I've got to give a talk in about 6 months and I've got 20-25 minutes to do it. I want to make it as tight as possible and suggest some ideas that the audience hasn't considered before. I'm going to work out some of the concepts here.
The dictionary definition of religion is a bit cramped. I have to say I don't agree with it at all.
(T)he belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
I don't see it that way. To me, it's a holistic system of beliefs which describe the world as it is. I'm probably cadging the definition of another phrase, "worldview" perhaps? Oh well.
Catholicism unites philosophy, science and faith. So does Islam. So does atheism. Agnosticism lays down on the couch, hoping it will all go away. How about this as a definition of religion:
The selection of one of a set of competing hypotheses about the nature of reality.
After all, since you can't prove the existence or nature of God the way you can work out thermodynamics equations, they all require faith. No one knows which one is true. You can only make an educated guess with more education giving you more accuracy.
The morality of a religion naturally falls out of the belief system. If Jesus was the son of God and He said we should forgive, then we'd better get on with the forgivering. If Mohammed was given the inerrant word of Allah and he says we need to convert the world or slay the infidels, then it's time to sharpen our swords. If there is no God, then the Marquis de Sade and Dylan Mulvaney have it right and we shouldn't waste time on anything but pleasing ourselves.
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| Party on, girls. |
It's something to ponder.
16 comments:
I have a question.
You say that you don't agree that "The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods" is a good definition for "Religion".
OK, that's fine, and you go on to say what you think "religion" is. But in that case, what do you call "The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods"? That is a thing. People do it. So what do you call it, if not "religion"?
Hmm. You're absolutely right that it is a thing and it should have a word, preferably not some horrible, German mashup.
My first issue with the definition is that it leaves out atheism which is just as much of a religion as anything else as it proposes a hypothesis about God. If you reworded it to include atheism, then it would be something on the order of a person's take on the supernatural realm. You're probably right that religion is the right word for it. That's why I said I might be stealing another word entirely, but what is that word?
The broader point is this: Catholicism includes so much more than the supernatural. What is that superset if not the natural conclusions of the faith? To me, that superset is religion.
I wasn't brought up religious. I have my own but it ain't much like any conventional one. I do wonder how it came to be and near as I can figure is that it grew out of a set of rules people developed that allowed them to thrive, and part of that thriving was being part of a community. Good behavior doesn't happen by accident. Bad behavior is bubbling just below the surface and may break out at any time. If you are the leader of your flock, how do you promote good behavior in general, and bad behavior when you need it? Maybe you introduce the ideas of heaven and hell. Did it work? Well, there aren't bands of savages running down my street, so I'd say yes, it did work.
Chuck writes "If you are the leader of your flock, how do you promote good behavior in general, and bad behavior when you need it? Maybe you introduce the ideas of heaven and hell."
This actually brings up something that I've been noticing for a while now on this site. You've described the classical "You should follow these rules because you will be rewarded by God if you do, and punished if you don't", where God is being used to enforce rules. This is, I think, how most people think of the relationship between religion and ethics.
But, KT is essentially saying the opposite:
"Here is a set of moral/ethical rules that, if you follow them, will make it possible for people to work together, establish stable societies, and generally be better off than they would be if it was 'every man for himself'. But, you can't just follow these rules because you think they are good rules on their own merits. You've got to accept this whole laundry list of supernatural beliefs, otherwise I will never believe that you will follow the rules!"
So, basically, instead of using God to enforce rules, he's using the desire for rules to enforce a belief in God. Which I think is backwards, and probably counterproductive.
I think you're trying to differentiate the the practice (or 'praxis' -- "practical application of a theory" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/praxis) from the religion's "theory" of the nature of reality ('worldview' or 'metaphysic').
That standard definition of 'religion' looks at 'praxis', while ignoring the 'metaphysic', as though any religion could be practiced, much less could exist, separately of its underlying theory of the nature of reality.
==After all, since you can't prove the existence or nature of God the way you can work out thermodynamics equations, ...==
All three legs of this assertion are false:
1) we *can* prove the reality/beingness of God (Synopsis: *you* are the proof that God is);
2) we *can* prove the general nature of God (obviously, and definitionally, we cannot fully "capture" God in any proof) ... including that God is One *and* a multiplicity of persons;
3) and we prove this in the same "way you can work out thermodynamics equation", by applying logic to what we know from empirical observation of the reality in which we find ourselves.
Tim -
"This actually brings up something that I've been noticing for a while now on this site. You've described the classical "You should follow these rules because you will be rewarded by God if you do, and punished if you don't", where God is being used to enforce rules. This is, I think, how most people think of the relationship between religion and ethics."
"So, basically, instead of using God to enforce rules, he's using the desire for rules to enforce a belief in God. Which I think is backwards, and probably counterproductive."
You've missed the point. There's no cause and effect at play at all. If I let go of a ball I'm holding in my hand, it will fall to the ground. Is that because of gravity or does it prove gravity? The answer is both.
Religion, in my definition in this post, is a description of the world as it is. Gravity is. It has both observable effects and behavioral consequences.
If we Catholics have it right, then moral behavior has observable effects and behavioral consequences.
Hmm. I'm liking my definition more and more. Thanks for the conversation!
Ilion, I think I'm in agreement with your first comment. Did I capture what you meant in the comment above?
As for proving God exists, I'm willing to grant an infinitesimally small probability to the Multiverse or whatever else the atheists are proposing now. Yes, our current understanding of physics says that the Universe has a finite age and that is the necessary and sufficient condition for one of Aquinas's proofs, but such theories in physics get updated all the time. I'm fine with saying that the existence of God is one of a set of competing hypotheses.
Tim, here's a concrete* example.
You don't jump off a 5-story building onto the sidewalk because gravity will pull you down and you will break bones.
Breaking bones as a result of a 5-story fall onto the sidewalk proves the existence of gravity.
* - Hahahaha! I crack myself up sometimes.
Chuck, what is "good" behavior?
If China takes Taiwan and sinks half the US Navy in the process while Europe and Japan collapse due to fiscal profligacy and low birthrates, then the resultant society will consider "good" behavior to be obedience to CCCP dictates.
Is that behavior still good?
When the Muslims become the majority in Europe, being gay will be considered "bad." Will it really be bad?
I think you're assuming objective standards of good and bad without attributing them to a Source.
If a community's rules for good behavior allows the community to thrive, then their rules are working, whatever they are. Could be horrific to our sensibilities, but it's hard to argue with success. Likewise, our rules could be considered horrific by people from other regions or other times. If a society collapses and dies out, I would suspect their rules weren't up to the job.
Your metrics make sense, Chuck. It's certainly a way to do things. However, the devil is in the details - what is the definition of "thrive." If it means population stability, for example, then Europe, Japan and South Korea aren't doing it.
==Did I capture what you meant in the comment above?==
Mostly. Except that religion isn't *merely* a "take on the supernatural real". Rather, a religion is a set of beliefs about the nature of reality, and the actions and practices which logically follow from that set of beliefs. Religion is vey much about the here-and-now.
== ... I'm willing to grant an infinitesimally small probability to the Multiverse or whatever else the atheists are proposing now.==
I'm not. Firstly, the concept is anti-scientific, so it's in direct violation of what *they* claim is the only source of true knowledge (even as they ignore that that particular claim cannot be grounded in 'Science!'). But more importantly, even if there were a multiverse, it does not solve the fact that *we human beings* are in direct violation of what must be true if atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.
==Yes, our current understanding of physics says that the Universe has a finite age and that is the necessary and sufficient condition for one of Aquinas's proofs, but such theories in physics get updated all the time.==
Science is a toy -- and a distraction -- for little boys; men do theology.
I didn't say that science (much less the 'Science!' of the science-fetishist atheists) can prove that God is. I said that we can use the methodology of modern science to prove that God is. And this is only fair, as that methodology was developed to do Christian theology in the first place.
Also, as I am given to understand it, Aquinas's proofs are agnostic as to whether the Cosmos has a finite age. That is, his proofs can deal with either possibility.
==As for proving God exists, ... I'm fine with saying that the existence of God is one of a set of competing hypotheses.==
I'm not. And I'm not willing to pretend that God-denial -- whether honest atheism or mealy-mouthed agnosticism -- is in any way intellectually respectable.
This "set of competing hypotheses" contains exactly two members (*); and these two are mutually exclusive and exhaustive of the possibilities. ERGO, and necessarily, one is true and one is false. ERGO, if we know that one is true, we simultaneoulsy know that the other is false, and vice-versa.
Atheism is an absurdity generator (examples: you cannot reason, you cannot know any truth, and, in fact, you do not even exist), and thus we can know that atheism itself is absurd, which is to say, false. And thus we can know that God is.
=============
(*) And, by the by, almost all paganisms actually cluster with atheism -- the "Polytheism-to-Monotheism Spectrum" is a false narrative, invented by God-deniers. This is one of the delicious ironies of Dawkins' "Just One More" pseudo-argument that Jews and Christians are for all practical purposes atheists also. All he has done with "Just One More" is to assert the claim -- which happens to be true -- that it is logically imposslble for agents to "arise" from mechanistic processes/events.
Think of it this way: Dawkins asserts that agents (human beings, including Dawkins himself) mechanically-and-accidentally "arose" from a long series of mechanistic events. But, that being the case, Dawkins has no logical or rational grounds to reject the hypothesis that the progenitors of the Olympian Gods similarly "arose" and gave birth to a number of generations of Old Gods, culminating in the Olympians.
==You've [Tim] missed the point.==
I decided to leave that to you, since: it's your post, and, 2) since I have no regard for Tim's or anyone else's feelings, I have no incentive to attempt being diplomatic.
==Religion, in my definition in this post, is a description of the world as it is. Gravity is. It has both observable effects and behavioral consequences.
If we Catholics have it right, then moral behavior has observable effects and behavioral consequences.==
The question of the reality of God (and the subsequent questions about the nature of God) isn't *merely* (*) a matter of theology or philosophy. Rather, it is the First Question about the very nature of reality, for all subsequent questions one may ask about reality, and thus all subsequent answers, follow from the answer to the First Question.
For instance, were it true that God Is Not, then there could be no "way things ought to be" ... and some of the atheists' favorite objections to God-belief are thus seen to be self-contradictory.
(*) I phrased it that way because most people suffer under the delusion that philosophy and theology, especially, have nothing to do with "the real world".
==Tim, here's a concrete* example.
...
* - Hahahaha! I crack myself up sometimes.==
Also, jumping off a 5-story building onto the sidewalk will tend to crack the sidewalk.
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