What is Religion?

I think it can. I think Durkheim would say then it becomes something other than just philosophy. But if he said it automatically becomes religion, he would be wrong and inconsistent with what he says throughout the rest of his book.. Atheist existentialists like Sartre and Camus emphasized action-first philosophies, and would hardly be considered religious by Durkheim. My main point is that the passage quoted was not Durkheim's main point. He was right about a lot of things, but that wouldn't be one of them. And certainly not the notion that belief detached from community and ritual would constitute religion. He says the opposite. Taken in context of the rest of his thought, it's a basic misinterpretation.

To understand Durkheim, focus on his definition of religion, which I gave supra. a religion must consist of three elements: sacred objects, a set of beliefs and practices, and the existence of community.sharing these beliefs and values. Unlike you,he emphatically rejects the need for gods or supernatural agents, and says the whole thing comes from society, not heaven.
Durkheim would probably see secular religion in a rally of a Nazi bund or a Soviet May day parade.
I think the OP might have been selective in finding what she thought was a passage agreeing with her own position, but in context I don't think it meant what she thought it did..

 

So then a catholic stranded on a desert island has no religion?

 

I think we all understand what beliefs and practices and community are, but how do you interpret "sacred objects"?

 

The Catholic stranded on the desert presumably has the religious beliefs he acquired through his previous religious community, previously reinforced by rituals and nuns with rulers. As the saying goes, "Once a Catholic, always a Catholic". But he will be unable, so long as he is stranded, to participate in the rituals of his faith, go to mass, take holy communion, etc. The habits will probably persist once they are acquired by the group socialization process. Socialization, not to be confused with socialism, is a soiciological term meaning . the process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable to society.

 

This is more difficult to explain, but central to Durkheim's distinction between sacred and profane. Profane refers to the everyday routines and workaday activities people are involved in. "Sacred" refers to things that are placed by society in a separate category, set apart for special reverence and veneration. Sacred objects are the collective symbols that people gather around as they experience some form of shared reverential sentiment: the totem, cross, national flag, etc.

 

I think you expanded a bit more than the OP, however the above do we not learn that as a baby forward from parents regardless if they are godless atheist or deity/god based religions?

Are 'objects', I presume objects of belief....or....belief reinforcement strictly required to be physical or can they equally be abstract-object?

What is an example of an abstract object?

For example, it is usually acknowledged that numbers and the other objects of pure mathematics, like pure sets, are abstract (if they exist), whereas rocks, trees, and human beings are concrete.Jul 19, 2001

Abstract Objects - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu › entries › abstract-objects

 

I appreciate the effort that went into framing the question, and the references offered as a starting point.

The discussion seems overly complicated and to have run far afield (such as involving the religions of atheists).

Faith is our relationship to God(s).
Religion is how we practice it.
Theology is how we explain it.

This is simple, and it covers the subject well enough for me. Keep the three together, and religion has its position and purpose. It doesn't belong in a discussion of agnosticism and atheism. They're mutually exclusive of religion.

 

Absolutely. Parents are the principal agents of socialization into religion. I was bused to a Catholic school at age 5, and my first clear memory of anything was the nun's lecture on original sin, which obviously made quite an impression. My parents took me to mass every Sunday, and I remember the priest droning on in words I couldn't understand, but I gathered from my parents it was all very important, special and "sacred". At age six, the nuns told my parents I'd be better off in the public school (the ultimate rejection!), so I encountered Protestants and Jews for the first time. I knew that I was Catholic (and Republican), although I wasn't quite sure what either of those meant. The problem with applying Durkeheim to our situation in the U.S. is that American "society" is pluralistic and vast--not the face-to-face thing in the Aruta villages. We actually are a nation of subcultures. In the public school, I was exposed to Calvinists who told me that if I remained a Catholic I'd go to hell, while the nuns at catechism class told me that I'd go there if I didn't--the classic damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma. This is what sociologists call being "cross-pressured". It explains why I'm neither Catholic nor Republican today, and am wary of both.

Of course, this is nothing new. Large empires faced a similar situation.. As Gibbon remarked of the Roman empire, to the average citizen all religions were equally good, to the philosophers all of them were equally wrong, and to the politicians, they were equally useful. In our own national society we protect all of them by the establishment clause and the free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, leaving it mainly to the courts to figure out the proper balance between, say, the pro-vaxers and the anti-vaxers. I think so far, the courts have done a reasonable job. Where public health is at stake, private beliefs, religious or otherwise, tend to give way to the common interest in survival.

They can be either or both, so long as the society or subculture defines it as special and worthy of reverence. I recall as a student being horrified when my professor threw the Bible on the floor, since I had been socialized to regard that as sacrilegious. Many Americans have the same reaction to flag burning, and I remember feeling similar sentiments when invited to step on the flag at a hippie gathering. I'm trying to think of an "abstract object" that would qualify. For me it would probably be the U.S. Constitution--not the document itself, but the principles it stands for.

I just gave the first one that came to mind: the U.S. Constitution. What is revered is not the parchment but the principles it embodies: constitutionalism--an abstraction. , .But why is it important to identify an abstract object? Usually, sacred objects are symbols of greater concepts, which are abstract.

 

If you already know, why ask? "Simplistic" might be a better term for your statement. For example, Durkheim and many others who study religion don't think "god(s)" are an essential element. Durkheim cited Buddhism as an example. Was he wrong? I think definitions are never right or wrong, but only more or less useful, and Buddhism certainly resembles godly religions in many respects. Durkheim was using primal Aruta totemism as his example of the simplest form of religion. No gods, but totemic objects that were embodied with sacred meaning, and with an impersonal force thought to pervade the universe. Was he wrong?

As for atheist religion, an atheist who simply doesn't believe in god(s) would obviously not be religious. But if he got together regularly with a group of non-believers, followed a common code of ethics, and used rituals to commemorate their non-belief, I and Durkheim would probably be inclined to call them religious. I attended a meeting of the American Humanist Society, in which the topic for discussion was consideration of a ritual for the "presentation of the child'--a counterpart to Christian baptism. These are atheists. But when you have community and ritual going, and a creed and code like secular humanism Durkheim would probably agree it's getting pretty religious. There are now atheist mega churches holding regular services. Atheist "mega-churches" take root across U.S., world - CBS News
And atheists also belong to the Unitarian Universalist church, along with Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and pagans. They hold regular services together. I recently finished Bible study with a group of UU atheists, although I'm a Methodist. I'd say atheism can be a religion, depending on the amount of creed, code, ritual and community involved.

 

Which we can say were his parents as life in the family unit

Therefore previously reinforced rituals by nuns with rulers et al notwithstanding.

Sacred then is things held and valued highly, such as the principles of your constitution as sacred objects, profane is that which you really dont give much attention.

The sacred-profane dichotomy is a concept posited by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who considered it to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." In Durkheim's theory, the sacred ...

Profanum - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Profanum

Therefore we can say that a single person carries forward religion as a result of being raised by parents.

So we have eliminated community outside the necessity of parents, creed is now morals as their sacred object, effectively demonstrating that a single sole person can in fact possess religion (be religious), accessories not required.

 

Not at all. Parents, typically, operate as agents of the community, in this case a religious community. Durkheim was referring to a tribal community in which there were few if any sub-groups. In our large, complex secular society, religion is conveyed by a religious sub-grop--Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, AA, etc. That community exercises a degree of control over the thinking and practices of its members--which may be great or slight, depending on the community. In my case, it was great enough for my folks to send me to the Catholic school, to see that I said my prayers at night, etc. But because of the cross-pressures of a pluralistic secular society, even my parents weren't strict observers--i.e., not bead clicking Catholics. (They were Republicans first, Catholics second). And by sending me to the public school, with the encouragement of the nuns who wanted to get rid of me, they unwittingly allowed me to be exposed to further cross-pressures from my Protestant and Jewish classmates.

Now your're spouting your personal opinion. You could have started with that and spared poor Durkheim the butchering of his theory, which saw society as central, community and ritual as indispensable, and the sacred as something communicated by society.Durkheim's main contribution was in highlighting the role of society in shaping religion, which he saw as essentially a transfiguration of society. Leaving that out throws the baby out with the bathwater.

No it doesn't. It's a complete distortion of Durkheim's position which emphasized the central role of society. You seem to have seized on poor Durkheim as a means of adding gravitas to your personal misconceptions.

No we can't. What a complete non-sequitor! In Durkheim's fullest definition,: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden–beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church (i.e., a religious community), all those who adhere to them.” To Durkheim, religionis an eminently collective thing. (p. 44) The sacred comes neither from gods nor from individual tastes but is thoroughly conditioned by society. In the simple tribal units Durkheim used as his prototypes, society and religious community tended to be one in the same and spoke with a single voice. In a large complex multi-ethnic, multi-religious national society like our own, the voices are multiple, but often still effective. Catholic and Evangelical brands of Christianity typically do a professional job of indoctrinating their kids and their kids' parents and grandparents. etc., from and early age in what to regard as sacred. Other faiths, like tso-called "mainline" Protestant churches tend to be less intense about it, but still somewhat influential. And the national community exerts its own ideas about the sacred to which all citizens are exposed through patriotic rituals--the flag solute, "God Bless America, Fourth of July celebrations, etc. Obviously, these didn't arise spontaneously, nor come from Heaven, but were deliberately designed by government officials to condition us to patriotic sentiments. In the leading Supreme Court flag-burning case Texas v. Johnson, Mr. Johnson had been arrested for violating a Texas statute prohibiting the "desecration of a venerated object" .Texas had obviously put the flag, a symbolic piece of cloth, in the category of the sacred.

You may have, in your own mind. Neither I nor Durkheim would go along.

Go back and read Durkheim again, take two logic courses, and call us in the morning!

 

MeAgain said:
"I asked if it would be morally wrong to oppose your, or anyone else's morals." Shy One said "Yes." Really?.You indicated that you thought Stalin was a terrible person who persecuted religious people. I agree, and consider it my duty to oppose such tyrants and the evil totalitarian values they stand for. Dealing with tyrants like Stalin is hard to do through individual action. I rely on government to help out, am an proud that ours stood up to the likes of Stalin and Hitler. Putin, too. And declared that their values were evil. I also think it's my duty as a private citizen to oppose domestic tyrants and demagogues like Trump and Desantis. Here I have to rely on the ballot box and other legal channels which fortunately are still available in our besieged democracy.

ShyOne indicated that (s)he accepts, as I do, J.S. Mill's utilitarian "harm principle"--that government should step in to regulate speech, religion or private morals only if it is doing harm to others. Of course, defining harm is the problem. We tend to leave that to legislatures in the first instance, and the courts in the last. But at the national level, we don't leave it to a referendum. The folks who wrote our Constitution didn't believe in such things, because they were too much like the direct democracy of ancient Athens ,were impractical for large societies like the U.S., and didn't allow for the informed deliberation that is needed for effective government. Instead they gave us a republic, which is often simply defined as representative democracy. Actually it's more complicated than that, because they also incorporated separation of powers among the three branches , checks and balances, division of powers between national and state governments, and a Bill of Rights with a First Amendment protecting free speech and religion. Shy One seems to be ambivalent about this--on the one hand, indicating that it would be a bad thing to let the majority outvote the minority on matters involving religion and morals, but on the other hand, requiring a referendum if the government encroaches on individual ideas about what is right and moral. I go by the maxim that your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins, and it's up to the courts to strike a reasonable balance between individual liberties like speech and freedom of religion, on the one hand, and individual preferences on the other. So far,. I think they've done a reasonable job, but it's important to keep it that way.

In the lengthy exchange between ShyOne and Meagain, two policy issues stand out: (1) public health versus private values; and (2) public accommodations versus private conscience. I suspect that ShyOne's strong personal views on these matters are the opposite of mine, and have colored her whole elaborate discourse inaccurately invoking the authority of Durkheim. I don't think Durkheim is of much help in addressing either one of them, but a careful analysis of them can show the importance of striking a reasonable balance between personal claims and the public interest.

 

(1) Public health versus private values. A standard definition of the function of politics and government popularized by political scientist David Eastman, who defines it as "the authoritative allocation of values--i.e., deciding disputes over values by means of legitimated power. Anarchists might regard this process as unnecessary and undesirable, but it's how we and most other societies around the world have done things since the dawn of civilization. Nor everybody can have his/her way all the time. I think the U.S. has done a relatively good job of balancing the general interest with individual wants and needs.

ShyOne seems to agree that a major consideration here should be the "harm principle"--no restriction of personal liberty that does no harm to anyone else. "Harm",,of course. is often debatable, but when it comes to pandemics that kill large numbers of people, I think it's pretty clear that unsound policies can be harmful. Unfortunately, in our pluralistic society, there is often a "lunatic fringe" that disagrees with scientific consensus on what is harmful. There are those who believe that vaccines are designed to sap us of our precious bodily fluids and implant chips in our systems that will enable the Deep State to control us. There are others who think they're Jesus Christ or Napoleon or who believe that Jewish space lasers influenced the 2022 election. Somewhat more mainstream and in the ambit of religion, as it is commonly understood, are some twenty sects who believe that modern medicine , in whole or in part, is morally wrong. Churches with religious beliefs against medical care - Probably the best known examples are the ChrIstian Scientists, who are against all medical physicians in general, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, who object to blood tranfusions as violations of Old Testament injunctions against ingesting blood. What to do? These beliefs do not simply affect the believers themselves, since contagious or infectious diseases can kill or disable others, and denial of blood transfusions can kill or disable innocent children. In our constitutional democracy, we have what I think is the sensible idea that such decisions are best settled by the democratic process and by the courts, within the limits set forth by the Constitution. How is this done?

Where non-communicable diseases are concerned, matters are left largely to the states. The Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act of 1996, Congress providesthat there is no federal requirement for a child to be be provided “medical service or treatment against the religious beliefs of the parent or legal guardian.” Forty-six states have statutes protecting parents from prosecution in such cases. Where communicable diseases are concerned, things are a bit different, although the matter is still treated largely as a federal rather than a state issue. .

We can take, for example, the case of smallpox, a disease that ravaged my Native American ancestors back in the day, has been found in Egyptian mummies, and is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the early 20th century.
According to the World Health Organization , the disease has effectively been eradicated worldwide.
H. Koprowski & M.B. Oldstone (1996). Microbe hunters, then and now. Medi-Ed Press. p. 23.
The eradication of smallpox – An overview of the past, present, and future - ScienceDirect

How did this happen? It might have been sunspots or the benevolent influence of extraterrestrials, but most rational people attribute to the first vaccine, introduced in the eighteenth century by Edward Jenner. A Massachusets law requiring compulsory vaccination was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Mass. (1905), Justice Harlan writing for a 7-2 majority. He he wrote:. “[T]he liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly free from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.” Makes sense to me. The same logic would apply to other diseases which have been effectively combated by vaccination, such a polio in the U.S. Eradication of poliomyelitis in the United States - PubMed I'm so glad our public health officials and judges had good sense.

More recently, there seems to be compelling evidence that vaccines have reduced the mortality rate for Covid strains, especially among the elderly and other vulenrable populations.
COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness
Efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines - PubMed
COVID-19 vaccine efficacy summary
Vaccine efficacy, effectiveness and protection
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe5938
Yet conspiracy theorists lie Q-anon, and politicians like Trump and DeSantis (who was for the vaccine before was against it), demagogue the issue with gullible followers.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in two different cases struck down the more general OSHA COVID-19 vaccination emergency standard for employers of over 100 employees (National Federation of Independent Businesses v. OSHA), but upheld the DHHS COVID-19 vaccination mandate for healthcare personnel (Biden v. Missouri, 2022), recognizing the DHHS's longstanding interest in protecting the public against health emergencies.

**********************************
(2) Public Accomodations. While religious liberty has generally been given extensive protection by the courts, it has never been regarded as an absolute. The matter of public accommodations is similar to the public health issue in that regard. I think Meagain has done a good job of laying out the issues. In general, Congress in Title II of the Civil Right Act of 1964 (Public Accommodations) prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation because of race, color, religion, or national origin. This was initially applied to prevent businesses like hotels and restaurants providing services to the public from turning away customers because of their race, the test case being Katzenbach v. McClung involving the restaurant Ollie's barbecue. The case upheld Congress' ability to ban such practices under its power to regulate interstate commerce, since Ollie's got its meat, napkins, etc., interstate. Tenuous as it might seem to conservatives, it is the law, and if the current court were to reverse it, it would cause even a greater stir than the reversal of Roe v. Wade on abortion and lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the court. What conservatives have done instead is to try to chip away at it, using freedom of religion and creative expression as their rationale.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favour of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, on grounds of religious liberty and creative expression. Unlike McClung, the baker was claiming that his cakes were a form of creative expression and that the Colorado legislature had expressed hostility toward religious liberty. The U.S.Supreme Court agreed. Then, in 2021, the Court turned away an appeal from a decision of a Washington State florist making a similar argument, because the state officials did not act with particular anti-religious animus . Most recently, the Court has taken a case involving a Colorado Christian web designer seeking to post a notice that she will decline to serve gay couples on grounds of creative expression, as well as religious freedom. The Supreme Court majority seems sympathetic to her, but we'll see how it goes. Whatever the outcome, it's doubtful that the case will be decided on the basis of ShyOne's questionable theory that virtually any personal opinion involving personal values constitutes religion and therefore deserves protection under the First Amendment.

 

Not true.


If You Say ‘Science Is Right,’ You’re Wrong
It can’t supply absolute truths about the world, but it brings us steadily closer

One popular move is to insist that science is right—full stop—and that once we discover the truth about the world, we are done. Anyone who denies such truths (they suggest) is stupid, ignorant or fatuous. Or, as Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg said, “Even though a scientific theory is in a sense a social consensus, it is unlike any other sort of consensus in that it is culture-free and permanent.” Well, no. Even a modest familiarity with the history of science offers many examples of matters that scientists thought they had resolved, only to discover that they needed to be reconsidered. Some familiar examples are Earth as the center of the universe, the absolute nature of time and space, the stability of continents, and the cause of infectious disease.

Science is a process of learning and discovery, and sometimes we learn that what we thought was right is wrong. Science can also be understood as an institution (or better, a set of institutions) that facilitates this work. To say that science is “true” or “permanent” is like saying that “marriage is permanent.” At best, it's a bit off-key. Marriage today is very different from what it was in the 16th or 18th century, and so are most of our “laws” of nature.

 

I sorry but I must have missed that part, please quote it for me:

The Constitution of the United States

 

I thought I used the word injury, please include a quote with what you claim are my claims.

 

Authority? Wow!
What authority is vested in Durkheim?

 

The above is false, again stating claims I never made, and again does not reference my actual statements with a quote using the quote function.