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Defining Religion
Why do religious experts have such a hard time defining religion? Shouldn’t they know better than anybody else? Instead, whenever I read statements by “recognized experts” I always end up shaking my head in disagreement. They just don’t see it. Whatever it is. Take this excerpt from an article on Scientology:
David Bromley, a Virginia Commonwealth University sociologist, says Scientology posed a complex problem because it didn’t “fit the standard religious model” and “had elements of religion, elements of a business, and started as Dianetics therapy.”
To J. Gordon Melton, editor of the “Encyclopedia of American Religions,” a religion deals with ultimate life questions “beyond the limits of science that we need answers to” and Scientology qualifies - but not, for example, Freemasonry or Werner Erhard’s est training.
I find these guys opinions to totally suck balls. This is the best experts can come up with? Vague platitudes about “ultimate life questions” and things that go “beyond the limits of science”? Fucking moronic, especially since science is obviously just another religion. I’d expect this recycled hooplah from somebody who never actually gave the topic any serious consideration, but for people who’re supposed to at the top of their field, I just don’t think this cuts it.
Why in the hell is Scientology a religion, but not Freemasonry or “est” training? People could be equally fanatical about any of these. Seems like a totally arbitrary distinction from my perspective. I’m more of the mind that any and everything can be a religion. I generally prefer the term “story-system” because it reflects the true narrative heart of what religions are all about. You have stories that you interact with to frame information and experience into a meaningful concept. And then you ritually act out or interact with these stories, so you can feel what it’s like to experience them. Socially, they function to bring people together via a shared life context and ritual experience of a guiding mythology. It seems perfectly simple to me. But am I just off my rocker?
- Your Ideal Religion
- Religion Vs. Spirituality
- Books: Give Me That Online Religion
- These people are geniuses
- Source of authority in religion
- Prev: Spirit as a separate entity
- Next: Charles Manson’s Life
July 9th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
Tim, you wrote:
I really don’t think it’s helpful to blur the distinctions between science and religion. Yes, they are both story-systems or ideologies but they deal with different realities. At the “higher levels” of mysticism, these realities are seen as united but it’s a union of different entities, not a sameness.
Science succeeds to the extent that it diminishes the occult. Religion succeeds to the extent that it deepens it. Well, that’s my own spin. I would agree that there are many who carry on science as if it were a religion and many who carry on religion as if it were a science. That doesn’t make them the same thing.
I would agree with you, however, that the exclusion from religion of Freemasonry and est training is problematic. I know that in the US there are tax concessions or something similar if you can define your organization as “religious” and this clouds the issue somewhat since it introduces an economic motive into the definition. I guess an organization can be defined as a religion (or not) in a legalistic sense and this need not be consistent with other definitions of religion.
Whoever does the defining is, of course, bringing their own ideologies to the definition. I’ve seen monotheists deny religious authenticity to polytheism. Some theists don’t accept Buddhism as a religion, and so on. So this article just reflected the author’s prejudices. An editor of a book on American religions might well be influenced by the legalistic considerations. This does not make his view relevant in all other contexts.
Ironically, I would say that a good definition of religion would need to be authoritative on both counts, that is, scientific (scholarly) and religious (heart-felt or based on a revelatory experience). That would be hard to find.
A lot would be solved - or resolved - if such a definition could surface. I, for one, am not holding my breath.
July 9th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
My definition of religion: religion is the system of thought/action/habits on which you build your life. It can include mentors (gurus, saints), rituals/liturgies/acts of worship, sacred books/recipes/family stories, devotions/prayers/habits/practices; it is something the person who lives it cannot imagine living without; it is the part of one’s life that ties together everything else.
I have known people whose religions were politics, banking, golf, family (including forms of ancestor worship, cooking, art, acting, and many other subjects. Often someone whose religion is one of these doesn’t even realize it, until it’s pointed out — but whether he or she accepts the idea that the major focus in his/her life is a religion depends a lot on past experience with the word “religion.”
July 9th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
The 4th definition of religion at Answers.com is, indeed:
Very nicely put, twistedchick, as beliefs “on which you build your life”.
Words change their meanings as they are used slightly differently over time. Maybe “religion” will come to mean only this fourth thing.
Another component I would add is vision. Religion sets up parameters for the ideal (person or society) and a vision for where humanity is going. The perfect apple pie can embody that vision just as well as the perfect golf shot.
July 10th, 2005 at 2:41 am
Religion is when two or more people agree about God.
July 10th, 2005 at 7:47 am
im happy to read that.
you have no idea the oppostiton i meet trying to argue that point…
hmmm.. i disagree, and i think a in depth study would reveal that science IS the occult, and that surface level scientific religion bashing is a cover for what is truly taking place..
July 10th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Nevermind that a lot of science derives from alchemy, and that people like Newton were some of the biggest magicians of all time.
Yeah, I agree though that nobody wants to hear science IS religion. Don’t know why. People don’t realize that when you really have religion, you don’t even question it. It’s a fundamental belief that is just incomprehensible to overcome. The way we relate to science is the way people used to relate to religion (and some still try)
July 10th, 2005 at 11:48 pm
Tim, you wrote (under Representation & Reality):
MAN 1 is expressing a religious truth, MAN 2 a scientific one.
If your own story-system feels more coherent by having science subsumed under religion, then that’s cool, stick with it.
Me, I prefer to see the realities of MAN 1 and MAN 2 as separate; as also are the human activities that pursue each kind of truth. I’m quite aware of (at least the possibility of) an underlying (or over-arching) unity of the two realities (and corresponding human activities) but I got the impression that you were jumping the gun a bit. Your comment sounded dismissive of science and, indeed, of religion which smacks of cultural nihilism. Also cool, if that’s how you like it.
July 11th, 2005 at 11:49 am
One of the problems with defining a religion is that a number of shysters hide behind the cloak of “religion” in order to inspire faith from their followers — and to avoid prosecution because of “religious beliefs.” L. Ron Hubbard was famous for this, as I’m sure you’ve read by now: his critics accuse him of turning Scientology into a “religion” in order to obtain tax exempt status, and also to avoid prosecution for false medical claims. But he was hardly the only one to do so: look at the infamous “psychic surgeons” of Indonesia. They’ve been trying to expand their influence and make a foothold here in North America — and how do they offer their services? They say it’s “religious.”
My Web site, the High Weirdness Project, has an entry on the psychic surgeons that you can look at whenever you’re interested. You already know about Scientology.
July 11th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
Arizona:
I would argue rather that MAN 1 is expressing a private truth, and MAN 2 a public one. I’d like to see if you agree with that or not. If you do, it leads us to the conclusion that religion is strictly a private matter with no public/objective reality. What’s your take on that?
July 11th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
[…] 7;ve taken for granted for a long time: whether science is really just another religion. I tend to think it is but readers such as Arizona of AlchemiZade have been making a […]