1.
Human
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Modern humans are the only extant members of Hominina tribe, a branch of the tribe Hominini belonging to the family of great apes. Several of these hominins used fire, occupied much of Eurasia and they began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. In several waves of migration, anatomically modern humans ventured out of Africa, the spread of humans and their large and increasing population has had a profound impact on large areas of the environment and millions of native species worldwide. Humans are uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression and the exchange of ideas. Humans create complex structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals. These human societies subsequently expanded in size, establishing various forms of government, religion, today the global human population is estimated by the United Nations to be near 7.5 billion. In common usage, the word generally refers to the only extant species of the genus Homo—anatomically and behaviorally modern Homo sapiens. In scientific terms, the meanings of hominid and hominin have changed during the recent decades with advances in the discovery, there is also a distinction between anatomically modern humans and Archaic Homo sapiens, the earliest fossil members of the species. The English adjective human is a Middle English loanword from Old French humain, ultimately from Latin hūmānus, the words use as a noun dates to the 16th century. The native English term man can refer to the species generally, the species binomial Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th century work Systema Naturae. The generic name Homo is a learned 18th century derivation from Latin homō man, the species-name sapiens means wise or sapient. Note that the Latin word homo refers to humans of either gender, the genus Homo evolved and diverged from other hominins in Africa, after the human clade split from the chimpanzee lineage of the hominids branch of the primates. The closest living relatives of humans are chimpanzees and gorillas, with the sequencing of both the human and chimpanzee genome, current estimates of similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%. The gibbons and orangutans were the first groups to split from the leading to the humans. The splitting date between human and chimpanzee lineages is placed around 4–8 million years ago during the late Miocene epoch, during this split, chromosome 2 was formed from two other chromosomes, leaving humans with only 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to 24 for the other apes. There is little evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee. Each of these species has been argued to be an ancestor of later hominins
2.
Culture
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Culture can be defined in numerous ways. In the words of anthropologist E. B, Tylor, it is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is the way of life, especially the customs and beliefs. As a defining aspect of what it means to be human, culture is a concept in anthropology. The word is used in a sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes seen to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of culture that emerged in the 20th century. When used as a count noun, a culture is the set of customs, traditions, in this sense, multiculturalism is a concept that values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes culture is used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a context, meaning something similar. His use, and that of many writers after him, refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human. To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensive to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, thus a contrast between culture and civilization is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Cultural invention has come to any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior. Humanity is in a global accelerating culture change period, driven by the expansion of commerce, the mass media, and above all. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change, Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change, for example, the U. S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors, Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices
3.
George Orwell
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Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of injustice, opposition to totalitarianism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism and he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, in British India. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman, although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, Eric Blair described his family as lower-upper-middle class. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, Burma, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters, Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger, when Eric was one year old, his mother took him and his sister to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a monument of historical importance. In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, they did not see the husband and father Richard Blair until 1912. His mothers diary from 1905 describes a lively round of social activity, before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, on being asked why, he said, You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up. Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers and he said that he might write a book in the style of H. G. Wellss A Modern Utopia. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacinthas brother and sister. At the age of five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames and it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, who had been exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a school education, but his family could not afford the fees. Ida Blairs brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprians School, Eastbourne, Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, in September 1911 Eric arrived at St Cyprians. He boarded at the school for the five years, returning home only for school holidays
4.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One, a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of war, omnipresent government surveillance. The superstate and its residents are dictated to by a political regime euphemistically named English Socialism, shortened to Ingsoc in Newspeak, the tyranny is ostensibly overseen by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake and it is not interested in the good of others, it is interested solely in power. The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth and his job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions that the workers receive portray the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are, forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the Ministry also actively destroys all documents that have not been edited and do not contain the revisions, in this way, Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. The heroine of the novel, Julia, is based on Orwells second wife, as literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen,2 +2 =5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, in 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was awarded a place on lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 13 on the editors list. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 8 on the BBCs survey The Big Read, on 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg and Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949. By 1989, it had translated into sixty-five languages, more than any other novel in English at the time. Warburg suggested changing the title to a more commercial one. In the novel 1985, Anthony Burgess suggests that Orwell, disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War, intended to call the book 1948. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four reports that Orwell originally set the novel in 1980, the final title is also a permutation of 1948, the year of composition. The novel is in the domain in Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Australia. It will be in the domain in the United Kingdom and Brazil in 2021
5.
Propaganda
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Propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, in the 2010s, the term propaganda is associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda historically was a neutral descriptive term. Propaganda is a modern Latin word, the form of propagare, meaning to spread or to propagate. Originally this word derived from a new body of the Catholic church created in 1622, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Its activity was aimed at propagating the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries, from the 1790s, the term began being used also to refer to propaganda in secular activities. The term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. The Behistun Inscription detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an example of propaganda. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a network of newspapers and printers who specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, propaganda was widely used, abolitionists in Britain and the United States in the 19th century developed large, complex propaganda campaigns against slavery. The first large-scale and organised propagation of government propaganda was occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914, after the defeat of Germany in the First World War, military officials such as Erich Ludendorff suggested that British propaganda had been instrumental in their defeat. Adolf Hitler came to echo this view, believing that it had been a cause of the collapse of morale. Later, the Nazis adapted many British propaganda techniques during their time in power, most propaganda in Germany was produced by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Joseph Goebbels was placed in charge of this ministry, the 1930s and 1940s, which saw the rise of totalitarian states and the Second World War, are arguably the Golden Age of Propaganda. Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the propaganda movies. US war films in the early 1940s in the United States were designed to create a patriotic mindset, the West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, television, and radio programming to influence their own citizens, each other, george Orwells novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are virtual textbooks on the use of propaganda. During the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro stressed the importance of propaganda, Propaganda was used extensively by Communist forces in the Vietnam War as means of controlling peoples opinions. During the Yugoslav wars, propaganda was used as a strategy by governments of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Croatia
6.
Totalitarianism
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Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. A distinctive feature of totalitarian governments is an ideology, a set of ideas that gives meaning. The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s by the Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt, Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat, in his influential work on the legal basis of an all-powerful state, The Concept of the Political. The concept became prominent in Western political discourse as a concept that highlights similarities between Fascist states and the Soviet Union, the term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state, according to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human, Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency, in a radio address two weeks later Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to a Communist or a Nazi tyranny. And went on to say Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state, when the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it. G. Wells, Henry Miller or twopenny color postcards, every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, only the blind and incurable could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, used the term in connection with the Soviet Union, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that Nazi and State communist regimes were new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology, which provides a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle, once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to Nature or the Law of History, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus. In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways. Is only concerned with power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Authoritarianism does not attempt to change the world and human nature, in contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and it also mobilizes the whole population in pursuit of its goals. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics. Single mass party, typically led by a dictator, system of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police
7.
Theology
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Theology is the critical study of the nature of the divine. It is taught as a discipline, typically in universities, seminaries. Augustine of Hippo defined the Latin equivalent, theologia, as reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity, the term can, however, be used for a variety of different disciplines or fields of study. Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument to help understand, explain, test, critique, the English equivalent theology had evolved by 1362. Greek theologia was used with the discourse on god in the fourth century BC by Plato in The Republic, Book ii. Drawing on Greek Stoic sources, the Latin writer Varro distinguished three forms of discourse, mythical, rational and civil. Theologos, closely related to theologia, appears once in some manuscripts, in the heading to the book of Revelation, apokalypsis ioannoy toy theologoy. The Latin author Boethius, writing in the early 6th century, used theologia to denote a subdivision of philosophy as a subject of study, dealing with the motionless. Boethius definition influenced medieval Latin usage, Theology can also now be used in a derived sense to mean a system of theoretical principles, an ideology. They suggest the term is appropriate in religious contexts that are organized differently. Kalam. does not hold the place in Muslim thought that theology does in Christianity. To find an equivalent for theology in the Christian sense it is necessary to have recourse to several disciplines, and to the usul al-fiqh as much as to kalam. Jose Ignacio Cabezon, who argues that the use of theology is appropriate, can only do so, he says, I take theology not to be restricted to its etymological meaning. In that latter sense, Buddhism is of course atheological, rejecting as it does the notion of God, within Hindu philosophy, there is a solid and ancient tradition of philosophical speculation on the nature of the universe, of God and of the Atman. The Sanskrit word for the schools of Hindu philosophy is Darshana. Nevertheless, Jewish theology historically has been active and highly significant for Christian. It is sometimes claimed, however, that the Jewish analogue of Christian theological discussion would more properly be Rabbinical discussion of Jewish law, the history of the study of theology in institutions of higher education is as old as the history of such institutions themselves. Modern Western universities evolved from the institutions and cathedral schools of Western Europe during the High Middle Ages
8.
Catechism
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Catechisms are doctrinal manuals - often in the form of questions followed by answers to be memorised - a format that has been used in non-religious or secular contexts as well. The term catechumen refers to the recipient of the catechetical work or instruction. In the Catholic Church, catechumens are those who are preparing to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, traditionally, they would be placed separately during Holy Mass from those who baptized, and would be dismissed from the liturgical assembly before the Profession of Faith and General Intercessions. Today, they are characteristic of Western Christianity but are present in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Before the Protestant Reformation, Christian catechesis took the form of instruction in and memorisation of the Apostles Creed, Lords Prayer, the word catechism for a manual for this instruction appeared in the Late Middle Ages. The use of a question and answer format was popularized by Martin Luther in his 1529 Small Catechism, the format calls upon two parties to participate, a master and a student, or a parent and a child. The Westminster Shorter Catechism is an example, Q, what is the chief end of man. To glorify God and enjoy Him forever, what rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him. The word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is the rule to direct us how we may glorify. The catechisms question-and-answer format, with a view toward the instruction of children, was a form adopted by the various Protestant confessions almost from the beginning of the Reformation. Among the first projects of the Reformation was the production of catechisms self-consciously modelled after the older traditions of Cyril of Jerusalem, Luthers Large Catechism typifies the emphasis which the churches of the Augsburg Confession placed on the importance of knowledge and understanding of the articles of the Christian faith. Primarily intended as instruction to teachers, especially to parents, the catechism consists of a series of exhortations on the importance of each topic of the catechism. It is meant for those who have the capacity to understand, and is meant to be memorized and then repeatedly reviewed so that the Small Catechism could be taught with understanding. The catechism, Luther wrote, should consist of instruction in the rule of conduct, which always accuses us because we fail to keep it, the rule of faith, the rule of prayer, and the sacraments. Luthers Small Catechism, in contrast, is written to accommodate the understanding of a child or an uneducated person and it begins, The First Commandment You shall have no other gods. We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things, Catechists not intent on this end, besides fatally injuring the Church, by sowing the materials of dissension in religion, also introduce an impious profanation of baptism. For where can any longer be the utility of baptism unless this remain as its foundation — that we all agree in one faith, the scandal of diverse instruction is that it produces diverse baptisms and diverse communions, and diverse faith. However, forms may vary without introducing substantial differences, according to the Reformed view of doctrine, John Calvin produced a catechism while at Geneva, which underwent two major revisions
9.
Revelation
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In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired, for instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai. Most Christians believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were inspired by God, Muslims believe the Quran was revealed by God to Muhammad word by word through the angel Gabriel. In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered apauruṣeya, not human compositions, and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, what is heard. The 15,000 handwritten pages produced by the mystic Maria Valtorta were represented as direct dictations from Jesus, aleister Crowley stated that The Book of the Law had been revealed to him through a higher being that called itself Aiwass. A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision, direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity, or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, the Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient. In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will, in secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy, and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays an important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Revelation may be defined as the communication of truth by God to a rational creature through means which are beyond the ordinary course of nature. George Joyce draws a distinction between revelation and inspiration, with the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, beginning about the mid-17th century, the development of rationalism, materialism and atheism, the concept of supernatural revelation itself faced skepticism. In The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine develops the theology of deism, rejecting the possibility of miracles, Thomas Aquinas believed in two types of individual revelation from God, general revelation and special revelation. In general revelation, God reveals himself through his creation, such that at least some truths about God can be learned by the study of nature, physics, cosmology. Special revelation is the knowledge of God and spiritual matters which can be discovered through supernatural means, such as scripture or miracles, direct revelation refers to communication from God to someone in particular. Though one may deduce the existence of God and some of Gods attributes through general revelation, Aquinas believed that special revelation is equivalent to the revelation of God in Jesus. The major theological components of Christianity, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, are revealed in the teachings of the church, special revelation and natural revelation are complementary rather than contradictory in nature. Continuous revelation is a term for the position that God continues to reveal divine principles or commandments to humanity. In the 20th century, religious existentialists proposed that revelation held no content in and of itself, Revelation is a human response that records how we respond to God
10.
Western esotericism
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Western esotericism is a scholarly term for a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements which have developed within Western society. They are largely distinct both from orthodox Judeo-Christian religion and from Enlightenment rationalism, the idea of categorising a wide range of Western traditions and philosophies together under the rubric that we now term esotericism developed in Europe during the late seventeenth century. Various academics have debated the definition of Western esotericism, with a number of different options proposed. One scholarly model adopts its definition of esotericism from certain esotericist schools of thought themselves, treating esotericism as a perennialist hidden, a second perspective sees esotericism as a category that encompasses world-views which seek to embrace an enchanted world-view in the face of increasing de-enchantment. The 19th century saw the emergence of new trends of thought that have come to be known as occultism. Prominent groups in this included the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Modern Paganism developed within occultism, and includes religious movements such as Wicca, Esoteric ideas permeated the counterculture of the 1960s and later cultural tendencies, from which emerged the New Age movement in the 1970s. The academic study of Western esotericism only emerged in the late 20th-century, pioneered by scholars like Frances Yates, Esoteric ideas have meanwhile also exerted an influence in popular culture, appearing in art, literature, film, and music. The adjective esoteric first appeared in the second century CE as the Ancient Greek term esôterikós, the noun esotericism, in its French form of lésotérisme, was first used in 1828, by Jacques Matter in his book, Histoire du gnosticisme. The term was popularized by the French occultist and ceremonial magician Eliphas Lévi in the 1850s, Lévi also introduced the term loccultisme, a notion that he developed against the background of contemporary socialist and Catholic discourses. Esotericism and occultism were often employed as synonyms until being distinguished by later scholars, the concept of Western esotericism is a modern scholarly construct rather than a pre-existing, self-defined tradition of thought. The first to do so was Ehregott Daniel Colberg, a German Lutheran who wrote Platonisch-Hermetisches Christianity, various academics have emphasised the idea that esotericism is a phenomenon unique to the Western world, as Faivre stated, an empirical perspective would hold that esotericism is a Western notion. As scholars such as Faivre and Hanegraaff have pointed out, there is no category of Eastern or Oriental esotericism. The emphasis on Western esotericism was nevertheless primarily devised to distinguish the field from a universal esotericism, Hanegraaff has characterised these as recognisable world views and approaches to knowledge that have played an important although always controversial role in the history of Western culture. This attitude was endorsed by Egil Asprem, nevertheless, esotericism itself remains a controversial term, with scholars specialising in the subject disagreeing as to how it can best be defined. It subsequently became a popular approach within several esoteric movements, most notably Martinism and Traditionalism, within the academic field of religious studies, those who study different religions in search of an inner, universal dimension to them all are termed religionists. Such religionist ideas also exerted an influence on more recent scholars like Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, there are various problems with this model for understanding Western esotericism. The most significant is that is rests upon the conviction that there really is a universal, hidden, moreover, Hanegraaff noted that when scholars adopt this definition, it shows that they subscribe to the religious doctrines which are espoused by the very groups that they are studying
