What his political calculus was is irrelevant, " just doesn’t happen" was provably an exaggeration.
The whole point that SanVito was making and that I agree with is that the levels of religious speech seen in the USA “just doesn’t happen”.
A reply to specific question about his faith during an interview at the end of his political career does not amount to evidence to the contrary.
By the time Blair made that statement a lot of people were coming round to the opinion that he was an idiot. That statement merely confirmed it.
Sure, but what I am saying – and this is based on 8 years of living in China – the vast, vast majority of people are way on the other side of the spectrum from that.
So, OK, I guess we can call it a religion, and we can say that the majority of Chinese people follow some of the ceremonies of that religion. But it’s still extremely misleading to say the majority of Chinese are therefore religious.
It would be akin to saying that everyone who gives Christmas presents is religious because technically blah blah.
I can see saying everyone who just follows the little rituals isn’t necessarily religious, but I’d say everyone who actually believes their ancestors watch over them, is. I don’t know about China, but here, many of those people literally do believe the ancestors exist and watch over them. That doesn’t mean everyone who does the little ceremonies of African folk religions does believe that, but most do.
And I’m not one to call people who follow folk religions “not really religious” just because they’re disorganized.
In your 8 years, have you actually asked many Chinese if they are just going through the motions?
“not really religious” is not my phrasing.
What I have tried to say, is that the claim that most Chinese are religious might well be technically true – whether they are, is semantic and people can disagree about exactly where the line gets drawn between vague, tentative spiritual beliefs and religion.
However, it is nonetheless misleading, because “religious” carries a strong baggage in most of the world regarding clear membership, doctrine, church attendance, theism and so on.
It’s especially misleading in a thread like this, where the suggestion was that China cannot count as a minority religious country. On a spectrum between US-style born-again evangelical Christian on the left and naturalist atheist on the right, the vast majority of Chinese are way over to the right.
I wasn’t there as a tourist, I speak Chinese, have lived with a Chinese family and have participated in many of these ceremonies. Yes, in many cases they were just going through the motions, especially the younger generation. And even for the others, it’s more like a tentative feeling and a not very fleshed out idea. It feels nice to conceive of the relative’s still being there, and that’s about the beginning and end of it.
I think that’s a very Western view, and is not actually baggage that exists in most of the world. Folk religions and non-doctrinaire faiths are widespread. Regular “church attendance” isn’t a big thing for a lot of Hindus, for instance. There’s a lot of ceremonial stuff at temples, but regular worship is often family-centered and home-based. And the same for “clear membership”.
So right away, you’re dismissing the majority religions in two of the most populous countries on Earth, India and China, as only “technically” religious - “not really religious” is a perfectly valid gloss of that, and “most of the world” is suddenly not all that populous.
I disagree very strongly that Chinese folk beliefs are anything like “naturalist atheist,” assuming that those two words mean anything like their common understood meaning when combined like that.
Also, personally, I think it’s a vaguely chauvinistic statement, to equate Chinese folk religion with “vague, tentative” anything.
Who said anything about tourism? So just to be clear, you’re saying yes, you actually, directly asked many Chinese people whether they really believed?
I’ve participated in quite a few African folk religious ceremonies, and if you’d asked me a decade ago, I would have said exactly what you’re saying here - that the educated, Westernized people I knew were just doing cultural things without believing. Then I started actually asking them, straight out, and no, it turns out they really do believe in the ancestors. Even many of the Christians.
That is, nevertheless, a religious belief, and those who hold it are following a religion. It’s not a belief they came to themselves, it’s part of the cultural framework and, yes, doctrine, of their religion.
This is something often observed in these discussions, I suppose an inevitable intrinsic bias due to where the boards are based and who are the majority of participants.
Going ahead and making my own act of attribution and reading-into-others’ words, what the thread title question seems to be about is when would active, pious followers of “Organized Religion” become powerless to influence how our societies function and what happens then.
As mentioned, there are already societies where piety and devotion to the doctrines of the alleged majority religion are not directly determinant of policy (*but more on this later). And they don’t look much different.
As to “pillars of society” – many of those “pillars” are so ingrained and solidified at this point that it’s almost irrelevant if they are or are not a component of a religious background. For a society to function it needs laws, and for most of the classic ones we can refer to Hammurabi or Rome rather than the Bible just fine; it needs the people ot exert self-control over excesses of certain conducts even if you don’t all them “deadly sins”; it must allow people to gather to support one another and share ideals and aspirations even if they don’t call it a devotion.
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(*The more on that: ) Now, OTOH, if we have a society where majorities have a particular spiritual identification, then of course the general society will reflect that: even if the religious doctrine is not legally enforced, we will feel the social approval or disapproval.
Well, IMO that is never going away. Get rid of religion and people will have other reasons to wag their finger at you over there being a Right Way and a Wrong Way to do whatever it is you’re doing.
And they’re just as likely to be wrong themselves.
Debatable. I mean, this is the idea of “religious” common also to Africa, the middle east, much of South America etc. Most denominations of the major religions do consider it important to go to church / mosque.
Furthermore, since this is a primarily US, and beyond that, Western, forum, you’re implicitly conceding here that the word “religious” may indeed carry these connotations for the majority of people reading my post, so it was quite a valid thing for me to point out, right?
No; “not really” is not a valid gloss of saying “technically” – they are 100% religious if our definition of religion is inclusive of such ceremonies – and I have not dismissed anything. I’ve simply said that it’s misleading in the context of this discussion to describe China as majority religious.
That’s not what I said though, I said the majority of Chinese people are far closer to naturalist atheist to a Christian evangelist. This is different to how we classify the beliefs themselves.
Again, the fact that a majority of people exchange gifts for Christmas doesn’t mean a majority of people strongly believe in all of the myths that are the basis of that ceremony.
No, they told me.
Sure, if you choose to define religion that way then sure.
Personally, I don’t discount the possibility of some kind of afterlife – not playing a harp in the clouds, but waking up from a simulation or whatever. Does that make me religious? If yes, then the word has been so watered down that many avowed atheists are religious. If no, then why should we necessarily count those who have a tentative belief that their ancestors might still persist in some form as religious?
I respect your experience on that. Why are you so quick to handwave mine?
Good question. When you think of “religious” people or religion, it’s usually tied in with worship to a god or gods. With that line of reasoning, you could then ask, what is a god? In Christianity, “God” usually means the creator of all things but even then, there are many different belief systems within Christianity that define “God” in different ways or forms. We only hit the tip of the iceberg there. In fact a “god” can be anything we give devotion to or “worship”, money, sex, oneself or someone else along with so many other things which are too long to list. Whatever or whoever we worship or idolize becomes a “god” to us. So, in the strictest sense, “religion” or “religious people” are not and will never be in the “minority”. And remember, “There are no Atheists in Foxholes”. Believe me, they pray and give their devotion and worship to someone or something too. So, I ran my mouth long enough. Anyhow, sometimes it helps to look at things from another vantage point or angle to get a clearer or bigger picture as opposed to the mainstream.
On what authority/evidence do you make this claim and expect to be believed? If I provide you with evidence of an atheist that did not do so, will that convince you that you’re wrong?
This is not in any way a new vantage point or argument.
What would a society with few religious people look like? We have many examples. Some countries with more than half the population declaring no religion are The Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, North Korea and China now. Don’t forget the Soviet Union in its heyday.
I appreciate your point of view. However, the point that I was trying to express is that generally speaking, human beings, whether they are atheist or not, will look to someone or something to help them get out of horrible or life threatening situations. It’s only human right? My original thoughts were in reference to religious people and what defines them as religious and which is not confined to any mainstream religion.
No, it isn’t, and it’s just not true. My best example is myself. Apparently, some religious people can’t get it into their heads that some brains are wired differently, or that some people were just brought up without religion, and have no need for any prayer or worship whatsoever, in any situation.
Religion is defined by a commonly shared set of dogmatic practices. There are many mainstream and non-mainstream religions, past and present. But they all involve an internally common set of principles around the way in which they are practiced/expressed.
You may be talking about deism, which is a personal belief in a god or gods and the manner in which individuals choose to express that belief. Which is more informal and varied and arguably is not a “religion”. For example, I do not think there is a formal way by which one can express worship of an invisible pink unicorn; thus, most people are left to their own devices.
The Soviet Union in it’s heyday remained a religious society with deep roots in Christian (Russian/Ukrainian/etc.) Orthodox principles and beliefs.
You stated that your best example is yourself. Would you elaborate on that? I’m interested in your point of view.
I won’t get too personal, but I’ve suffered from illnesses for 23 years that brought me into desperate, life-threatening situations several times. Not once have I ever even thought about praying, worshiping or getting any other religious consolation. That’s just not me and total alien to me. (right now, I’m worrying about my father, who learned that he has cancer about a week ago. This sure stresses and frightens me, and I think a lot about it. But any thoughts of prayer? No.)
This is offensive to me, and I suspect quite a few other atheists. I have faced almost certain at least three times in my life, and not once did I seek out any invisible entity to pull my fat out of the fire.
IIRC, he did so because of political calculations of the PM of the UK not being Anglican.