What is Religion?

Oops!

You forgot to post the the rest of the definition.

Its always good to be thorough!

5. a : unassailable, inviolable
b : highly valued and important
a sacred responsibility

 

taking this a step further;

"1. a: dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity
a tree sacred to the gods"

A dedicated physical object; that represents something not physical
or...
A physical object that is set apart [for]; representing something not physical

"b :devoted exclusively to one service or use (as of a person or purpose)
a fund sacred to charity"

Exclusive to one use or purpose

"2. a: worthy of religious veneration : holy"

A status worthy of [holy] veneration

"b: entitled to reverence and respect"

Deserving of reverence and respect

Here is the biggy!
"3 : of or relating to religion : not secular or profane
sacred music"

Not profane!
If not profane then secular.
If secular then religious.
If sacred then 'value'

It should be clear that the word religion focuses on things that which is very special to someone with regard to 'value' [especially conscience] (things they highly 'value' and a deity would be a subset under things that are very special to someone.

 

Yes, that which we highly value and hold near and dear to our hearts, contrary to that which we could care less about (the profane).

the basket we call religion holds your choice of flavors, theists get what they want atheists get what they want and everyone in between get what they want as long as they dont violate someone elses sacred grounds.

No God or gods required!

Sacred is a subset of religion and things that are highly special, set aside, 'valued' and held near and dear to ones heart are a subset of sacred.

Your own definition shows this. If you dis or ridicule what I hold to be highly valued as 'sacred' (my 'religion') that you would have have violated or trespassed upon me. No God required.

I have said many times that politics today is or has become a religion for many people! ...and political views are all too often peoples religions gone public!

 

Wow!

I cant believe how badly I hosed that up!

Heres a redux

Sacred = not profane
Sacred = religious
Profane = not sacred!
Profane = secular!
If not profane then sacred.
If sacred then 'value'
If sacred then religious.
If religious then we can conclude religion is your bucket of sacred highly valued [things] no deity required.

If a deity is sacred and central to you then your religion is focused on the worship of a deity, otherwise your religious focus is directed to something else you consider sacred, like not eating pork.

 

Rites are the abstract objects of that which is sacred.
Same as math is the abstract object.


What is an example of an abstract object?

Examples of concrete objects include plants, human beings and planets while things like numbers, sets and propositions are abstract objects.

Abstract and concrete - Wikipedia
wikipedia.org
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Abstract_and_concrete
Just because something is abstract does not change the fact it is the object of the basket its put into.

You cant be right though because that is not the context of the thread.
The context of the thread is clearly delineated as secular religion as cited in the OP with the Durkheim quote.

I wont disagree with you that 'ONE' version of religion is deity worship, however nondeity versions are identified as shown in the OP.

I disagree, it only means that there is more in the religion bucket than deity worship.

It means both secular and nonsecular are both religious identified by religions core 'characteristics' that they share.

 

Nobody. That was my point. If you only trust the hard sciences, you leave important areas of inquiry out in the cold.

Nobody I know. But that would seem to be the implication if we only listen to the hard science and put other areas of expertise on the same level as Joe Sixpax.

Who's talking about "definitive" statements. I'm talking about conclusions by specialists who have devote their professional careers to the fields in question. I don't take their conclusions as the last word, but I certainly give weight to them.

What do you mean by "confirmed". In the absence of time travel, we can't go back and interview the artists. We can only make inferences, based on the available evidence. One scholar's assessment can be subject to peer review by the others. We can "confirm" assessments of prehistoric artifacts by field research on modern hunter gatherers. That's as far as it goes. You can brush it off if you want. I don't.

Meanwhile, we have to rely on his expertise. Same goes with the hard sciences. Newtonian physics has been reassessed in light of general relativity and quantum physics. And who knows, the reassessment may be reassessed, if Shy's sources gain credibility.

This isn't "the experts". Just J. Dale Guthrie, a retired zoology prof. whose previous publications were on body organs and frozen Pleistecene mammals, enjoying a new hobby in his retirement years. (this study was published at age 76). He claims he was motivated to cross into the field of paelentology when his ideas were rejected by archaeologists at a conference in Switzerland. The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie, an excerpt Has he published a single article on this in a refereed journal? None that I can find. Instead he provides a sensationalized interview to a popular science mag., apparently with the intent of boosting sales. Can we rely on his judgments? Some reviewers don't think so. "The book contains a lot of small, monochrome line drawings made by the author. So every item of the Palaeolithic art is depicted by the author of the book. Unfortunately, at least some of the depictions are unacceptably different from the originals. The author redrew the item in such a way that he emphasized the woman's features and, as a result, it looks strinkingly different from the original. A good example is a finding from the Rytirska Cave, the Czech Republic. It is not obvious what the actual artifact represents. Most archaeologists believe that it is probably a representation of a woman (although very atypical of the Magdalenian, where it belongs). page 340). The book contains a lot of small, monochrome line drawings made by the author. So every item of the Palaeolithic art is depicted by the author of the book. Unfortunately, at least some of the depictions are unacceptably different from the originals. A good example is a finding from the Rytirska Cave, the Czech Republic. It is not obvious what the actual artifact represents. Most archaeologists believe that it is probably a representation of a woman (although very atypical of the Magdalenian, where it belongs). The author redrew the item in such a way that he emphasized the woman's features and, as a result, it looks strinkingly different from the original(page 340). The Venus of Dolni Vestonice is depicted frontally four times in the book (pp. 332, 340, 351 and 366) and, at the same time, only the figurines depicted on pp. 322 and 351 are quite similar. The figurines presented on pp. 340 and 366 differ from each other and from the depictions on pp. 322 and 351 as well. The back views of this piece of art are on pp. 322 and 351 and these two drawings do not depict the identical figurine, either. There are mistakes in captions, for example instead of Gagarino, Russia, there is Gargano, Italy (e.g. pp. 332), instead of Dolni Vestonice there is mistakenly Pekarna (pp. 353), etc. I believe these mistakes should also be avoided, especially when it is possible to verify such information using the Internet within several minutes in most cases.The question arises: To which extent can I trust the author's illustrations? Vit Lang.Amazon.com
Guthrie may have been projecting his own distant memories of horny adolescence upon his subject matter.
"The author seems to not realize his own bias such as when describing that he personally never saw a nude female body until he viewed x rated material as a teen and using this modern experience in his own culture to guess that paleolithic boys also never saw a female nude, and the continued statement that cave art was done by young boys with raging testosterone (horny)...over and over his assumptions about human reproduction permeated this book and made me shake my head." Christine MM. Hey, he could be right, but I'd like to see some expert peer reviews.
And I wonder about the equivocation between cave paintings and the "venus figurines" that might be fertility goddess statues or early cave man porn ( seems to opt for the latter), To my knowledge, there isn't a single cave painting of a nude figure. Most depictions of humans are stick figures, while the animals are portrayed in magnificent detail. One notable exception is of a chimeric figure generally interpreted as a shaman.

Could have been? It obviously was! And in the deepest, hard to get to parts of the cave. Painted by torchlight. So these lads must have been really horny. Or, as most knowledgeable experts conclude, they were shamans, painting in trance state, for religious purposes. And doing it all if the lady wasn't even going to see it stretches the bounds of credibility.

Because even horny teenagers wouldn't go to this much trouble to impress their lady. The conditions under which the artists must have worked would be a challenge for Michaelangelo.

I should mention at the other extreme the findings of Dean Snow, professor of anthropology at Penn State, publsihed in the peer reviewed journal American Antiquity, a journal of the American Archaeololgy Society, who studied the hand prints found in caves containing prehistoric artwork and found that 75% of the handprints were those of women, leading to an article in National Geographic entitled were the first artists mostly women. That of course is at odds with Guthrie's theory. Snow focused on the hand prints that covered the outer rooms of caves, as opposed to the animal paintings deep in the interior. and yes, it's long been recognized that women and children were involved in those. The authorship and purpose of the animal paintings deep in the interior of the cave is another question.Naturally, Guthrie isn't impressed with Snow's theory.

 

Just going by what he told us. He mentions his own experiences with porn as the basis for his insight. BTW, I hope you caught what I said about the cave paintings not containing many pictures of recognizable women. The closest we come is a head on an animal's body that could be a woman--not the sort of thing likely to conform to a teenage adolescent's sex fantasies. There are no images of entire human forms, although there is one fragmentary image of what looks to be a vulva linked to an unfinished set of legs. Maybe the adolescent artists were into bestiality. There were plenty of sculptures of volutuous females, but it takes a leap of faith to connect them to the cave paintings. And of course we're talking Upper Paleolithic, not the Ajanta cave paintings in India , which date from Buddhist times.

Guthrie is obviously talking about the so-called "venus" figurines, on which the jury is out as to porn versus goddesses.

Really. You thought that? That an expert on one field qualifies as an expert in other fields, and that every opinion by a single expert is definitive? Once again, he's not "experts". Just one guy. And he's an expert in zoology, who had some pet theories about prehistoric culture that got rejected at a conference of archaeologists--an event that he attributes to the divide between C.P. Snow's two cultures (actually, Snow was talking about the barrier between the sciences and the humanities.) . He seems never to have submitted his ideas on prehistoric art to peer review, but instead rushed them to print in a book published by his university press. I'd accept him as an authority on zoology, and I might agree with him on his theory, if other experts do through the peer review process or if he comes up with more compelling evidence for it. That's how it works with experts.

Let me share with you some critical comments on Guthrie's book by a real expert in anthropology, Randal White. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/looking-for-biological-meaning-in-cave-art

"Disturbingly, Guthrie's book lacks any theoretical discussion of "art" and "meaning" in cultural or ethnographic terms. His ecological determinism leaves almost no room for metaphor, for the experiential power of caves or for a spiritual understanding of this underground world by ancient humans."...
"Guthrie's interpretations of Paleolithic images are expressed with a kind of certainty that approaches stridency. For example, his identifications of certain images as plants are made without reservation, even though the originals are notoriously ambiguous. He seldom provides alternative readings, and the fact that his drawings are not faithful to details and surface features prevents the reader from independently evaluating his propositions. The book does not contain a single photograph against which to judge the author's sketches."...
"He ignores context to such an extent that he does not inform the reader whether a given sketch he has made represents an engraving, a three-dimensional sculpture, a cave painting or a bas-relief." (confirming my suspicions that those buxom women were the venus figurines instead of paintings on cave walls.)..."Surely the fact that Gravettian female figurines (dating to between 28,000 and 22,000 years ago) are often buried in ritualized pits trumps their interpretation as universal examples of sexual presentation behavior."

Anthropologist David Lewis-Williams (2002) The Mind of the Cave drawing on his extensive field work on shamanism in hunter-gatherer societies and research on San rock painings, thinks the cave paintings are the outcomes of shamanic hallucinations. Archeologist Jean Clottes agrees: paintings done in hard to get to parts of the cave suggest either a quest for visions or a desire to go as much as possible to the depths of the earth.That is the leading explanation, championed by Historian Mircea Eliade and archaeologist Jean Clottes are leading champions of this theory. The older theory that it represented sympathetic magic (also connected with shamanism) still has adherents, but less so because the animals depicted were not the ones commonly hunted. Either way, these are the theories most experts in the field accept. Guthrie's theory is definitely fringe, for reasons I hope I've explained. Some people are drawn to fringe theories. If you're one of those, go for it! But it will take a lot more evidence to convince me.

For expert opinion that the cave art was religious, you might try:
Religious beliefs seen as basis of origins of Palaeolithic art
Prehistoric Cave Art | Tennessee Encyclopedia.
Scholar: Cave paintings show religious sophistication – Harvard Gazette
Cave Paintings and Shamanism
Prehistoric Cave Paintings and Religion | History Today
Indonesian cave paintings show the dawn of imaginative art and human spiritual belief
Art and Shamanism: From Cave Painting to the White Cube
Shamanic Explorations of Supernatural Realms: Cave Art - The Earliest Folklore

I thought this thread was about the origin of religion. That's what the title says. Would we be going off topic if we said the origin was God? Seems to me though that what we've been dealing with are secular explanations--sociology, psychology. The only other approach I can think of is theological, which would be pointless unless we're willing to go by faith and dogma.

 

That may be true, however that does not mean its either an incorrect or misleading meaning.

Thats why people hire attorneys, the same words you use every day may have an entirely different meaning in law.

So did I, but you only seem to acknowledge yours wnile discarding mine!

...and that would of course be true if you fail to acknowledge slternate meanings and usage of polysemous words.

I dont see stipulative in there anywhere?
I see scientific observation, such as functional or substantive. How did you conclude its stipulative?

Definitions of profane

adjective
grossly irreverent toward what is held to be sacred
“profane utterances against the Church”

synonyms: blasphemous, sacrilegious

irreverent
showing lack of due respect or veneration

adjective
not holy because unconsecrated or impure or defiled

synonyms: unconsecrated, unsanctified

unhallowed, unholy
not hallowed or consecrated

adjective
not concerned with or devoted to religion
“sacred and profane music”
“"secular architecture", "children being brought up in an entirely profane environment”

synonyms: secular

earthly
of or belonging to or characteristic of this earth as distinguished from heaven
impious
lacking piety or reverence for a god
laic, lay, secular
characteristic of those who are not members of the clergy
profanatory
profaning or tending to desecrate
secular, temporal, worldly
characteristic of or devoted to the temporal world as opposed to the spiritual world

see more
adjective
characterized by profanity or cursing
“profane words”

synonyms: blasphemous, blue

dirty
(of behavior or especially language) characterized by obscenity or indecency

verb
violate the sacred character of a place or language
“profane the name of God”

synonyms: desecrate, outrage, violate

see more
verb
corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality

synonyms: corrupt, debase, debauch, demoralise, demoralize, deprave, misdirect, pervert, subvert, vitiate


Which definition are you referring to?

I dont see an exclusive connection as you are proffering.

You chose to argue that sacred has only one meaning and usage and that is the way you use it not me.

I disagree. You rely heavily on the dictionary so I have included the definition of both profane and now sacred so you can see that is has many usages.

Take note one common usage, though obviously not common to you is:

sacred "simply worthy of awe and respect", brought up from the description a few lines below.

...and before you hit me with So Red Sox fans are a religion, no they are not as distinguished by Durkheim in the OP.

Now if you said the american flag, oh yeh that is definitely a sacred icon of the Americanism, religion.



Something sacred is holy, devoted to a religious ceremony, or simply worthy of awe and respect. Jerusalem is a sacred place for many religions, just as Fenway is a sacred place for Red Sox fans.

Sacred is an adjective used to describe a person or thing worthy of worship or declared holy. It usually appears in a religious context, but an object or place set aside for a particular purpose can also be sacred. Sacred spaces and items are intended to be treated with care and respect — even if it's just your shrine to Brad Pitt.
Definitions of sacred

adjective
made, declared, or believed to be holy; devoted to a deity or some religious ceremony or use
“the sacred mosque”
“sacred elephants”
“sacred bread and wine”

synonyms: consecrated, sanctified

holy
belonging to or derived from or associated with a divine power

adjective
worthy of religious veneration
“the sacred name of Jesus”

synonyms: hallowed

holy
belonging to or derived from or associated with a divine power

adjective
concerned with religion or religious purposes
“sacred texts”
“sacred rites”
“sacred music”

Synonyms:
consecrate, consecrated, dedicated
solemnly dedicated to or set apart for a high purpose
heavenly
of or belonging to heaven or god
pious
having or showing or expressing reverence for a deity
divine
devoted to or in the service or worship of a deity
ineffable, unnameable, unspeakable, unutterable
too sacred to be uttered
inspirational
imparting a divine influence on the mind and soul
inviolable, inviolate, sacrosanct
having to be kept sacred
numinous
evincing the presence of a deity
quasi-religious
resembling something that is religious
religious, spiritual
concerned with sacred matters or religion or the church
reverend, sublime
worthy of adoration or reverence
sacral
of or relating to sacred rites
taboo, tabu
forbidden to profane use especially in South Pacific islands

see more
adjective
worthy of respect or dedication
“saw motherhood as woman's sacred calling”

Synonyms:
worthy
having worth or merit or value; being honorable or admirable

adjective
(often followed by `to') devoted exclusively to a single use or purpose or person
“a fund sacred to charity”
“a morning hour sacred to study”
“a private office sacred to the President”

Synonyms:
dedicated
devoted to a cause or ideal or purpose

 

Hey if you want to bug out fine but dont put all that on me when its demonstrably not true!

Here:

Here again:

So please dont use me as an excuse to bug out.

We are, or at least I am.

You simply chose to defend the side of religion = deity worship ONLY and I chose to defend the side of religion = BOTH deity worship AND that which is highly valued as 'not' profane.

Matters of conscience for instance are highly valued since they are the ingredients that make up your moral base.

...and to both of you I am a 'she', though I did grow up in a family of boys and learned how to handle myself accordingly

 

2 & 3 will do.

 

If anyone inadvertently stepped over a tool left on the ground, it was thus rendered profane and would often be discarded.

Fine. How about mana? the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person. Definition of MANA

Spirit: an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms 2 : a supernatural being or essence: such as a capitalized : holy spirit b : soul sense 2a c : an often malevolent being that is bodiless but can become visible specifically : ghost sense 2 d (All or any of the above). Definition of SPIRIT
I'm thinking in particular of spirits in the context of animism. Animism:
a doctrine that the vital principle of organic development is immaterial spirit
2
: attribution of conscious life to objects in and phenomena of nature or to inanimate objects
3
: belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies Definition of ANIMISM

2. a: worthy of religious veneration : holy
2. b. entitled to reverence and respect;
3 : of or relating to religion : not secular or profane
sacred music

Mana. Mana was possessed not only by people but also by buildings, stones, tools, and all other things. Certain groves, trees, temples, and tracts of land were considered sacred and could not be entered by ordinary people because they were pervaded by the mana of a high-status person or god. If anyone inadvertently stepped over a tool left on the ground, it was thus rendered profane and would often be discarded. Violations of these and other lesser tapu were believed to result in supernatural punishment, manifested in bad luck or some form of illness.

Totemism. Durkeheim wrote Elemetary Forms of Religious Life to show that totems were sacred, and that the difference between sacred and profane was central to religion and social bonding.

Ancestors. "Ancestor worship, prevalent in preliterate societies, is obeisance to the spirits of the dead. Ancestor worship
Ancestor worship or ancestor veneration is among the world’s oldest religious practices. Ancestor worship is based on the belief that the deceased continue to have an active interest in the daily affairs of the living and that they may be able to influence what happens to the living. On a regular basis, deceased ancestors are honored with ceremonies so that they will continue to help the living.
Human Verification

Animism. "The ultimate source of the term animism is the Latin word, anima, meaning spirit, soul, or life force. In contemporary anthropology, animism is the generic term for numerous and diverse religions focused on the belief that nature includes spirits, sacred forces, and similar extraordinary phenomena....In general, animists believe that supernatural forces inhabit animals, plants, rocks, and other objects in nature. These forces are envisioned as spirits or souls... They can influence human affairs for better or worse. In turn, humans may influence them to some degree through appropriate rituals and offerings, especially by ritual specialists such as shamans and priests.Animism - Anthropology - iResearchNet
"Shamans are employed among animist communities to engage or mediate with other-than-human persons in situations which could potentially prove dangerous for un-initiated or untrained people." (T)the honor provided for the dead found in all faiths no doubt also arose out of animism....Thus, the tenets of animism can be said to have, at least in part, formed the bedrock of religion as we know it today." https://slife.org/animism/https://slife.org/animism/

Satisfied?

 

Secular: denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.[/QUOTE] An oxymoron? I'm not sure what she means here. Maybe that we're looking at non-religious sources for religion. That would make sense. Psychological, sociological, economic explanations of religion would be secular in that sense. E.g, Durkheim sees religion as essentially a mechanism for social bonding. As opposed to religious explanation of religion, such as the popular one among Christian apologists: God instituted religion, and then human depravity caused it to degenerate.Geisler Primitive Monotheism – NORMAN GEISLER
Or maybe its about those "godless" religions like the Asian ones, the prehistoric ones, and the modern ones like secular-humanism. But that doesn't exactly fit the title, does it. What Is Religion is more than "what is secular religion. The godly religions are still in the lead from the standpoint of numbers. Islam, Christianity and Judaism account for over 55% of the world's religious population.

 

Yes one of my responses was global the other local.

I have no idea how you could confuse and claim that my 'analytical' definition with a "stipulated" definition.

Granted I will give you that your version is reportive however this is a philosophy section so it would seem you should expect us to dissect this for analysis?

You have made several unsubstantiated claims that remain unresolved starting whit why you feel "popular usage" should trump an academically analytic definition?

 

We also have cows and gold calves, both are matter that we can touch, one is even corporeal, both treated and worshiped as God or gods.

It appears to me that even matter can be revered as a divine God or god. This seems to contradict MA's "supernatural" only version of religion and is equally valid as we can see based upon the way it was assessed by moses who actually lived and judged the golden calf event real time. the golden calf was an egyptian idol.



What was Moses response to the golden calf?

golden calf, idol worshipped by the Hebrews during the period of the Exodus from Egypt in the 13th century bc and during the age of Jeroboam I, king of Israel, in the 10th century bc.

In Exodus 32 the Hebrews escaping Egypt asked Aaron, the brother of their leader Moses, to fashion a golden calf during the long absence of Moses on Mt. Sinai. Upon returning from the mountain with the tablets of the Law and seeing the people worshipping the golden calf, Moses broke the tablets (symbolic of breaking the covenant relationship with God) and had the idol melted down, pulverized, and mixed with water. The people were required to drink the mixture, an ordeal to separate the unfaithful (who later died in a plague) from the faithful (who lived).




Golden calf | Old Testament - Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica
https://www.britannica.com › ... › Scriptures

The cow, a revered animal in Hinduism

In the Hindu religion, the cow has acquired a sacred status.
It used to be sacrificed like other animals and offered to the gods and its meat was eaten.

The sacred cow - Alimentarium

Alimentarium
https://www.alimentarium.org › fact-sheet › sacred-cow



Why was it a sin to worship the golden calf?

Then the Israelites did a very foolish and irrational thing. They proclaimed that this Egyptian deity was the person that delivered them from slavery. Then they worshipped the idol and offered sacrifices to it (Exodus 32:5-6). To commit idolatry and worship a false god was absurd.Aug 26, 2022

“The Great Sin of Worshipping the Golden Calf” Exodus 32:1-35 by Dr ...

atascaderonews.com
https://atascaderonews.com › commentary › the-great-sin...