I notice in discussions about religion, here and elsewhere, that they are generally not actually discussions. They are people butting heads over fully formed, deeply rooted beliefs, and the discussions is usually a prolonged attempt by each side to convert each other. What I’m wondering in this thread is if there is a way to find a common starting point, if it is possible to find somewhere to start that we could use to deduce what we should all believe. I don’t think it’s possible. As I search for such a foundation, I am drawn to the empirical, starting from my experiences and observations, and justifying what I believe based on what I have empirical evidence for believing. That’s what might be expected of an atheist.
I imagine that such a foundation will not satisfy everyone, and I wonder why this is. I propose that all thought and experience, at least by the time one is old enough to discuss it, is theory laden (it may even be innately theory laden). By this I mean that a common foundation cannot be found because the theory under which people construct and justify their beliefs is not uniform, and there is an impass (I suppose that it is the Kuhnian notion of a paradigm, but applied to religion rather than science).
I suppose if this is true, the conclusion would be that it is (often?) pointless to argue about religion.
I think it will be difficult to find a common ground, a universal principle for a religion. Humans are so different in nature from each other that their gods and devils, their heavens and hells can be diametrically opposed. The Viking Walhalla, for example, is certainly much closer to the Christian hell than it’s heaven.
As I have been taught, religion, by encyclopedic definition, is a philosophy that includes both of the the following tenets: 1) “souls”, and 2) before/after life.
My teacher’s source was a late-'70s publication The Encyclopedia of Religions.
If the philosophy does not include both of these tenets, it simply is not a religion.
Upon reflection, that does make sense.
That is the rational starting point with regard to all religions.
According to the encylopedia, a tenet of “God”, though quite common in religion, is not required for the philosophy to be a religion, as a number of religions (often classed under “New Age” or “Theosophy” (if I recall correctly)) that include reincarnation do not have a tenet of “God”, and they either don’t address the “why” of things (saying that’s just the way the universe is) or they nebulously allude to a “force”.
Indeed, many religions just use their tenet of “God” merely as a “see, our religion must be true because “God” himself agrees with it” justification for the specifics of their religion-defining tenets and resultant other particulars.
Though it is thus possible to find that general starting point (“souls” and before/after life), I question that we could therefore “agree” about “what we should all believe”.
First, “souls” and before/after life are fantasies, fantasies that we’ve used to cope with the sting of death ever since the first caveman lost his parents and his beloved mate.
The more anciently-based neuropsychological inability to accept the finality of death and mourn the loss is a culturally lingering handicap of the collective psyche, compensated for by fantasizing away the pain of loss in a way that makes “creative” epistemology irrationally more important than foundational ontology’s request that we face the difficult realities and their emotional truth head-on.
Thus I question the value of “believing” in something (the fantasy of “souls” and before/after life) that is essentially a manifestation of reality denial. We’ve progressed much over the millenia, debunking myth in favor of facing reality’s particulars. Why would we ever want to dumb ourselves down and go backwards?
Second, the specifics of “souls” and before/after life can differ significantly from religion to religion depending on the esoterics of a region’s specific cultural history of coping with death.
Death being such a HUGE aspect of life, I doubt people are going to surrender the particulars of their deeply ingrained pet coping mechanisms in the name of experimentally creating a “universal” coping mechanism.
It’s not … nor is doing so desirable.
Better is to keep facing the reality of our mortality, debunking myth … and thereby continuing to make progress in our neuropsychological evolution.
Surely one of the points of a religion is that it’s teachings are something revealed from a source, without which we couldn’t have gotten there on our own. If it wasn’t for that, a religion would just be another one of those things we believe, like history or science or whatever. I mean, we could state all sorts of things we believe in common, down is down, up is up, rain is wet- but what sorts of things would we have to state to make a religion out of them?
I don’t think a religion necessarily includes a soul, a belief about the before/after life, nor revealed teachings. According to ReligiousTolerance.org, a religion is “Any specific system of belief about deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life.” (1)
In any case, I intended “religion” to include scientific atheism and other worldviews that run counter to revealed religions. I further intended our common foundation to be pre-religious, and Uccisore has given me hope that something like that is possible. Revelation requires experience, and such an experience, if it is indirect (such as biblical revelation), can be compared with other such experiences (revelation of empirical knowledge). So it must be shown why such revelation should be taken as more valid than scientific or empirical revelation. In fact, if revelation is the basis, it is immaterial whether the revelation is indirect or direct (why trust what might be a hallucination over evidence that such hallucinations happen? Or conversely, why trust the body of scientific knowledge over a vision that seems much more real and direct?)
L. Ron Hubbard - Creator of Scientology:
“If you want to make a little money, write a book. If you want to make a lot of money, create a religion.â€
Like the universe “itself” or the “force” or through being channeled by some extra terrestrial yogi … none of whom are the person of “God”.
Cornering the market on “the truth” by appeal to an authoritarian “source” is an old justification trick of the religious and non-religious alike – just ask any historical leader, from Ghengis Khan … to President Bush.
But religion doesn’t require that source or that that source be “God”.
There you go again, choosing from many differing perspectives the link that just happens to match your ideology. 
In your opening post you doubt that it is possible to create a unifying religious perspective.
Of course, you also imply that you are an atheist.
That means your take on religion will likely be the old flat-earth “definition” that there must be a “God” for there to be a religion … so you can doubt that unification is possible simply because you, as an atheist, would never buy it.
In this modern day and age of more accurately known realities, wouldn’t it be better to use the unanimously established ground rules as determined by the world council of all religions themselves a mere thirty years ago?!
I believe it would … if you want to exclude personal bias from the process. 
Well, now you’ve lost sight of what many would take to be your original request to create a unifying religion, as atheism isn’t a religion, and neither is science.
Your task is now too broad to be of any real value.
Keep changing things to your liking if you must.
But don’t expect of us looking for a modern and sensible standard set of ground rules to keep up with your reactively changing whim.
Good luck setting objective standards with a quorum of relativists. 
But, of course, without “souls” and before/after life in that revelation, you won’t be talking about religion.
There’s a definitive difference between religion and a “religiously” held belief system.
Now you’re imagining that religious “sources” will behave like scientists, appealing to the scientific method to validate their “revelation”.
Your rules are a bit strict for the religion religious to adhere to.
For that matter, why trust that “revelation” is a defining requirement of religion?
The council of all world religions didn’t make that mistake.
Perhaps you shouldn’t either.
But, they still could be on drugs.
Throwing a compensational bone to those who differ from your perspective simply to garner their “revelation” factor agreement is both obvious and amateurish.
The modern foundationally defining description of religion I presented is a scholarly one, appealing to a relevant authority in such matters.
If you wish to perform your initially requested exercise with any degree of scholarly intelligence then you must be true to the objective standard intelligent scholarly ground rules …
… Even if you don’t like them in their contradiction of your personal esoteric perspective …
… As unacceptance leads to spouting the same kind of error-based “divine inspiration” that brought you to the “need” for this thread in the first place …
… That is, of course, it does assuming you weren’t really out to discredit religion in the first place.
Sabrina, I’d really not like this thread to break down into bickering about words. You want to use the Encyclopedia of Religion? Fine, let’s:
"“In summary, it may be said that almost every known culture involves the religious in the above sense of a depth dimension in cultural experiences at all levels — a push, whether ill-defined or conscious, toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behaviour are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience — varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture.”(1)
This a very inclusive definition, and it is one I am more than happy to use.
I don’t think it’s possible for people to discuss the foundation of religion without coming from their own religious beliefs, but that shouldn’t matter. It should still be possible to analys one’s own beliefs to determine where they derive their beliefs. Under critical examination, it could be found that even at the lowest discoverable level people’s beliefs are incommensurable. But let’s cross that bridge when we get there, if we get there.
Sabrina
That’s right, there are religions who’s revelations are not alleged to be from or about God.
It’s only necessary to appeal to this as an ‘old trick’ if the beliefs in question are false. Since we aren’t talking about any religion in particular (are we?) this is unnecessary. For example, if Buddism, Christianity, or Judaism happen to be the truth, then the only way to preserve and spread that truth through the ages would be to do it in more or less the way it was done. If they are correct, they are no more ‘authoritarian’ than a university is when teaching the facts of history.
I disagree. It is specifically the fact of a revelatory source that can only be verified after the fact and not proven first, that causes people to have a religious ‘attitude’ towards the subject matter in the first place.
one unified religion, well let’s see, ok, we all have differing views even so broad as to whether god exists or not . . . so let’s see, well let’s use my ideas and go from there, now all of you have to surrender your ideas. Cool, ok there we now have a universal religion. I will all tell you what to change your beliefs to tomorrow as I will then start my fast to reveal to you your new religion. I would like to be called, “Reedemer prophet mike” from now on.
in all reality, this is an interesting topic to talk about, good luck though.
I will conclude that what you mean here is that, though religion requires a revealing source, that source doesn’t have to be God.
I agree that religion doesn’t require God as a source of revelation.
But the strict definition of religion is as I’ve said: a philosophy incorporating both 1) a tenet of “souls” and 2) a tenet of before/after life.
Whether the details of “souls” and before/after life are revealed by the religion through its ancient other humans, merely passed down through history, or through (obviously false) allegations about it coming from God, such is not definitively required for a philosophy, also repleat with revelations, to be a religion.
Then repent from your usual behavior of definition bickering.
I realize you would prefer to define things in such a way that they conform to your own esoteric belief system, but if you’re going to involve others, you need accurate, intelligent, modern and scholarly ground rules by which to present your paradigm and stay true to those particulars.
Your quote of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Definition_of_religion is far from the Encyclopedia of Religions.
Do you purposely not show us your link (“1” ) to a wiki quote while referencing it as if the link was from the Encyclopedia of Religions in a definitive manner purposely to mislead? 
Wiki’s selected quote of the Encyclopedia of Religions many presentations on a description of religion may suit your hand-picked needs of the moment, but it is hardly a reference to the definitive standard I presented.
The late 1970s edition of the Encyclopedia of Religions contained an entire chapter presenting the results of the then recent study conducted at the conference of the Council of World Religions, a conference that included a representative from every religion.
This authorized body took upon themselves the task of finally, once and for all, getting to the bottom of just what definitively constitutes a religion.
And after considerable scholarly study, they all agreed – yes, it was unamimous that a religion is a philosophy that incorporates both of the tenets of “souls” and before/after life, and that the presence or absence of “God” or “divine revelation” was immaterial and irrelevant with respect to their scholarly state of the art conclusion, a conclusion which still holds true today.
I realize that you relativists have a tendency to think that everything is all about your ego’s take on life, but appealing to a valid authority once in awhile, as I have presented, will make your task easier and more fruitful when you are involving others in the process.
By “inclusive” you obviously mean too broad and nebuluous to be of any real value in the task, not to mention that it isn’t a modern state of the art definition backed by valid authority.
You non-definitive esoteric description, one of many you could have chosen from your link, simply panders to your ego, and doesn’t even begin to set the accurate and appropriate parameter limitations your task requires.
Thus you are simply wasting everyone’s time until you accept the truth of what a religion truly is.
And if everyone from every religion is represented in your thread, all you would have to do is poll them with regard to the council authority’s decision about what definitively constitutes a religion, and you’ll see that neither divine revelation or “God” is required.
And, that should indeed matter.
Personal guess and by golly is no substitue for accurate appeal to valid source authority.
Anyone can guess about the source of their world-wide religion.
Appealing to the facts is an entire other thing … that takes work.
Which is, of course, immaterial.
Simply stay with the foundational restrictions as I have referenced from the valid source authority itself on the matter, and whatever comes of your study will be of value with respect to the word “religion”.
You’ll get validly nowhere with respect to religion until you stop defining things according to your ego’s whim and instead appeal to the valid accurate source authority on the matter, as I have presented.
I know that you are obviously lost without being able to link to something to justify your wishes about how you’d “like” things to be.
But try to trust that I obviously know what I’m talking about and use this valuable knowledge to your edification and the benefit of your study.
You may not like the fact, as a divine authority defiant atheist, that a tenet of “God” in any way simply isn’t required to make a philosophy a religion, or you may not like the fact that “souls” and after life are required to make a philosophy a religion, seeing how you obviously “like” yourself better when you imagine you are “non”-religious.
But if you personally believe in “souls” and before/after life, Carleas, you, Carleas, are practicing a religion. 
Your tendency to “link”-away what you don’t like, though “legendary”, is, however, futile if you care about being correct.
Thanks for the reply, Sabrina.
Yes, that's one of the things I meant. As far as your strict definition of religion, I have to confess that I don't really believe in 'strict' definitions. I think words are defined by how people use them, and that the fact is people refer to many things that don't both souls and the afterlife as religions. Some sects of Buddism, for example, only have one or possible neither of those concepts. Whether or not we call that a 'religion' really seems like semantics, and not all that important to me.
Your definition of religion will cover 99% of what people mean when they say the word, though, so it's alright with me.
I think I disagree with you here. If there were a group of scientists who felt they had discovered something about souls and the afterlife (something positive, that is, not just that they don’t exist), and published their findings, people who accepted those findings as true would not be then religious followers of those scientists. Same goes for philosophy- If I came up with some logical argument that showed an afterlife exists, people who saw that argument and accepted it as true would not then be followers of the Religion of Uccisore, would they?
(inhale. . .)
Sabrina, why is the definition you cite more valid than the definition I cite? They’re from the same source (you note that I found mine on Wikipedia {the link} but you should also note that it is from the Encyclopedia or Religion {the quote}). In fact, I can tell you where my quote appears (p7692-7701). Can you? or should we be expected to search all 7000+ pages to find the definition to which you refer?
But that’s really not necessary, for a number of reasons:
- The definition you give is dubious. You say that this conference included a representative from every religion. So representatives from every religion convened to define religion? Do you see the circular nature of this process? Clearly, there was a preconcieved notion of what religion means, and that the religions included reflected this in their unanimous definition is neither enlightening nor surprising.
- ‘Religion’ is not a religious term; those who call themselves ‘non-religious’ (which I have not) also employ the term, and have equal stake in it. Therefor, it is unimportant what a group of people who identify as ‘religious’ determine, as it excludes many with equal right to provide input into defining the word. So regardless of the particular bias used to assemble the conference, the idea that such a conference is privileged to define ‘religion’ is flawed.
- This is only one definition of many for the word religion. I have already provided that given by ReligiousTolerance.org (a well respected site on which you’ve given no grounds for dissent other than that it disagrees with your preconceived definition). But clearly I am only pointing to sites that support my views. Let’s look at other obviously biased sources:
Interesting. Now we have quotes from six sources, essentially the usual suspects when one is doing internet research into the definition of a word (with the exception of ReligiousTolerance, but I think a site devoted to understanding and exploring religious belief is a pretty valid source for a definition of religion. You don’t have to agree, there are still five others). Interestingly enough, none of them present your definition. The only common thread (and there is noteably not unanimous agreement) is that it involves a deity (something you have denied repeatedly).
And finally
4) I began this thread with a certain idea of what I meant by the word religion. It was not a definition that I made up, and it is a definition that can be found in multiple reputable sources (including one that you have claimed as the source of an alternate definition). I do not care what you intend when you create threads where you include the word ‘religion’. You pointed out the ambiguity, and I feel that at this point I have clarified myself amply. But if you are still at a loss, let me define explicitly, for the last time, what I have meant by religion in my posts, and we can leave your previous objections as my failure to clearly express myself: Religion is any belief system that serves to help us understand the nature of the universe, the ultimate truth, the “meaning of life”. Religion is the overarching theory that orders our life, be it scientific, god-focused, mediative, deduced or revealed, dogmatic or doubtable, communal or personal. And in this thread I had sought to discuss where such beliefs come from, because people must have some form of them by defintion (the defintion that I intended from the get-go is that broad). If that is not the definition you use of ‘religion’, feel free to call it a world-view, a life-philosophy, a who-the-hell-cares, just don’t fucking tell me what I mean by the words I use!
(. . . exhale)
Carleas, I have a question:
What would be the advantage of a new religion over one that has already
been around for a couple thousand more years of “thought and experience”?
mrn
I suppose that comes down to a question of what is valuable in a religion. Being around for a long time isn’t necessarily a good thing when it comes to what we believe about the nature of reality. I suppose being new isn’t necessarily a good thing either.
But then that’s something worth discussing. Should a just foundation be old or new, and why?
Personally, I think that factual claims should not be valued merely because of age, because early factual claims were in many ways crude scientific hypotheses, and they have been refuted by new evidence.
When it comes to the ‘spiritual’, the wisdom of ages might be an asset. Though people have learned a lot about the world, things like purpose, ethics, values, and meaning, have remained largely unanswerable (and may be in principle unanswerable). There is much use in looking to anyone who has tried to answer the unanswerable.
I also feel, however, that there should be somewhat of a feedback system between the two, meaning that the line I’ve just drawn is as fuzzy as any.
There you go again, attempting to selectively link your way to ego validation. Some people never learn.
And the great Carleas, an admitted atheist, now overrides valid authorities on religion about their very own matter.
Your ego knows no bounds.
Yes, clearly – your internet linking bias has been obvious from the beginning back in the abortion matter.
Given a chance to learn something new, you choose to remain flat-earthly ignorant.
The Council of World Religions – every religion by your broad brush stroke’s coloring – assembled to definitively determine what makes a religion a religion, without any prior presumption as to what the answer would be.
By the time they had come to their unanimous decision, some religions stoically accepted the “revealed” fact that they simply weren’t religions, but merely philosophies.
They accepted the truth of it.
But the great Carleas – she just can’t seem to accept it.
But, then again, acceptance seems to be a denial-based inability for you.
One can only hope … .
All that simply to say that your general nebulous “definition” isn’t even good enough for government work.
Again, you have an opportunity to learn something here … and you refuse it.
Even the Council of World Religions, a group you would imagine resistent to accepting new modern-day realities, learned from their mildly startling round-earthly discovery.
But don’t just take my word for it, Carleas, test it out for yourself and see.
Find any rationally acknowledged religion. There you will also find a tenet of “souls” and before/after life. And for some you will not find any allusion to “God”.
Thinking rationally for yourself, even if that means discovering things you don’t “like”, beats the heck out of picking and choosing your internet links to match your ego.
Also, it doesn’t matter who creates a thread, Carleas. You don’t own this thread, nor does being the creator grant you immunity from rebuttal.
And, Carleas, I didn’t point out your “ambiguity” – I pointed out your error.
Regardless of whether this is “the last time” for you to expressively fail to “define” what you esoterically mean by religion in your posts, Carleas, that won’t mean that the rest of the intelligent and up to date scholarly world will either care or buy your liberal relativist agenda’s kool aid.
The world is much more than “your” posts.
There are others in “your” world too.
Yes, you just described the field of physics, medicine and philosophy itself.
I’ll bet all those medical doctors never knew they were studying to be “ministers” of medicine.
Your esoteric “definition” of religion thereby fails to be religion.
You can call a cow a pig if you like, Carleas.
But that doesn’t make it the animal you “wish”.
And when you add the adjective of “personal” to your “definition”, you have automatically created a “term” on which no one will agree to “terms”.
You’re wasting your time until you can come to respect the true and limited meaning of the word religion.
I have a hunch that you have a problem with real-world limitations.
From the onset “in this thread”, as you made clear, you sought to ponder the possibility of creating a new religion, beginning with a starting point about which we “should” all believe.
I merely helped you by presenting the need to not create your new term “Carleasreligion” in the meaninglessly broad sense, and stay true to modern day “revelation” from the proper authorities about religion.
You now, once again, simply change your mind to suit it.
Temper, temper, Carleas.
When you are justifiably corrected, it’s considered bad form to crucify the messenger of the truthful message you just can’t handle.
But your statement here is quite revealing, in that ultimately you think it’s simply okay to redefine terms to your relative moralistic liking and expect scholarly educated and knowledgeable people in this modern day and age to just sit still as you blow us all back to the ignorant Dark Ages where the tribal leader “defines” what’s “real”.
Sorry, Carleas, but those of us who know better prefer to move ahead, choosing progress over being forced to “worship” anachronistic personal esoteric “definitions”.
That’s good.
Just breathe … … .
-Religions should be the ones to define ‘religion’? Like the insane should be the ones to define ‘insane’? Or maybe more like the dead should be the ones to define ‘dead’? Hmmmm. . .
-Apparently I can’t get over my attempt at ego validation. Please, show us the links where your definition is given, since mine are all wildly biased with a “liberal relativist agenda” (it’s apparent that you noted the citations for those definitions). And if you hve time, explain how my ego was validated when the majority of the definitions I gave weren’t the one I was proposing.
-Hey Sabrina, did you know that words have multiple definitions, and that the definition you have in your head isn’t always the right one? Did you know that many words do not have a universally agreed definition? Did you know that words are dynamic and that their meanings change from generation to generation?
Excuse me if I ask another question.
So what is this ideal religion like? Does it have ancient sources yet still address modern problems? It should be able to come to conclusions about big questions like ethics, values and meaning?