I think it would be inpossible to totally separate religious rules from secular rules. Both preach against killing, stealing, etc. These rules have an absolutness from both camps. The call to kindness and love by many religions are for the benefit of the participates. Just like obeying traffic lights and stop signs in daily life keep you safer and healthier, so following the rules of kindness and love will help keep you safer and healthier also. I don’t belong to any religion, but I do recognize their value. Of course, there is a down side in many religions – going to hell, separation from God, etc. These negative teachings should be done away with in my opinion, so more positive ideas can be explored.
Please forgive me if I am being too simplistic here, as I am far from an expert, but don’t most religions teach some form of balance between good and evil, light and dark, yin and yang?
Christianity teaches you will reap what you sow.
Paganism has the three-fold law.
Many Eastern philosophies believe in karma.
In other words, if you are only putting out negative energy, expect to get it back, sometimes amplified, at some point.
Isn’t there some form of this in pretty much all organized religions?
I don’t think Theravada Buddhism teaches there’s an afterlife of any sort. There is no “transmigration of souls”, but rather a system of karmic cause-and-effect, where one being begets another, like a candle may be used to light another candle. There is no continuity of being from one life to the next in this school of thought, only the phenomenological consequence of being recapitulating itself until the cycle of rebirth can be halted by engaging in right existence, as discovered by the Buddha.
Alan, I think you are on to something though in particular with the importance of ritual in religion.
Extending my question now though, really inspired again by Redfury’s post -
The secular world now has offered up other ways to meet some of the same needs that were once upon a time only satisfied by the world’s religions. How much of the world’s difficulties today, on both the international and domestic sides, are based on conflicts between these value systems?
Domestically of course we see the agenda of some to reclaim the US as a moral Christian nation and to read “secular humanism” as evil, rather than as a non-religious basis of moral justification for behavioral expectations. We see the conflict between what certain religions claim are “right” and what our countries laws have claimed are “right” play out in everything from gay rights to Terri Schaivo to researching stem cells. Conflict between America as a plurilistic country vs America as a Christian nation.
Internationally we see Islamists fighting to the death against the encroachment of Western secularism into what they see as their world. And we see a conflict between our group identifications. Religionist, nationalist patriot, Western secularist citizen of the World, ethinic group member. Time was that ethnicity, religion, and citizenry all were the same thing for almost all of us. (Historically I mean, not personally.)
So, is a major underlaying issue in the world today religions’ resistance to being marginalized as just another group membership and use for comfort in times of doubt? Or not?
But that’s very close to my point. Rules aren’t what define religion, nor a religion, in most cases. In neither case are the rules necessarily absolute, in the sense I intend. (Perhaps ultimate or transcendant would be better.) A law against murder might be universal, that is, intended to apply to all persons and all situations under the law without exception, but very few secular states would claim that refraining from murder (or even obeying the entire legal code) ought to be the ultimate principle orienting life and towards which all thought and activity should ultimately be directed.
In Christianity, all rules and laws are explicitly relativised and made non-ultimate by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, who is the appropriate orienting principle for all being. In Judaism, the Torah is given a sort of penultimacy or functional ultimacy as the covenant and teaching of God, by which He has directed the covenant community to order and orient its life. True Ultimacy/Absoluteness/Trascendence is reserved to (and the functional, proximate ultimacy of Torah is derivative from) God alone. I understand Islam is similar in its understanding of the relationship between and relative importance of God and the law.
Secular orders rarely make the sorts of claims for ultimacy in ordering human life that those religions make for God, that Buddhism makes for Enlightenment and release from suffering, that Unitarian Universalism makes for individual human dignity and the search for truth, that Confucianism makes for proper relationships, etc. Where secular orders do make such claims (often in philosophy) they generally lack a ritualized mode of orienting ourselves according to such claims, ie, they lack anything that could be construed as worship.
Apart from religion, the only possible case I can think of that might contain both claims of ultimacy and worship would be some absolutist dictatorships, such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, North Korea, etc. These cases often seem to have explicity religious trappings and tend to be described as cults or as cult-like. Even then, with the possible exception of N. Korea, the attempt to make a religion of the state seems, in my impression, never to have been completely realized. Were it to be realized, I think it would be recognized by most people as a religion.
Yes, I believe you are right. Most religions recognize favors for good works and punishment for bad. From what I have experienced the old “Ye shall reap whatsoever Ye sow” best explains what happens. I think if one contemplates that knowledge on even a small thing – shouting foul language at someone and having them return with the same kind of language – it will become more apparent.
But the rule doesn’t always mean you will receive back from the same person you gave. The works, good or bad, can return from anyone at anytime.
Minor note: that is only the case for Wicca and its descendants. There are many modern pagan religions that are not Wiccan and do not hold to its tenets. Feri and its descendant Reclaiming (which more people have heard of) are non-Wiccan forms of religious witchcraft, as one example; none of the reconstructions are Wiccish at all.
Back to the OP, to supplement my original comment: I think one thing that religions have in common (though this does not distinguish them from a number of non-religious systems) is that they are systems for the assignment and manipulation of meaning.
Pochacco, “systems of interlocking & self-supporting supernatural beliefs that combine to create a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the universe and human existence?”
Personaly, I would say that they cointain
“Just-So Stories” of why it is ok to eat animals, or not ok in some cases, and such things, but your defintion fits too, save for the fact that the stories are not always comprehensive. Heck, even L.Ron Hubbard’s religion has some crazy tale about space aliens that explains why some people are good and some are bad.
You got to be kidding, the only thing you can give to science, which I’m not entirely sure is a total positive, is that science is changed easier.
I don’t understand why there has to be antagonism between science and religion. Religion asks “Why?” (a potentially unanswerable question), while Science asks “How?” (much easier to posit)
I was thinking about this issue not more than half-an-hour ago, while walking to the quickie-mart for a pack of smokes… “Why is it that scientists (and I’m talking about ‘real’ scientists) have no truck with religion, while there are many “devout” folks who feel threatened by science?” Well, it was a short walk, so the best I could come up with is that those who feel most threatened by Science are the ones who understand it the least.
I think that the awe and beauty of the scientific view of the world is very similar to that experienced by many of the religious persuasion. There’s no reason both views can’t co-exist.
One reason might be that many people insist that everything what-so-ever proves religion right, and get irratated when science doesn’t. Another reason might be that once upon a time, religion answered, “how”, how the earth came to be, how come animals are so tasty, what the stars are, and people are pissed that science does a more accurate job of explaing such things than religion does.
That one’s easy…because they’re made out of meat!!!
Yeah, that’s kinda what I was thinking of, as well as the verse in genesis which gives adam permission to form P.E.T.A. (People Eating Tasty Animals)
Pope John Paul II:
Yeah…what he said!!!
All religons have in common the commandment “Thou shall not disfigure the soul”.