Religion!

[Christopher Weeks]

Yeah, but you aren't going to make any larger statements about what religion really is anyway because you can't define it!

Does religion always try to illustrate appropriate behavior?

Does religion always try to explain phenomena?

It's interestng that you note religion commonly includes a power structure.  I would have thought surely there are egalitarian lay religious traditions that subvert that as a distinction.

Chris

[Sean]

Jack Aidley wrote: "I believe there is a real world, and that that world corresponds in a meaningful fashion to our senses."

This turns out to be hard to prove. I believe it too though.

Chris, why do religious studies people feel compelled to include these borderline cases that subvert your definition as part of 'religion'? I can think of two plausible answers:

1) They 'seem like religion' even though they don't fit one or another traditional definition. What's the basis of the seeming, then? It seems that here you've got to assume there's some underlying concept of religion that hasn't been analyzed well enough to receive a clear formulation, or else that religion is too 'out there', if the seeming in question is to have any basis other than whim.

2) The ol' Wittgensteinian 'family resemblance' line: well, there are these things that are sort of like these other things and those are sort of like these other things, and so on, and gosh, where would you draw a non-arbitrary line? I guess there isn't one...


The status of (2) is unclear at best. Many intelligent people consider this kind of line an abication of intellectual or theoretical responsibility more generally; of those who do not, the best tend to be very astute at comparing different particular cases in illuminating ways. On the other hand, you might also think the argument, like so many others, just shows the hopelessness of being an empiricist about everything, and the importance of keeping certain concepts fixed on 'rational' or 'a priori' grounds (at least until the needs of research show that it's time to replace them with better ones) so that you can make progress with your investigations.

[clehrich]

Chris, why do religious studies people feel compelled to include these borderline cases that subvert your definition as part of 'religion'?

Well I don't think we do, actually.  The sticking point is usually tribal religions, and there are an awful lot of those.  To treat the customs of non-literate peoples as borderline is problematic in its own way, right?

2) The ol' Wittgensteinian 'family resemblance' line: well, there are these things that are sort of like these other things and those are sort of like these other things, and so on, and gosh, where would you draw a non-arbitrary line? I guess there isn't one...

Bingo.  It's like pornography: in a sense, I can't define it but I know it when I see it.  But these days, we usually don't worry about absolute definitions because it seems pretty clear that we're not going to settle on any.

Many intelligent people consider this kind of line an abication of intellectual or theoretical responsibility more generally; of those who do not, the best tend to be very astute at comparing different particular cases in illuminating ways. On the other hand, you might also think the argument, like so many others, just shows the hopelessness of being an empiricist about everything, and the importance of keeping certain concepts fixed on 'rational' or 'a priori' grounds (at least until the needs of research show that it's time to replace them with better ones) so that you can make progress with your investigations.

Well, I quite agree with you in a lot of ways.  As far as I'm concerned, it's comparison that offers any sort of reasonable hope of coming to greater clarity about this category, "religion."  

On the subject of empiricism, we have a basic problem there, in that there are ethical problems with determining what's religion on a priori grounds.  If it were entirely true that everyone simply thought of "religion" as a useful category and no more, then it would be just fine to say that X people have religion and Y people don't.  But the reality is that the word "religion" has exceedingly strong valuations in our own culture, and thus to announce that X has a religion and Y doesn't ends up being a statement of some sort of value.  And since we're trying to study people, we're generally trying to be wary of imposing valuations on them.  

My students tend to take this to extremes: they're so anxious not to have to say anything definite about other peoples' religions that they end up thinking theorists about religion are proposing theories of how religion should be rather than trying to formulate descriptive categories of how religion is.  And then they say that so-and-so is wrong because religion shouldn't be X way.  I put it very bluntly at them: if Frazer argues that savages believe in magic because they're stupid (he doesn't, actually, but they always think he does), you can certainly say that you don't believe this because you don't believe the savages are stupid.  But that's only a statement of opinion: if you accept his definition of magic, and you accept that only stupid people believe in it, then what are you going to say about people who believe in magic?  You can find it unethical to say they're stupid, but the syllogism hasn't been challenged.

I don't know if that clarifies matters, of course.

[Valamir]

Chris, why do religious studies people feel compelled to include these borderline cases that subvert your definition as part of 'religion'?

Well I don't think we do, actually.  The sticking point is usually tribal religions, and there are an awful lot of those.  To treat the customs of non-literate peoples as borderline is problematic in its own way, right?

Interesting.

But if tribal religions are the sticking point, what is lost by not trying to define "Religion" and instead defining "Tribal Religion" over here, and "Non Tribal Religion" over there.

I mean if trying to define them together prevents one from being able to define anything conclusively at all, then it seems to me you just narrow down the range a little bit and start defining categories.

[Jason Lee]

Weird observation:

Whenever a thread gets started asking what people believe, why does the conversation almost always focus on the atheists, agnostics, and Christians?  Not saying I have a particular problem with people being atheist, agnostic, or Christian, but it always seems that these are the only voices being heard.

According to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey the top two brackets are:

76.5%  Christianity
14.1%  Nonreligious (Almost double what it was in 1990, btw.)

UK figures from the 2001 census are:

72% Christian
15.5% Nonreligious

So, that's why they're the only voices heard.  They're most of the voices.

[greyorm]

As far as intellectually true religion goes, it's highly unlikely because the adherents would have to believe only in "true" things. "Intellectually true" means mainly accomodating of logic and consistency in it's axioms, qualities totally irrelevant to religions. Religions are myths priests try to explain, not something "intellectually true".

"Religions" are not myths priests try to explain. Myths are a part of religions. Myths are events priests try to explain, at least in some religions. In many other religions, myths are parables to be meditated upon, not "the infallible truth of things" or "the way the world works because."

Modern paganism, Asatru, and the Mystery Cults of ancient Rome are just some examples of religions where myth was/is understood as sacred symbolism, not actual truth or an "explanation of events."

Religion, in fact, might best be described as the passing on of data deemed important, and the performance of specific actions in a specific context. That is, a religion is a collection of "myths" and "rituals."

And I don't even like to use the word "myths" because "supernatural stories" is only one of the things I mean to refer to: folk wisdom, social laws, natural or societal observations, etc. are other things that it could be instead (or in addition to).

And "rituals" could as easily be observances or behaviors.

So, quite honestly, we're talking about wholly seperate things, here, because I'm aware of religions which where logic and consistency in axiom are not totally irrelevant qualities, and one specific case where such are central features of the religion.

Hence, two probabilities present themselves: when I say "religion" I am referring to something completely different than what you call "religion," and your understanding of what the term "religion" encompasses is incomplete.

Also, when I refer to my religious beliefs, I refer to things I "know" and not things I simply "believe." I'm not much of one for faith. I prefer empiricism. What I can see, what I can feel, what I can actually know (reasonably). So, again, we are talking about different things, and I'm not sure that your premises are strong enough to necessarily support the conclusion you've come to.

what I mean is it supports some other hypothesis better.

That's exactly what I said, though, Chris...that there was no hypothesis supported better by the evidence. I went over it again and again. It certainly wasn't a "need" to believe...I'd been, and still do, go through stages of agnosticism, and I constantly question myself, but I keep coming back to the irrefutable facts of my experiences, and have to say, "Fuck it. There's nothing else reasonable."

Why? All the "more reasonable" possibilities are less reasonable, less plausible, because they require belief (faith) in something equally (or more) absurd than a divine presence or spiritual dimension to the universe.

That's way bad.  But what do you mean specifically?

Alright, look at some of the statements posted on this (and related) threads, or commonly posted as "truisms" by self-proclaimed atheists. "Religious people are stupid," "Religions are the opiate of the masses," "Religion is nothing more than people trying to gain power over others," "Religion should be wiped out," "Every war in history is because of religion," etc.

That's what I'm talking about. They talk and sound just like, just exactly like the religious fantatics. Further, they even have their own modern myths passed from individual to individual, memes -- that "religion is or requires or does or is responsible for X" when such is provably not the case. A specific example is amount the naturalistic fallacy (examples being "in nature the strong rule the weak" or "in nature, it is survival of the fittest") is used as support of logic.

And yet they pride themselves on "logic, objectivity, and being above ignorance" when it is clear that they are not, and are definitely ignorant in many regards, particularly in those areas closest to examination of their own supporting premises.

They call for a sort of cultural genocide, deride and dismiss anyone not like them, and so forth. Sounds like a religious cult.

This is why I rant about modern atheists and ignorance and fanaticism...because, damnit, they go hand in hand. "Religion is evil!" is the cry, and then a long list of Western Judeo-Christian atrocities follows.

I strongly believe that the reason atheism, agnosticism, and Christianity are the main things discussed in religion threads are not because they're what educated white males know, but because the majority of educated white males are ignorant about anything else.

They've decided "THIS is religion, and THIS is bad, hence religion is bad" so they keep talking about this "thing" as though it's real, basing their decisions and facts off of that belief, and never bother sticking their heads out the door of their own culture and history.

When you examine religion, faith, and spirituality from a global, non-Western perspective, much of the "Atheist" argument against "the evils of religion" becomes transparent or falls apart.

Note that the religious belief of each age is laughable to the next.

This is true in specific, individual cases, but is not valid as a generalization.

In fact, the same can be said of social institutions, or medical knowledge. "The medical knowledge of each age is laughable to the next." So what does that mean, that medicine is all crap? Because our modern medical knowledge and beliefs are going to be laughable in a century? Like last century's are to us?

Prior to the invention of science as a method of inquiry, other methods had to be used...I consider that these mostly amount to making shit up and letting the most plausible tales gain momentum.

If that were true about the formation of religious mythologies, I would agree. Of course, it isn't quite that simple.

What gets me most about this and similar arguments is the assumption of the truth of modern man's great error: "we're so much smarter and much less gullible than our (barbaric) ancestors!"

Seriously, humanity hasn't changed THAT much in thousands of years. We're fundamentally the same beings; and our ancestors weren't morons, which is what this line of logic always silently hinges on.

It relies on putting forth facts that are absurd upon consderation, because for them to be true, our ancestors would have to have been blind and unthinking, unquestioning and without reason. It assumes that they would mistake fiction for truth, and never even wonder or argue about such matters despite their own experiences.

Bullshit. Our ancestors were as smart as modern man -- performing tasks we are only slowly figuring out how to do with their "crude" tools (and in some cases, until recently, had no idea how it was done without technology).

Our ancestors studied the patterns of the stars, created calendars, knew the earth was round, calculated the effects of gravity and pressure, worked with some very high-level mathematics (and without 0!), performed surgeries, knew how to find food and water, made lasting protective shelters, created systems of social government, pondered morality, philosophy, and ethics, created and reveled in art, and numerous other incredible accomplishments -- and not simply through dumb luck.

Survival requires the seperation of falsehood and truth, requires the ability to discern favorable actions that encourage survival from those which hinder or do not contribute to it. And life was much, much harsher back then...you had to be able to think on your feet in order to survive, had to know your environment intimately, and be far more aware of the state and changes in the local world, the seasons, and similar things than modern people are.

By studying phenomena and noting correlations -- via what would be referred to today as "the scientific method" -- they carved out lasting societies and self-sustaining communities, gained an understanding of the cycles of the natural world, eventually expanded their borders, engaged in trade, and made advancements in knowledge and technology.

And yes, just like today, it didn't always reveal the truth, or someone took the wrong data to mean the wrong thing, and it was perpetuated for years or decades without correction. Look at what passed for scientific truth just forty years ago...laughable, right? "We're so much smarter today!" Whatever.

They weren't huddled savages praying to the "scary lights in the sky" for help, running about grunting, fighting, and cowering to superiors -- despite the modern myth of "our stupid, unmodern, uncivilized, uncultured" ancestors. Ancient man behaved just like us, just without toasters.

So, no, I don't believe in the "advances in modern thinking allowed us to outgrow all those silly superstitions we made up to explain things cause we were drooling morons back then" argument. Logically, it doesn't fly.

The priests and magicians of ancient times were well-educated in the sciences. To think they would perpetrate obvious myths for no reason other than tradition is to do a disservice to the human mind...no, as with modern versions of the same religions, there are deeper meanings to the stories than the surface details. Religious myths are purposefully full of symbolism and mysticism.

And no, I'm not talking about Judeo-Christian religion, which is different from most other religions in its insistence that its stories are infallibly true history and events, rather than sacred myths. (And yes, I know that's not even true for all versions of Christianity and its cousins)

[contracycle]

The priests and magicians of ancient times were well-educated in the sciences. To think they would perpetrate obvious myths for no reason other than tradition is to do a disservice to the human mind...no, as with modern versions of the same religions, there are deeper meanings to the stories than the surface details. Religious myths are purposefully full of symbolism and mysticism.

Hmm, well I feel it was not that they merely duplicated myth for no reason, but for the very particular reason that it constructed a pretext for them to be fed and housed by others without having to work.  And I suggest they are full of alleged symbolism as a form of deliberate obscurantism, a trade secret.

[Brian Leybourne]

Brian, Brian, Brian...didn't you read my rant last year?
You're strongly anti-fundamentalist is what you are. You aren't anti-religion, at least not based on the reasons you give in your post, because you aren't describing religion...you're describing Western Judeo-Christian religions, with strong fundamentalist overtones. But not all religion.

My examples would seem to say that, you're right. Of course, since those are the only religions I have good knowledge of, that's where I draw my examples from.

But OK, I'll bite.

Perhaps if I shift my stance slightly and say that I'm opposed to fundamentalism, I'm opposed to any form of belief when it's used as an excuse for intolerance, and I'm opposed to any form of belief when it draws lines between those who do and those who don't believe (whether those lines involve name calling or suicide bombing). Actually, I suppose that falls into the "intolerance" box anyway.

Better? :-)

Brian.

[Jack Aidley]

Jack Aidley wrote: "I believe there is a real world, and that that world corresponds in a meaningful fashion to our senses."

This turns out to be hard to prove. I believe it too though.

Hard? Try impossible, I think - Kant and all that.

[Green]

"we're so much smarter and much less gullible than our (barbaric) ancestors!"

LOL.  Greyorm, we should do lunch.

[Rich Stokes]

I used to think of myself as non-religious, and then as anti-established-religion but more lately I'm just a plain old Secular Humanist.  I don't and can't believe in a god, it's just utterly preposterous.  But that doesn't mean I have no faith.  Like many folks here I have absolute faith in there being no god.  I often find myself trying to explain the difference between no belief and a belief in nothing to religious types and they usually fail to see a distinction, but that's ok by me.

I used to be fairly fundamentalist about Atheism, but lately I find I really don't care what other folks think.  It's everyone's right to be believe what they want, even if it's wrong.  And yes, I think that people who have any faith in any god are wrong, but that doesn't mean I think they're wasting their time in church.  Churches and the act of worship can be great for people.  As I don't believe in any kind of afterlife or higher purpose, I see the meaning of life as living and enjoying it.  If folks get something out of the experience, then that's good, right?  I enjoy RPGs, they enjoy worship, some people really dig watching 20+ hours of TV a week, who's to judge?  If it's fulfilling, go for it.  I only pity them if their beliefs are making them or others unhappy.

A very close friend once asked me why, if I didn't believe in a god or any kind of divine retribution for sins, I didn't just act like an arsehole the whole time.  I couldn't get my head around that: Did he really need the fear of god to scare him into being a morally sound person?  His parents were religious types too, so I guess he'd never had to formulate his own morality.

I was raised an Atheist in a largely secular country (the UK).  Even though there were prayers at school, I guess I was about 14 when I realised that there were people who ACTUALLY BELIEVED all this stuff.  I'd assumed that everyone knew it was poppycock and just kinda went along with it up until then, and it was really weird for me to see that, no, there really were people who MEANT IT when they said the words of the lord's prayer.  I thought it was like Santa or the Easter bunny: Nobody really believes, right, but we go along with it anyway?  So i guess you could say I've never had a crisis of faith, I've always been true to my beliefs and I've never doubted them.

I still take issue with anyone who preaches their beliefs, and I find myself being even more annoyed if their beliefs do not agree with mine (ie, they are wrong), but fundamentalist Atheists who cannot see that religion and (more accurately) belief can actually do a lot of people a lot of good wind me up a good' un.  You don't really have a great tradition of Jehovah's Didn't-see-anything-guv's, who might come around to your house and tell you that there's no god and you're not going to hell.  We do have a tradition of people who come round to your house and tell you about double glazing and that you're going to be cold if you don't have any and they piss me off too.  But anyone who tells me I'm going to hell because I don't go to church is going to get laughed at, loudly.

Oh well...

[Christopher Weeks]

Raven,

I'm not familiar with the body of atheists that you're referring to.  I haven't read prominent atheist writers.  I don't get together with other atheists to make fun of the poor unwashed masses.  I don't know that they sound like religious fanatics, but at least the way you're painting them, they do sound silly.

I definately overgeneralized the appearance of past religions.  I think my point is valid in many western cases, but not a global phenomena.  But I'm not sure the comparison of evolving religion to medicine makes sense because medecine essentially didn't exist before say 200 years ago while religion of various flavors has a much longer history.

What gets me most about this and similar arguments is the assumption of the truth of modern man's great error: "we're so much smarter and much less gullible than our (barbaric) ancestors!"

I don't think that.  And I don't think my argument is predicated on it in any way.  If any fault is to be hilighted in my assertion, it is that science can be boiled down to a similar process.  I just think it is provably better at getting to the truth, faster and more reliably.  I assume you know that the scientific method is more than "studying phenomena and noting correlations."

Look at what passed for scientific truth just forty years ago...laughable, right? "We're so much smarter today!"

Uh, no.  I'm not sure what "scientific truth" is, but if you mean the hypotheses that were best supported by the available data analysis, then no.  It's not laughable.  Some of it was wrong, but more of it just needed little tweaks.  Forty years ago we had a strong foundation on which to build, just like today.

So, no, I don't believe in the "advances in modern thinking allowed us to outgrow all those silly superstitions we made up to explain things cause we were drooling morons back then" argument. Logically, it doesn't fly.

Don't you see that you're fighting a straw man by making that stance up and sort of debunking it?  Specifically, the invention of the scientific method increased our ability to search for truth.  No drooling morons were involved.  But that doesn't mean that silly (once you have better-fit hypotheses) superstitions (explanations of how and why things happen or once happened) weren't made up.  It just means that they didn't have the tools to do better.  And not just the tools, but the foundation.  Every single discovery (and even incorrect hypothesis) today is made by someone standing on the shoulders of giants.  

A contemporary example of the silly superstition thing is the "debate" between competing hypotheses of the origin of species.  On the one hand, we have "the" theory of evolution and on the other, biblical creation.  The creation myth of God and the seven days was a fine story for explaining something that a people had absolutely no way to investigate.  I mean, I guess it's hard to imagine that people would have agreed with it so fully when there's not way to verify it, but whatever...there was no contradictory evidence.  Now there is.  The people who made up that creation story, originally, were not drooling idiots because they were not rejecting reason.

Chris

[greyorm]

Hmm, well I feel it was not that they merely duplicated myth for no reason, but for the very particular reason that it constructed a pretext for them to be fed and housed by others without having to work.  And I suggest they are full of alleged symbolism as a form of deliberate obscurantism, a trade secret.

lol...I should have predicted that one from you, Gareth.
I'd agree, if it made sense upon examination. That is, for this to be true, one would have to believe there was a generational conspiracy in the priesthoods of all world religions created specifically to support the priesthoods as the society's "fat cats." That would mean that everyone who ever became a priest did so for selfish, rather than spiritual, reasons -- which is so difficult to believe that it is preposterous.

This would be as ridicuous as claiming that your quests for social justice, and your desires to see communist economic structures put in place is an attempt by yourself to increase your own social standing and power, rather than via any real or primary concern for those issues. Or as ridiculous as claiming as those who were doctors or healers in ancient (or modern) times became such and perform such solely for the prestige and money, rather than out of any real or primary concern for the welfare or health of others.

Now, I do not doubt abuse of one's position undoubtedly occurred in individual cases, but perpetration of such a scheme for social dominance across the ages (to say nothing of cultures), requires one to believe the absolute worst of millions of individuals throughout time, that every priest everywhere ever was less interested in spiritual, ethical, and societal concerns than in their own personal welfare. And that's a lot of bullshit to try and swallow, given that it has usually been those interested in social justice and community welfare who are attracted to the priesthood and its mysticism.

(To say nothing of its hinging on the idea that, again, ancient man was so stupid that they couldn't see it occuring in front of their faces, every, anywhere.)

Fact is, the priests in most societies worked quite hard and gave back a great deal to their communities. They were the engineers, architects, judges, and counsellors (among other things) to their people. They certainly didn't sit around getting free housing and food for doing nothing, let alone for reasons of personal greed. Priests in many cultures also had to perform lengthy public rituals...strenuous and demanding, and if solely for the purpose of keeping, alot of work when other options would have been avilable to achieve the same.

And of course, the idea of priest as social beneficiary isn't even true in all cultures. As an example: Norse gothi were priests in addition to whatever it was they did for a living. They only existed for social functions, not as spiritual authorities, because for the Norse, what is between a man and the gods is between a man and the gods.

I could go into the practices and social realities of shamans and medicine men in various Native American tribes as well, but I should hope the one example is sufficient to expose the flaw.

Your explanation also would not account for the variety of mystic religions that exist whose practitioners and priests are not on top of their social totem pole. And I can guarantee those didn't develop "later" from established religious traditions -- they've been there since the begining, right along with the more secular priesthoods in various societies.

So, sorry, no dice.

Also, why do I get the feeling you would call Zen Bhuddism "deliberate obscurantism"? (when, I'd hope you know, that isn't its function or point at all)

[Muggins]

I definitely think I am coming in late here (blames me for being new around here), but here goes:

Having had far too many years to think about things, I have made some conclusions on religion. In background, I am an Anglican (Episcopalian for our American brethren). I was schooled in a private Catholic schools. I did two years of Comparative Theology in one of my many forays into academia. By trade I am a scientist, a geologist in fact. But the only label I can apply to myself is (and i discovered philosophical arguments don't do it for me):

Agnostic Christian.

Why Agnostic: Because God would really ruin my life and all other aspects of our day to day life if He could actually intervene in the world. Consider that if God defied the Law of Gravity just once, Gravity would become null and void, owing to the empirical principles of observation. Basically, provided God does not affect my physical existence, His existence can be be accepted. The life of the soul, the afterlife, all of which is perfectly acceptable, while miracles and divine intervaention would simply make a mockery of all human endeavour for the last 150 years.

Why Christian: because all my moral and ethical stances are informed by my very Christian upbringing. I find nothing more offensive than the fundamentalist Christians who get bogged down in the technical fluff of the testaments and miss the basic truth of the matter: Love one another as you would be loved. Respect. And forgive those who trespass against you. I find the inability of most "Christians" to forgive their most heinous crime. The death penalty, pre-emptive strike, racial and religious intolerance, all these are anathema to the core precepts of Christianity. Nothing is worse than a self-righteous bigot, who fails to remember that humility and tolerance are God's most valued commodities.

Of course, I could be wrong...

James

[greyorm]

I'm opposed to any form of belief when it's used as an excuse for intolerance...Better? :-)

Works for me. Heck, that's my stand on the issue as well!
In fact, I don't disagree at all with anything you stated as problems or atrocities in your posts -- just the ascription.

LOL.  Greyorm, we should do lunch.

If we both make it to Indy this year, you're on.