a) True
b) False

Question 23:

Canada was the first country in the world to adopt an official multiculturalism policy.
a) True
b) False

Question 24:

Fascination and dread are a defining mark of religious experience across cultures.
a) True
b) False

Question 25:

Myths are always the origin of rituals.
a) True
b) False

Question 26:

Rituals recall important events in the history of a faith.
a) True
b) False

Question 27:

In Canada today, it is acknowledged that religion is a purely personal affair.
a) True
b) False

Question 28:

Religion is about purely spiritual things.
a) True
b) False

Question 29:

All morality is grounded in religious experience.
a) True
b) False

Question 30:

All modern world religions have relied on written materials.
a) True
b) False

Question 31:

Religious language is primarily symbolic.
a) True
b) False

Question 32:

The gods of the cities were unrelated to the tribal/country gods that preceded them.
a) True
b) False

Question 33:

People only became frightened of and worried about death once they began to live in cities.
a) True
b) False

Question 34:

World religions emerged in conjunction with the formation of empires.
a) True
b) False

Question 35:

In myths of history, time is the enemy.
a) True
b) False

Question 36:

Modern cultures understand themselves as part of a history characterized by human progress driven by science and technology.
a) True
b) False

Question 37:

All the different names for God should be understood as different ways of referring to the same concept.
a) True
b) False

Question 38:

World Wars I and II shattered the myth of scientific progress.
a) True
b) False

Question 39:

Relativism solves the problems of ethics by erasing the distinction between good and evil.
a) True
b) False

Question 40:

Myth, as used in the study of religion, means a fabrication.
a) True
b) False

Higher Education

World Religions Today - Chapter 1