What is Religion?

Commerce?

Its illegal in america to be an inconvenient commercial establishment!

Uh huh, so would have I, but do you know why?

If I were you would have the best of both worlds.

thats right I almost forgot 'we the people' were left out of deciding the law we want to live under. Our overlords take care of that for us!

 

Sorry - I haven't mastered the technique of quoting in this forum as yet. Hence the confused way of responding that I've done in post #382.

 

No, not to the source.
Thats why Durkheims (not sure whats the best description, philosophy or pshychology) of religion, in the OP really shines above the bulk of nonsense definitions out there.
I have yet to see anything that describes the human condition of religion better as to what happens in the human mind, making the distinction between philosophy and valuation..

While I agree everyone chooses a religion based on some source(s) if it were the source if it were the source atheists would base it on themselves.

With that to get back to themselves doesnt add up very well.

The biggest problem with the word religion, those who worship deities wasnt to claim it exclusively for themselves, and atheists hold up a cross to keep the evil word as far away as possible which prevents us as you can see by the nonsense this thread has turned into having a well 'reasoned' discussion. Both sides get their panties in a twist over it

 

Two ways to quote. One in general, and one for a specific sentence or two.

1) Click on Reply. Their post will be at the top of your reply. The cursor is below it. Space down below it for two lines and begin your comments. Then Post Reply.

2) Same as #1, but this time Select a word, line or sentence, hit Copy and move down to your reply and Paste it there. (I add quotation marks, some use asterisks.) Then skip a couple of lines and write your comment. Repeat for other words or sentences you want to comment on.

Hope this helps. ---OGN

 

Proper? My, my. Propriety seems out of place on Hip Forums. You seem to have a fetish for "proper" word usage, but really words are tools and their usage is a matter of their usefulness. It is certainly true that older structuralist definitions of religion included god(s). And older definitions of law and government included institutions. But anthropologists like Malinowski notice that Trobriand islanders had a well-ordered society without such institutions. We could say they were lawless anarchic societies. But Malinowski argued that we could learn more from them by broadening our concepts to include informal institutions based on custom.

If one thinks the similarities far outweigh the differences, treating them as separate emphasizes the differences. "Godless religions" might do. Anyhow, treating them as religions is well-established in comparative religious studies. In my own personal "trip" to Christianity, I started mentally with Judaism a passage in Genesis, moved to Hinduism (Atman) and Buddhism (Upādāna), on to Islam (Shirk) , and ended up a Christian (Love of God and Neighbor)--in a matter of a couple of days. Insights of atheism (historical-critical method) were added later. My religion is still an eclectic blend of those with a primarily Christian focus. Works for me! I'm also still aware of the differences among religions, and regard fundamentalist tendencies in my own church congregation as misguided. Since the notion of godless religion is pretty well-established in the literature, why is it so important to you to keep 'em separated?

 

Yes , but those are geared to popular usage rather than technical usage in particular fields. Wikipedia has an entries for "secular religion" and "nontheistic religion".

 

Your point got thru. Thanks for it.

 

If "inconvenient" means one that discriminates against certain categories of its customers on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation--

A slave-based theocracy circa 3000 BCE run by conspiracy theory fans mourning the defeat of the Confederacy and adopting "Dixie" as the national anthem? In some dystopian universe, maybe.

"We the people" is a useful rhetorical device, reminding the elites who coined it and the elected representatives who make our laws that they have an obligation to act in the public interest.

 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1600910X.2010.9672755

Ben Clements addresses the difficulty of defining religion in First Amendment cases in the Cornell Law Review. He notes that "the broad purpose of the religion clauses was not merely to assure the liberty of particular religious denominations, but rather to protect the religious impulses of man from government interference...and that therefore "a constitutional definition of religion cannot be limited to the theistic religions recognized by the Framers, or even to a broader class of traditional religions." Based on First Amendment case law, he offers the following definition :" a comprehensive belief system that addresses the fundamental questions of human existence, such as the meaning of life and death, man's role in the universe, and the nature of good and evil, and that gives rise to duties of conscience." It also blurs the boundary between religion and philosophy, that was the subject of Durkheim's musings in the OP of this thread. Of course, that focuses on beliefs, and eliminates the ritual and communal aspects that sociologists and comparative religionists think are important. That is a very Christian way of looking at religion that may do for First Amendment purposes, but not for doing justice to religions that place more emphasis on cultus and community, like Islam and Buddhism. And the crucial element of the sacred, spiritual, transcendent, etc., is missing. But it's a start in bridging the theistic barrier.

I prefer the definition by primate researcher Frans deWaal's definition: “the shared reverence for the supernatural, sacred, or spiritual as well as the symbols, rituals, and worship that are associated with it”.

 

Really? Buddhism? Taoism? What a remarkable indictment of a whole academic field of scholarship who seem to be men and women of integrity! Read their publications and get back to me.

 

It's important to me to recognize striking similarities among differing belief systems. Why is it so important to you to deny that such phenomena recognized by scholars who have devoted their professional lives to the matter are not religion when they find it useful to do so?

They aren't "the established definitions of words." We've been through that. Webster isn't delivering his definitions from Mount Sinai on stone tablets.

But that opinion hardly applies to secular scholars in the field. It is precisely to avoid that bias that they developed functional and cluster approaches that do not depend on God. As a matter of fact, those approaches originated in sociology, and were highly influenced by Durkheim, Malinowski and Parsons.

 

Do all "belief systems" qualify as Religion?

Or just those that are purposed to returning to the creator (which, as I posted earlier, is the meaning of Religion).

 

With all respect to Rabbi de Longe,emeritus prof., he was writing about precisely the problem that led comparativists to abandon theistic definitions of religion and to adopt functionalist and cluster approaches. If you think about it, it isn't Christians who are pushing the idea that religion isn't all about God. It's not a right or wrong matter. It's a matter of usefulness. As long as scholars explain how they're using the term, it doesn't cause undue confusion, and they can make a case for its usefulness, it doesn't make sense to say they can't do it or it's somehow improper.

As I said earlier, I think Frans de Waal's definition of religion as “the shared reverence for the supernatural, sacred, or spiritual as well as the symbols, rituals, and worship that are associated with it”

My understanding is she is claiming that those personal beliefs must be strongly held as a matter of conscience. My problem with her definition is that it is unclear to me that it must include the supernatural , sacred, spiritual, or transcendent. Without those, political, economic, or purely philosophical beliefs could qualify as religious. That would make no sense at all.

I agree that if it is not about the supernatural, a religion must at least be be about the sacred, spiritual, or transcendent. That could be a great spiritual power or force, like mana, wakan, orenda, etc.; spirits that animate nature; deities; or simply reverance and awe for values that are regarded as sacred. Apart from that constant, I favor a cluster approach that does not claim any other values in particular are essential, but rather some combination of the following: creed, code, cultus (ritual) and community. Prothero, God Is Not One.