MAN 1 is expressing a religious truth, MAN 2 a scientific one.

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?

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.

MAN 1: “Last night I turned into a buffalo.”
MAN 2: “No you didn’t. You were asleep by the fire. I saw you.”

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.

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)

especially since science is obviously just another religion.

im happy to read that.

you have no idea the oppostiton i meet trying to argue that point…

Science succeeds to the extent that it diminishes the occult.

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..

A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.

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.

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.”

science is obviously just another religion

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.