International Journal of Business and Social Science

ISSN 2219-1933 (Print), 2219-6021 (Online) DOI: 10.30845/ijbss

Scientific Study of Religions: Critical Analysis on Western Scholarship
Mohd Faizal, A.K; Siti Nurleha, Saffie

Abstract
The study of religions becomes the prominent interest among Western scholarship nowadays. They have pioneered in many approaches of scientific studies of religions which contain empirical, experiment and rational study of religions. For instances, they established the anthropology study of religion, psychology of religion, sociology of religion. However there are some critics regarding their study of religions since their study only concern with the rational and empirical study. Therefore this paper aims to critic the three scientific approaches in the study of religions which are: anthropology, psychological, and sociological. Three aspects which had been scrutinized regarding the scientific study of religions are denying the transcendent factor, analyzing religion as a human phenomenon and exterior approach of defining religion.

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