What is Religion?

Great Debates
101

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Religion is almost undefinable because it seems you can find an exception to virtually every criterion. There are religions without deities. There are religions with no supernatural beliefs at all.

I think the best way to describe it is as a set of practices or beliefs based on axiomatic assumptions which are used to guide individual behavior and decisions. Or to simplify it, it’s living your life according to a central set of beliefs which may or may not be provably true.
[/QUOTE]

Bolding mine

Tell me, in what fundamental ways does this not describe atheism?

102

[QUOTE=the raindog]
Bolding mine

Tell me, in what fundamental ways does this not describe atheism?
[/QUOTE]

Atheism does not contain any practices, beliefs or guidelines for behavior.

103

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I don’t have faith in shit. I know for a fact that nothing can get accepted by the scientific community unless it can be proven to a fare-thee-well. I trust the process, not the people.
[/QUOTE]

Brilliant whoosh!

If you truly believe “that nothing can get accepted by the scientific community unless it can be proven to a fare-thee-well”, it is indeed you that is displaying the greatest of faiths!

104

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Refusing to argue doesn’t make your position any more correct.
[/QUOTE]

Heh snort

105

[QUOTE=Eben]
So I guess the next move is to petition the removal of the word from common usage.
[/quote]
I see no reason to do that. The “tight definition” you later propose is fine for many mundane purposes (though still not without some ambiguity). But let’s do use the term more judiciously when the real topic is “how do we know?”.

106

[QUOTE=the raindog]
Brilliant whoosh!

If you truly believe “that nothing can get accepted by the scientific community unless it can be proven to a fare-thee-well”, it is indeed you that is displaying the greatest of faiths!
[/QUOTE]

Why would you dispute this? Nobody is tougher on new scientific claims than other scientists. Peer review is a rigorous, merciless process and you literally do have to prove everything you say.

107

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Atheism does not contain any practices, beliefs or guidelines for behavior.
[/QUOTE]

Well, addressing the ‘simplified definition’ first, surely you’d agree that atheism is “living your life according to a central set of beliefs which may or may not be provably true.”

Would you not agree with that as written?

108

[QUOTE=the raindog]
Well, addressing the ‘simplified definition’ first, surely you’d agree that atheism is “living your life according to a central set of beliefs which may or may not be provably true.”

Would you not agree with that as written?
[/QUOTE]

No, I don’t agree because atheism has nothing to do with how a person lives his life. It has no guiding principles or beliefs. My atheism is irrelevant to my life decisions.

109

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Why would you dispute this? Nobody is tougher on new scientific claims than other scientists. Peer review is a rigorous, merciless process and you literally do have to prove everything you say.
[/QUOTE]

I think you display much trust, in not just the process, but the people as well.

As I’m sure you’d agree, science has been wrong many times. There is nothing wrong with that. But the notion that the peer review is a rigorous, merciless process and you literally do have to prove everything you say is simply not true. There are many areas of science where we do not have perfect knowledge, and the “proof” has not yet been established. As a result, there are mainstream theories with very incomplete data. An awful lot of what has been ‘said’ has yet to be proven at all.

I don’t like using the word “faith” in this context any more than you do (in large part because it is used to incite) but the fact is that science has no shortage of “trust” or speculation. (no matter how rooted in observed “fact”)

I’d also think it is naive to suggest that ‘peer review’ is immune to peer pressure. There have many scientists that have dared to question common accepted science only to find their careers marginalized. Science is not a bastion of unbiased objectivity.

110

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
No, I don’t agree because atheism has nothing to do with how a person lives his life. It has no guiding principles or beliefs. My atheism is irrelevant to my life decisions.
[/QUOTE]

Have you ever made the decision to do something because it would elevate your position in a post-death world? I’m going to guess that as an atheist you would say no. So then your atheism is very relevant to your life decisions. You probably also have decided not to support certain organizations based upon your atheism.

OTOH, atheism is as far from a good definition as one can get, so if we can include it (and in the weak definition we can) then our definition is not very useful.

-Eben

111

[QUOTE=the raindog]
I think you display much trust, in not just the process, but the people as well.

As I’m sure you’d agree, science has been wrong many times. There is nothing wrong with that. But the notion that the peer review is a rigorous, merciless process and you literally do have to prove everything you say is simply not true.
[/quote]

Cite one example of this not being true at least within the last 100 years or so).

And science does not claim knowledge before it exists. Science is only a method, not some kind of authortarian ideology or philosophy.

Cite one example of something being accepted as scientifically valid without proof.

This is not true. Science does not and cannot operate on faith or trust. Nobody’s word counts for anything. All that counts is evidence.

Like who?

Scientific method and peer review are immune to the personal bias of the human beings engaging. A claim can either be proven or it can’t. Proof takes the subjectivity out of it.

112

[QUOTE=Eben]
Have you ever made the decision to do something because it would elevate your position in a post-death world? I’m going to guess that as an atheist you would say no. So then your atheism is very relevant to your life decisions. You probably also have decided not to support certain organizations based upon your atheism.
[/QUOTE]
Did you know that your lack of belief in arrows being constantly shot at your head right now is very relevent to your life decisions? Look at how you’re not ducking and running from one peice of cover to another all the time.

Did we just elevate every single one of the billions of possible beliefs a person doesn’t have to the status of being religions? If so, I think we just broke the back of your definition.

[QUOTE=Eben]
OTOH, atheism is as far from a good definition as one can get, so if we can include it (and in the weak definition we can) then our definition is not very useful.
[/QUOTE]
Right - if everything is a religion, then the word is meaningless.

I still find it very hard to believe that you seriously can’t determine is a given belief system is a religion or not. I mean, really.

Can I throw out “Must be an actively held, completely believed, system of beliefs involving supernatural entities or supernatural forces” as a possible definition? I think is screens out some of the extreme over-inclusiveness that has been popping up.

113

[QUOTE=Eben]
If by work you mean tells about the truths of the universe (this is what I suspect you meant), then the answer is yes for many people who don’t need hard science knowledge to get through their lives.
[/quote]
Incorrect. First, wrong is wrong, even if they don’t know they are wrong. And second, millions of people suffer and die all the time because of a lack of “hard science knowledge”. Believing in something that’s wrong can easily get you killed.

[QUOTE=Eben]
That’s okay. Astronomy and biology don’t seek truth by methods that are remotely similar either.
[/quote]
Closer, much closer than by evidence free revelations. No matter how much you pretend, religion is nowhere near the level of science in terms of intellectual firmness, in terms of how it acquires knowledge.

[QUOTE=Eben]
Um, careful there. It sure sounds like you’re claiming that science doesn’t have a false view of the world. Clearly science does have a false view of the world, in that not everything is perfectly known by science. If it was then there would be no need for further scientific study.
[/quote]
It has an imperfect, incomplete view of the world. As opposed to religion, which has an imaginary world view. A world view which ignores and denies reality, and makes things up. Again, not the same.

Or in other words, science is imperfect; religion is garbage. Not the same thing.

[QUOTE=Eben]
On the subject of drowning… has anyone ever died because science had a false view? The answer is yes, most definately! Besides the uneducated who dabble in science dangerously, how about dead astronauts? Surely trying to fly into space by means of science has dangers. The false view that science knew everything (or rather enough things) regarding spaceflight contributed to deaths.
[/quote]
And when science is wrong, it corrects itself. Because it’s not based on faith.

[QUOTE=Eben]
All I’m saying here is that you’ve leveled criticism on religion that can be equaly leveled on science.
[/quote]
No, they can’t. You are doing the standard religious apologist trick of claiming that since all things are imperfect, they are equal, therefore religion is valid. Untrue.

Science is usually right, and getting better. Religion is almost always wrong - you’d be better at using dice to make decisions. Science at least tries to discover the truth; religion doesn’t. They simply aren’t the same.

[QUOTE=Eben]
The degrees are likely to be very different, but you’ve still failed to do more than use religion as a denigration rather than a seperation.
[/quote]
Because that’s what it is, in my eyes. Calling a system of belief a religion is an insult; the same as calling it irrational and obviously false.

[QUOTE=Eben]
I’d say that given what we know about quantum physics and relativity that believing in Newtonian Physics and Euclidean Geometry is idiotic. Idiotic, but useful to daily life.
[/quote]
A useful approximation isn’t the same as idiotic.

[QUOTE=mswas]
Heh snort
[/QUOTE]
Do you have anything to add to the conversation ? Your “I am the MIGHTY MSWAS and do not deign to speak to such as you !” act is getting old.

114

[QUOTE=Eben]
Have you ever made the decision to do something because it would elevate your position in a post-death world? I’m going to guess that as an atheist you would say no. So then your atheism is very relevant to your life decisions.
[/quote]
No it isn’t. My decisions just aren’t influence by theism.

Not true. I have never based a decision of any sort upon my atheism, including what to support or not support. I have given money and time to religious charities, for instance.

It can’t be included under any definition because it does not constitute any belief or principle or practice or behavioral guideline. Atheism is an absence of belief.

115

[QUOTE=Eben]
I’m fairly sure that I remember reading the Old Testament where God was mostly angry and punishing and then the New Testament where God was mostly caring and sympathetic. I’m not saying it makes a lot of sense, I’m just pointing out that religion *can * change and still acknowledge the old ways.
[/QUOTE]

On the contrary, the cognitive dissonance inherent in the way in which Christianity deals with this issue is very educative. Many current strands of Christianity talk only of their god being love, peace and understanding. That their very own book says (in some parts) quite the opposite is buried firmly, so that the veneer of an acknowledged ultimate reality can be maintained, regardless.

116

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
Just a note that that **isn’t **what Marx meant when he used the term . A more full quote illustrates this:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”

He didn’t mean that religion is used to control the proletariat, but that the proletariat themselves develop religion as a (temporay) palliative. Opium as a medicine, not a narcotic, from broader context. Illusory, yes, but not in the cynical way you’re implying.
[/QUOTE]

If I were using it like Marx I would have said so. It acts as a drug to control the poor ,unwashed.

117

In an effort to move discussion along a bit. Is Buddhism a religion? How about Wicca? Scientology?

As I’ve said before, I’m more interested in exploring the gray are than the extremes.

-Eben

118

[QUOTE=Eben]
In an effort to move discussion along a bit. Is Buddhism a religion? How about Wicca? Scientology?

As I’ve said before, I’m more interested in exploring the gray are than the extremes.

-Eben
[/QUOTE]
Yes, yes, and yes*, respectively.

  • Note that in this, we start to fuzz the line between “religions” and “things that are pretending to be religions” - though only starting to. Clearly there are people who genuinely believe in Sceintology, and they firmly ground it as being a religion. However, there is a possibility that its leaders and creators crafted it as a scam (though I have no evidence at all for this); if so, the “religion” wasn’t really a religion until it was filled out without actual believers. (And even so, it would still retain its status as a scam, until it stopped having the properties of being one.))
119

[QUOTE=Eben]
In an effort to move discussion along a bit. Is Buddhism a religion? How about Wicca? Scientology?

As I’ve said before, I’m more interested in exploring the gray are than the extremes.

-Eben
[/QUOTE]

Yes to all, and I don’t see anything “gray” about any of them. They all fall squarely within any reasonable definition of religion.

120

begbert2, I’m in agreement with you on those three yeses. (yeses is a funny looking word!)

How about Taoism and Confucianism? Are they religions? How about the Navajo belief system?

If anyone’s got some suggestions for potential gray area, let’s hear them!

-Eben