What is Religion?

Solomon said (somewhere) "There is nothing new under the sun"

I guess what I'm looking for is what differentiates a religion from a philosophy or methodology. How do we determine the difference between a cult and a religion? What sets religion apart from belief in pixies or gremlins?

fungotheclown


Religion is mythology or if you will another version of Grimms fairy tales

au1929, if that is true, why aren't religions treated as such?

fungotheclown

Brainwashing.

To which Fungo replied:



Good Lord, that's the most naive question i've seen in a while. People are fed up on religious dogma from the cradle. It doesn't just inform their world view, it is their world view. To attack their religious beliefs is perceived by them as a personal attack of the most fundamental kind, attacking everything they hold most dear, and the basis upon which they see and react to the world.

You can't treat religion as a fairy tale, because people are so desperately serious about their religious beliefs.

Religion is what has failed Notre Dame fans lately:

drinking and debauchery is perfectly acceptable at purim, it's too much drinking and debauchery that is a potential problem.

i'm sure there are plenty of priests that suffer from worse things than partying, but since they're pious, who cares? what's really offensive is the image of people partying, and sure enough, you've chosen an image.

tinygiraffe wrote



Main Entry: de·bauch·ery
Function: noun
Pronunciation: di-'bo -ch&-re, -chre, -'bä-
Inflected Form(s): plural -er·ies
1 a : extreme indulgence in sensuality b plural : ORGIES
2 archaic : seduction from virtue or duty

Since when?? And by whose authority?

Buddhist doctrine is no more uniform than the doctrines of Christianity. Both religions are divided into several large groups, and each of those are further divided into many sects. In most cases, for either religion, there are some fundamental doctrines that are broadly, if not exactly followed by most of the schools and sects of the religion. Christian sects, for instance, tend to believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creator/destroyer god having very human characteristics. Most Buddhist sects on the other hand absolutely deny the existence of any gods, souls, or the reality of the perceptual, material world. The Buddhist conception of Ultimate Reality can be defined as god only if we clearly understand that the definition is not congruent with the Abrahamic definition of god. The whole notion of defining and speculating into what realities give rise to the phenomenal world is rather foreign to Buddhist theology, which is far more focused on the practical means of mitigating the sufferings of sentient beings wherever, whenever, and however they arise.

Just as in the Abrahamic religions, speaking in generalities, Buddhist laymen hold a wide range of beliefs that have little, or nothing to do with the actual theology and doctrines of their religion. Religion is more than theology and doctrine. It is a means of defining ones place and membership within the culture. It is a mixture of folk belief and popular mythology. It is catechism, symbolism, ceremonial and ritual that evolved to meet human and social needs more than as truly important Theological fundamentals. Humans seem to have a need to celebrate important passages like birth, marriage, and death. Popular religions heed and supply those needs, and give them larger meaning.

What is religion, is just the sort of question that religion is in business to provide at least tentative answers to. Religions tend to provide answers to questions, like "why" that can not be satisfactorily answered by other means. Religions, it seems to me, grow out of transcendental experiences of charismatic individuals. That experience is fundamentally at odds with the mundane and is characterized by the concepts of time/space being replaced by a sense of an infinite reality embracing all things. The experience is often described as euphoric as the ego dissolves into the wholeness of an impersonal "other". The person having the experience, a Buddhist would say "Awakened", then tries to convey that experience to those around them. Plato's Cave Analogy is apt. How does one truly and accurately communicate a unique experience outside the mundane commonalities in wholly inadequate language? The experience can be communicated, but imperfectly and only in terms understandable within individual cultures. The Buddha's Teaching is communicated in terms that are understandable by Hindus of the 5th century BCE. Christ's Teachings fit into the religious/cultural milieu of 1st century CE Jewish experience, and then revised to meet the needs of the religion to reach out to the more accepting gentile world of late antiquity.

Religion, when defined as a collection of individuals professing common or similar beliefs, also provides support in numbers to those individuals for having those beliefs. Dogma aside, a religious community can provide a means of coming together with like-minded individuals for respite from an otherwise unsympathetic circumstance (the Jews under the Egyptian Pharaohs or Roman Empire, for example)

The following simplistic exercise illustrates the point. Take a piece of paper and write out your most sacred beliefs (not necessarily theistic beliefs, but whatever it is that defines your moral self). Without folding, tear the paper in two approximately equal halfs. Then stack those two pieces and tear again into fourths. Continue stacking and tearing to the point where it becomes difficult to tear the stack because of its thickness and size. Each fragment of the paper represents an individual with the same sacred beliefs or core morality but as each tear is made, the dissimilarities between the fragments (rough edges, if you will) become more pronounced. While the fragments become more and more dissimilar, the strength (power) necessary to destroy the stack becomes greater.

It becomes a problem when the dogma of a certain religion looks outside itself and attempts to usurp its strength on another 'stack'.

i agree.

This sounds more like a waste of paper to me.

That's fine, Steve. It wasn't addressed to you.

ok but who's gonna clear up all this mess?

Save it for toilet paper -- just beware of the rough edges.

points taken...sorry

avoided


surely you cant be defending the witterings of these semi conscious religiophiles?

Actually, I separate religion from dogma and see value in religion. It's the misapplication of dogma on behalf of any religion that bothers me (such as beating children), as does the application of any dogma towards anyone not in its own group (typical of most fundamentalists). Separating religion from dogma was precisely my point. The original question was, "What is religion?" which I answered with a definition that I'm comfortable having (a collection of individuals professing common or similar beliefs). Good things can and do come from these associations.

While some define religion in terms that describe only their personal experience there is a vast difference between a single life experience and a definition in global terms. Religion does not equal fundamentalist chritianity any more than it equals fundamentalist islam. Nor does it equal any one defined dogma of any faith tradition.

Fruitcakes aren't restricted to religiophiles. There have been plenty of other fruitcakes wandering the planet that can't blame religion for their fruitiness. I have no problems with a group of like-minded people gathering however often they choose to gather so long as whatever they do while they gather does not constitute abuse and has no unsolicited influence on the daily lives of those not in the group.

religion might be one of those words best defined in light of its etymology.

of course, this isn't to say it's usually practiced that way.

I believe that all religion is nothing more than a cultural embodiment of social values, I believe that there is much more evidence to suggest that God doesnt exist, than that God does, exist.