Literacy And Religion: The Adequate World Of Reading

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Evolutionarily speaking, humans don’t need to read. There’s no real purpose to this action on the natural level. However, the development of this skill has changed the way we communicate, work, and exist throughout history. Of course, with such vital importance comes agreements, opinions, and stark comparisons between ideas about the purpose and best way to spend our time reading. Some believe that reading is a transformational experience that is both private and shared, while others may focus more on the physical aspect of the books and how the objects found within them retell the histories of previous owners. Every idea of reading is valid in the sense that reading varies between in each person and their experiences, and thus the idea is not a concrete, indisputable occurrence. All of the concepts presented about reading create a different approach to this idea, and to elaborate more on them is to further show the diverse and vibrant world of reading. After looking at the interpretations of various figures throughout history, like the view of private versus communal experiences within literature and the …show more content…

Entire religions are based on texts, and followers are brought together weekly in order to discuss the stories within these religious writings. Literacy and religion have been tied since the translation of the bible into the common vernacular. For example, within Puritan society, it was obligatory that parents taught their children to read, so that everyone would be able to read and interpret the Bible. Religious texts have brought people together, however, great controversies also arise over other books, such as Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, which created great debate over its theories offered about evolution, contrary to the beliefs of the time. Many books have taken the world by storm through the spread of new ideas, creating unity or riffs within the