Heretic

Heretic is a dissenter, nonconformist, apostate, freethinker, iconoclast, agnostic, atheist, nonbeliever, unbeliever, idolater, idolatress, pagan, or heathen.  A Heretic is a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted. A Heretic is a person who maintains beliefs contrary to the established teachings of the Church. A heretic is someone whose beliefs or actions are considered wrong by most people, because they disagree with beliefs that are generally accepted. A Heretic is ridiculed and ostracized for ideas. A Heretic is a person who belongs to a particular religion, but whose beliefs or actions seriously disagree with the principles of that religion. A Heretic is a person who holds unorthodox opinions in any field.

Heretics were banished or put to death!

Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs. Heresy is distinct from both apostasy, which is the explicit renunciation of one’s religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is an impious utterance or action concerning God or sacred things.

The term is usually used to refer to violations of important religious teachings, but is used also of views strongly opposed to any generally accepted ideas. It is used in particular in reference to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

In certain historical Christian, Islamic and Jewish cultures, among others, espousing ideas deemed heretical has been and in some cases still is subjected not merely to punishments such as excommunication, but even the death penalty.

The term “heresy” is used not only with regard to religion but also in the context of political theory.

In other contexts the term does not necessarily have pejorative overtones and may even be complimentary when used, in areas where innovation is welcome, of ideas that are in fundamental disagreement with the status quo in any practice and branch of knowledge.

Scientist/author Isaac Asimov considered heresy as an abstraction, Asimov's views are in Forward: The Role of the Heretic. Mentioning religious, political, socioeconomic and scientific heresies. He divided scientific heretics into endoheretics (those from within the scientific community) and exoheretics (those from without). Asimov concluded that science orthodoxy defends itself well against endoheretics (by control of science education, grants and publication as examples), but is nearly powerless against exoheretics. He acknowledged by examples that heresy has repeatedly become orthodoxy.

The term heresy is also used as an ideological pigeonhole for contemporary writers because, by definition, heresy depends on contrasts with an established orthodoxy. Expanded metaphoric senses allude to both the difference between the person’s views and the mainstream and the boldness of such a person in propounding these views.

Religion is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. Religion is faith, belief, worship, creed, sect, church, cult, denomination or a particular system of faith and worship. Religion is a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.

 A religion may be defined as a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified places, prophesies, ethics, or organizations, that claims to relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.

Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being or supernatural beings or ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life and beyond. Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.

 Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life. Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life, the universe, and other unknowns.

The study of religion encompasses a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, comparative religion and social scientific studies. Theories of religion offer various explanations for the origins and workings of religion.

Traditionally, faith is considered the source of religious beliefs.

Hypocrisy is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform, pretense, dissimulation, false virtue, posturing, affectation, speciousness, empty talk, insincerity, falseness, deceit, dishonesty, mendacity, duplicity, sanctimoniousness, sanctimony, pietism, piousness; phoniness or fraud.

Hypocrisy is the contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations, especially with respect to religious and moral beliefs; hence in a general sense, hypocrisy may involve dissimulation, pretense, or a sham. Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one’s own expressed moral rules and principles. Increasingly, since the 1980s, it has also become central to studies in behavioral economics, cognitive science, cultural psychology, decision-making, ethics, evolutionary psychology, moral psychology, political sociology and social psychology.

If one question the teachings of a religion does that classify as heresy? If the scriptures of a religion proclaim ‘thou shall not kill’ and yet endorses war’s senseless murder in the name of the Lord, is that hypocrisy?

You decide.