Did you mean to reply to another post?
Sorry but I don’t mean just the lunatic fringe. Each and every single religious leader in the world, from the small town preacher to the most exalted grand poobah, makes claims about the world and their knowledge about it with no more real experience than you or me claiming that a fairy tale is true. All too many of them actually claim to take instructions from a supernatural being. Seriously. The lunatic fringe at least have the courtesy to be obvious in their lunacy.
And just because (good) science limits itself to studying the physical world doesn’t imply that a supernatural world exists and, even if one does exist, it certainly doesn’t mean that whatever religious leader you like can perceive and interact with that world.
Wrong. Sorry.
Can you point to some who don’t?
Do tell. Who is this religious leader who sticks only to demonstrable facts? I may be willing to convert if you know someone who actually communicates with God and can demonstrate that it is anything other than a one way conversation.
Certainly those in my congregation (where all three rabbis are avowed non-believers) and pretty much everyone I’ve met in the Reform, Reconstructionist and Liberal Judaism movements. If I have met someone active in those movements who believes in a transcendental god, they’ve been too embarrassed to say so out loud. 
ETA: Basically, there’s a whole world of religious humanism out there that your claim about “each and every single religious leader in the world” is ignoring, not to mention the religions that focus on practice and either aren’t fussed about, try to downplay or actively disavow belief in the supernatural/transcendent. We’ve been over this before on the boards a few times but it still seems to take people by surprise.
Well, that certainly took me by surprise.
Espescially the part where you call a movement a religion, where it doesn’t involve belief in the supernatural/transcendent.
How does that work?
To my mind UU’s are certainly a “religious” movement, but many of its leaders are atheists and humanists.
It seems you are using a definition of religion that requires belief in the supernatural, which is certainly one of many possible definitions, but which sort of begs the question about whether religion and science are compatible.
Ah, I see. We disagree on the use of the word “religious” I guess. I confess to having a hard time wrapping my mind around a religion that makes no claim of any kind about anything supernatural. That sounds more like a club or society to me. Perhaps you could suggest a (nice) word that I can use for groups that believe in the supernatural, you know they exist, so I won’t keep tripping over all the people who are religious but have no interest in any non-earthly reality. I’ll use that word in the future.
I tend to use “believers” to describe people who believe in things and “religious” to people who practice (i.e. doing stuff) religion. In my experience, they sometimes overlap but also exist on their own. I’m sure there are also some believers who don’t practice religion, too.
People who believe in a god would be called Theists.
Religion is (typically) a combination of beliefs and practice. As SecondJudith points out, there are many believers that are not religious (my mom being one).
Of course, I would say the vast majority of the religious are also theists in some form. But there are exceptions, including entire religious movements.
And when they have ‘answers’ about the other stuff they all differ anyway. You either will be/won’t be going to heaven/not heaven because you are/are not Jewish/Protestant/Catholic/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist if you do good things/believe the right things.
Lenny Bruce: “Reform shuls. Reform Rabbis. So Reform they’re ashamed they’re Jewish.”
When I was a kid the reform rabbis still believed in God. (Just not in Hebrew. ) I respect that the reform guide to the Bible now accepts that the Davidic Kingdom really didn’t exist. But how soon will it be that this branch becomes purely about the celebration of the tradition and not the actual belief. Our traditions are worthy of celebrating, but is it a religion any more? I got married in the Ethical Culture Society, which was a Jewish spinoff and strictly secular, but of course humanist. They didn’t consider themselves a religion, except for tax and marrying purposes. Is that where you are going, and if you are, are you going to wind up in the same atheist position I’m in?
To me, what SecondJudith describes sounds akin to a prayer during a historical reenactment. It may be religious, but it’s not religion. From the OED:
Even Buddhists believe in a supreme power, although they don’t necessary ascribe the quality of being to it.
I would say it’s rituals, not religion.
Nothing wrong with that but maybe, SecondJudith, you’re just an atheist but too embarrassed to say so out loud.
Look it is a fair question, the people who have a firm dogma about their god or whatever generally organize themselves into a nice little religion. The people [like me] who do not pretend to have any answers are shunned by the major religions. Do I know that there is a god? Nup, do I believe there is something beyond us? Yes, but how do I know? I just do. Call me irrational, illogical or stupid doesn’t change what I believe. It can’t because IMO it is beyond me or you to truly understand it.
What a lot of people believe is that science is science and it is right. That’s me. Evolution etc etc are all facts that sit quite comfortably with me but I feel that there is something beyond, now if science one day explains that [which it may do] then I will accept it.
It’s spelled “Allah”.
That’s perfectly fine, but it’s not necessarily the only valid definition of “religion”. Random House has:
The first clearly allows for religion that doesn’t require a superhuman agency.
Communism, at least the Stalinist version, is pretty definitely a religion (with hierarchy and schisms and inquisitions, yet), that does not involve belief in the supernatural/transcendent, unless the historical dialectic counts as “transcendent.”
It’s not hierarchy, schisms or “inquisitions” that define something to be a religion though.
I’ve always found the claim that fascism and communism are actually religions to be far over the top.
They do have similarities, and quite a few people believed in their dogma’s as they would believe in a religious dogma. Like f.i. that all workers would eventually live in a workers ‘paradise’. Certainly there was also a heavy emphasis on symbolisms and rituals.
Yet these things just remain the trappings. Not a belief in something super-natural, which remains the definition of a religion. To me.
Having said that, there were of course plenty of adherants to these belief-systems that did see some of it as super-natural. Who viewed the Führer as an actual savior with super power/knowledge, or the Soviet girl that would say aloud the Komsomol credo to Brezjnevs poster, every night she went to bed. Knowing that he could see her.
That is the closest will you get to an actual equivalence. There will allways be stupid people, and those that know they are ignorant and trust those above them to know everything.
Kind of like the awe for that man in the white coat with that magical implement around his neck.