On Jun 26, 2005, at 10:28 AM, William T Goodall wrote:
On 25 Jun 2005, at 12:36 pm, Andrew Paul wrote:
The question I want answered is what is religion.
(apart from evil of course)
The first thing to note is that there is no single simple identifier
of religion (even obvious candidates like human sacrifice or temple
prostitution are not universal across all religions)
Though there are correlates. Loosely, the Kama Sutra and the Christian
sacrament/communion can fall into those categories. One is sex for the
purpose of interaction with deity; the other is ritual
deicide/cannibalism. Eat the enemy to get his power; eat the god to
become immortal.
Anyway, here are the thoughts of some professionals on the subject:
I take it that you align with these ideas.
"An acceptable definition of religion itself is difficult to attain.
Attempts have been made to find an essential ingredient in all
religions
(e.g., the numinous, or spiritual, experience; the contrast between the
sacred and the profane; belief in gods or in God), so that an
"essence" of
religion can be described.
This seems overcomplicated. I think a simpler explanation of religion
is twofold:
1. People who have had some experience of something beyond normal
experience: The numinous, the unexpected, the apparently divine or
miraculous, because it doesn't fit into normal experience; and
2. A cadre of individuals who feel the experience they had in (1) was
similar enough that they're of the same stripe.
That's broad, but then, this is a broad brush. Note that many of the
experiences in (1) can be replicated now using sophisticated EM fields
beamed into the brain, and that they are *always* subjective.
Later you quote a passage on "belief" -- this is basically doctrine,
standardization. It's an attempt by the people in (2) to formalize what
happened in (1). What follows is fairly predictable: Rituals, ethics,
community; examples of these latter behaviors exist in nonreligious
cultures.
This suggests that it's really (1) and (2) that are the key to
religion. All else appears to be run of the mill politics.
What you've posted is valid as a sociological discussion, but it
doesn't support your basic assertion, which is that religion is evil.
Leaving aside for the moment that you've failed to define "evil", there
is no correlate that indicates that anyone subjected to either (1) or
(2) above is automatically caught in an "evil" mindset.
You were right; the discussion was both long and boring, but only so
because you haven't posted anything new, interesting or truly
thoughtworthy. Sorry; truly. You're going to have to be more incisive
than this to really make your point, even to an atheist like myself.
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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