I dunno, how religious do you want to be? How about, you don’t believe in God, but still decide to live your life according to the moral code of, say, Judaism, because you think that this code makes sense even if wholly invented by humans, as opposed to being divinely inspired? How about, you don’t believe in God, but Jewish tradition is still a part of your identity? How about, you don’t believe in God, but you still think that religious rituals also serve important secular functions? I think that there can be room for such a thing as “religion for atheists” (actually, someone should write a book aboutthat).
(That might be a discussion for another thread, though.)
I combine various flavours of Paganism. I chiefly worship Greek deities, but I worship most frequently with a Northern Tradition kindred (Norse deities) and with a Reclaiming circle. (Being a polytheist is convenient that way.)
Don’t know about the former, but in Glasgow an atheist who supported Celtic would be a Catholic atheist, while an atheist who supported Rangers would be a Protestant atheist.
Sort of. I don’t really follow any particular religion – I just basically believe in a god, and that’s about it. Sort of a sentient version of the Force, is the best way to describe it.
I call myself a “vague theist”. Perhaps all religions have some element of truth in them, or simply different ways of reaching god. I don’t think god can really be put in one box.
In fact, in Japan, it’s something like 80%+ are Buddhist and 75%+ are Shinto. I predict similar numbers for Hindu and Buddhism in India. If you look at the wikipedia page of a random Buddha you have decent chances of it listing a Kami and a Hindu god that are the same as it. Outside of Abrahamic religions, syncretism is widely practiced – after all, it tend to be easier to convince people to follow your religion when they’re compatible than when they have to give up their cultural heritage to follow it.
Leonard Cohen is something like a “BuJu”, and has lots of Catholic themes in his music. I think he’s just a cultural Jew though. Syncretism is pretty common in a lot of places, and certain religious like Voodoo and Santeria are that way. The Romans were great cannibals of mostly Greek religion. And yes, Japan. Jragon, where do those figures come from though? It seems hard to measure, I get the impression that most Japanese don’t really think about it.
Then there’s those Zensunni, Zenshiite, Zensufi, Zenisunni Catholic, Mahayana Christianity…
I’d have to make a few emails to get the exact source, but the polls have been the subject of whole books. There are many, many problems with Japanese religious statistics – some of which are built into the language.
For instance, on the same poll a large amount (90%+ I think) also answered mushukyo, which is a way somebody might try to translate “irreligious” to Japanese. So how can somebody be Shinto-Buddhist AND Mushukyo? Well, there are a lot of theories. One is simply that Mushukyo, meaning more or less “religion is meaningless” holds a different connotation than atheist or irreligious. It means more that it’s unknowable, or has no bearing on life, or that you don’t believe it but practice it to be safe or any number of things.
Another idea is a cultural expectation stigma, it’s really, really funny in that this goes both ways. I can’t remember the book, but one person gives an account of asking a person why they practice all these Buddhist rituals if they’re Christian. The respondent pondered for a moment and said “Because I’m Japanese.” So you’re in some ways expected to be culturally Buddhist/Shinto. But at the same time, there’s a bit of a meme in Japan that religion is dying quickly and on its way out – completely despite the polling numbers and bajillion Buddhist and Shinto festivals they have per year (not to mention the relatively stable shrine visit numbers per year and tiny shrines in small businesses to Oinari etc).
It’s a really complicated situation, and I think you’re right that they don’t think or talk about it much, I don’t think such statistics could survive if people introspected about it regularly. You’re also right that the statistics are hard to get a measure on, there’s so much cultural expectation in there that polling probably isn’t as accurate as we’d like it to be. One thing that’s certain is that religion is much more malleable in Japan – such as Christian weddings being more common than Shinto weddings (though from what I hear part of that is due to simple Shinto weddings being really expensive compared to simple Christian ones) for various reasons.
