[dotancohen]

When I hear the word religion I specifically think of people that are curious and critical.

Referring back to your example of Abrahamic religions, their most famous work opens with an explanation of how the world was created. Was that not the work of somebody interested in how the world works?

[lazide]

No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’. Which doesn’t go well with ‘critical’.

Some will flat out kill you for disagreeing, in fact.

[LinuxBender]

I am not an expert in this area but I think one has to go further back in time before religions were weaponized, censored, intentionally mistranslated, edited and otherwise tainted by kings and emperors. One example might be Gnosticism [1] not the modern version. There are probably better examples from earlier times of antiquity but again I am not an expert in this area. I would wager someone here may be knowledgeable in this area. Perhaps some religions around the time period of the Mycenaean period or other periods where people may have partaken in mind expanding substances as a matter of religious or cult practice? Or perhaps theories around psychedelic drugs used in the Eleusinian Mysteries?

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

[o11c]

The problem with Gnosticism is that it was highly prone to people inventing their own fanfiction that completely contradicted the canonical source material (and a warning against this exact thing is in the source itself). Of course, this doesn't stop the same from applying to "mainstream" denominations too.

[AStonesThrow]

Around 2002, I asked a Dominican friar if it was true that The Matrix films were promoting Gnosticism. He said that I could find Gnosticism just about anywhere, if I looked closely enough.

Pair that with Modernism, and you've got a recipe for some slippery definitions of "truth".

[o11c]

If you define it literally, you can easily find "Gnosticism" (personal knowledge/revelation) in the Bible itself (e.g. Mt 11, Mt 16, Lk 2, Jn 16, 2 Tim 3, all of Rev).

But we generally agree to only label it as Gnosticism if it doesn't pass the consistency trial (2 Pet 1, 1 Jn 4), and especially if it outright fails it.

[debit-freak]

How is that a problem? Even within christianity the bible is not considered "true" or "absolute" or "the word of god" or "sacred" outside of niche literalist communities. If you're chasing coherence with texts written by humans you're likely to end up bitter and confused (or openly exploitative) rather than benefitting.

EDIT: Especially in the context of christianity, the importance of faith/belief cannot be overstated. Even the very act of looking for proof that you're doing the right thing can arguably undermine the entire point of the "religion". cf John 3:16—"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

NB, as awkward as I am to quoting the bible, I am an atheist. I'm just saying this doesn't need to be a barrier to understanding other people.

[o11c]

I'm not sure I understand your position. It doesn't seem to follow from my understanding of what I wrote, nor does it reference real-world events that I recognize (outright dismissal of scripture is pretty rare even in denominations I criticize - neglect is more common). And where does "barrier to understanding other people" fit with this subthread? I had to go quite a distance upthread to find it ...

As for your scripture quote ... the usual misinterpretation I see in that is ignoring the context (particularly, the condemnation in verses 18-19 for those who believe not), but that seems not to be what you're saying. Remember that "faith, believe" is a much broader word in Greek, covering "loyal, trust, commit, persuaded"; I don't see how that's possible if we ignore the evidence we're handed. "Blind faith" is mostly an outside mockery of Christianity rather than a internal doctrine (I can go on about that if you want).

[debit-freak]

I quoted the James bible for a reason—not because it's a good translation (it's obviously not) but it formed the English preconceptions that people structure their understanding of christianity around in the anglo sphere. I chose it to best place the centrality of belief in the culture I assumed we both shared, given that we're speaking English. As I'm sure you're very aware, first century christianity would be nearly unrecognizable to basically any denomination today and is likely very different even from the fourth century when the canons were gathered and the roman state adopted the religion forming the roman church, but we're still stuck using a language that inherited much of its christian diction from the James bible. So that's the relevant text to unlocking understanding of much of what constitutes anglo christianity.

Regardless, you also see this issue with earlier latin translations, too—"credere" has similar semantics, and for all intents and purposes "trust" and "loyalty" have similar semantics, too. (I am not able to profess the same understanding of biblical Greek you do, and presumably neither of us know Aramaic or Ge'ez... which is fine, because neither do most christians.) This is fundamentally an expression of faith in the same sense that was expressed with the story of the binding of Isaac; the same sense of existential faith that Kierkegaard expressed in "Fear and Trembling". You're reverting to quibbling over precise interpretations of the text when it's not clear why this is more meaningful or any more correct than how people actually interpret it, nor more meaningful or correct than the culture that is widely accepted as universal in christanity—e.g. canon itself, the church, marriage sacraments, the Lord's Prayer, etc. Even original sin, although rejected by some protestants, has little textual basis and still permeates denominations post-schism. (Hell, christian values and worldviews still dominate western secular society to an extent most people probably don't process.) These things are just as much "christianity" as anything in the canon texts.

I mean, why is "canon" meaningful to you at all?

Anyway, I'm not trying to attack you for taking this approach (I, too, like trying to understand texts as closely as I can to understand the author), I'm just saying I don't see why gnosticism is any more "problematic" than any other interpretation. the Bible, like most texts written by humans, is fundamentally contradictory and incoherent. People are gonna interpret things how they interpret things—the beauty of texts like the Bible is the value you receive doesn't come from correctness at all but belief or some other subjective, internal reverberation (in my case—mere appreciation of connecting with an ancient author). The neuroticism you see with e.g. Aquinus over interpreting it originates in the problem that they had no better tools at the time for reasoning about the universe and morality aside from appealing to the worldviews and diction people already had in common and trying to wrangle consistency from it by applying Aristotle. If there were people who had other approaches that firmly reject the coherency of the Bible (at the time), we didn't bother to record them.

Personally, I like the theory that gnosticism is basically Egyptian revenge for being, as they saw it, slandered in the Old Testament. If you identify the demiurge as the god "Set" this is rather poetic. However, there are many varieties, so this is unlikely the only source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sethianism

[lazide]

Uh, when ‘further back’ has religion not been weaponized?

Every major religion in recorded history, and all the ones I’m aware of from prehistory, have some history of violence. Even Buddhism.

This is one of those ‘false ideal past’ things.

[LinuxBender]

I should have been more clear. When I say weaponized I meant to manipulate societies and control peoples traditions, compliance with governments and less to do with wars, crusades, jihads and the like. This seems to fluctuate throughout history but then again I am not an expert on this topic. Dominance of the patriarchy vs the sacred feminine and such... I am probably still being too vague.

[lazide]

What do you think religion is exactly? At least organized religion.

You can draw lines of causation back and forth between those two (or three) big things pretty much arbitrarily depending on the specific circumstances.

[bobthepanda]

Buddhism has ongoing violence, today, if you count the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

[debit-freak]

> No major world religion I’m aware of is all that friendly to anyone who disagrees with the answer once ‘given’

Eastern worldviews (tao, buddhism—particularly zen buddhism) are inherently contradictory. Regarding these your perspective is simply nonsensical. Most worldviews have contradictory aspects that require inward judgement rather than just looking to a given bureaucracy to determine value; it's very rare for opinion to have any meaning at all outside of the christianity and islam.

Of course, this comes back to what you consider a "religion". If you're looking for something like the catholic church where belief in a specific worldview is necessary for salvation of the soul it's a pretty natural to be dismissive of anything other than what you already believe in as you presume that other people even care what your opinion is (metaphysics, worldview, belief-system, whatever you want to call it) when likely your opinion is entirely beside the point.

[AlotOfReading]

The very idea that there would a specific set of canonical literature and beliefs that define a religion would have been a radically new idea if we go far enough back. It originated with early Christians and other Jewish groups in the Roman empire and it's not something that many other religious traditions adapted before the modern era.

[lazide]

Would a group be able to call itself Christian, while not believing in a single divine god and that Jesus was his prophet?

Would someone be able to call themselves Jewish, without considering themselves one of ‘god’s chosen people’ who had a covenant with that one god?

Would someone be able to call themselves Hindu without believing in the dharma?

Would someone be able to call themselves Muslim without believing in the one god, with Mohammed as his prophet?

Would someone be able to call themselves Buddhist without believing in Siddhartha Gautama, the dharma, and that enlightenment could exist.

At least, by anyone serious about the meaning of those groups or being at all honest about it. (Plenty of ‘Christmas Mass’ Catholics and non-observant Jews from a community identity perspective, but most would freely admit they aren’t ‘religious’ depending on who is asking).

At literally any point since those religions existed?

That is my point - these groups are fundamentally defined by beliefs, and while they are often pretty flexible on the margins, every one of them has core beliefs that define it and are non-negotiable.

Or do you think a Polytheistic Jew, and/or one with no genetic or conversion history is going to be accepted at Temple, or a Hindu who follows the Bible?

[AlotOfReading]

> Would a group be able to call itself Christian, while not believing in a single divine god and that Jesus was his prophet?

That was the whole debate over Arianism.

You can see this same sort of tension in the Torah too, specifically in the Deuteronomistic account. There's all sorts of remarks about those dang southern Jews and their heretical paganism. We also know of the apparently polytheistic Elephantine Jews from archaeological/literary evidence.

Let's not forget that monotheism and the impossibility of other gods is also a particularly Abrahamic belief that's not widely shared in other ancient traditions.

[lazide]

How does zen buddhism rank on the ‘major world religion’ scale? Or (by followers) Taoist/Daoists?

Though in both cases, would the unacceptable idea not be ‘there is one objective view of reality’, and anyone holding such a view highly unlikely to be considered an adherent?

[debit-freak]

> How does zen buddhism rank on the ‘major world religion’ scale? Or (by followers) Taoist/Daoists?

Well if you're just going off "popularity" then yea, you're going to end up with a lot of dogmatic belief that is the result of millennia of use by states. That's a big part of how ideas consistently spread and are maintained over time. That doesn't strike me as very useful and you're likely to offend a lot of people if you treat this understanding as accurate. But the closest parallel in the east—namely, confucianism—is almost entirely secular, which is a strong sign that you're actually talking about the dangers of authority. Arguably belief in "market forces" as a rational form of resource distribution today form another such secular religion worldwide, and indeed when you watch political figures discuss macroeconomic forces the effect is largely similar to the Pontifex Maximus slaughtering a bird and inspecting its liver to understand the future.

> there is one objective view of reality

Yes, this is fundamentally contrary to the Tao (or Dao if you prefer). It's also very rare for most animist beliefs to have anything like this sort of understanding of the sort. I don't know as much about Buddhism or Hinduism, by I understand this is also trivially incompatible with that from my layman's chair.

For the most part humans just need to agree insofar as we have to in order to form a society. It seems like what you're actually complaining about are the effects of Abrahamic religions and their historical relation to state authority, which very much emphasize the importance of believing certain historical events are true. That's actually quite rare by enumeration of what people refer to as "religion", "faith", "spirituality", etc.

[lazide]

I literally said ‘major world religions’ in my comment for a reason.

[detourdog]

Maybe but I’m not sure it has to do with religion. This type of behavior is generally only a sub-group of any believers.

[lazide]

Have you even met religious people?! I’m not saying everyone is violent. But the core tenet of every religion I’m aware of is believing in it without meaningfully diverting from its core tenets. That’s pretty fundamental.

Otherwise, pretty much every religion says they aren’t a part of it anymore. Sometimes that has serious consequences for them. Several of the large religions have ‘you can’t leave’ clauses, either de facto or de jure.

And if the core tenets get ‘influenced’ to violence, then that is what also happens.

[Nathanba]

Religion is just a form of trained education, you see the same type of belief in people who were educated in schools. People who go through such targetted training are inherently going to believe that the training had some kind of purpose and made it unnecessary to reevaluate it every single time it's brought up. After all what's the point of training if you have to question it all day. This is why you see so many people in society fairly blindly parrotting "I believe in science!" and you think they mean: oh you believe in the scientific method, truth above all else, etc. But no, they mean that they were trained to believe in this particular thing that the tribe thinks is important and they kinda got the gist of it during training.

[detourdog]

I’m really afraid that everything you mention is pretty general and not my experience.

[lazide]

Care to be specific then?

[detourdog]

I can only speak for one religion it has authorities that are well studied and can be consulted. These authorities are only as influential as the congregation that supports them. The story goes that the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Israelites is the translated to the land without a ruler. The idea was that they self organized around texts.

[debit-freak]

> Referring back to your example of Abrahamic religions, their most famous work opens with an explanation of how the world was created. Was that not the work of somebody interested in how the world works?

I absolutely agree! Although in the context of authorship during exile I'd hazard a guess that there was some motive of community cohesion and development.

> When I hear the word religion I specifically think of people that are curious and critical.

I hear a far more ambiguous term, and the term will have different connotations if you ask a catholic vs a protestant vs jewish person vs a sunni vs a sufi vs an atheist, &c. I have no clue how others perceive the term, but I sense that it's a rough match at best and completely nonsensical at worse.

But broader than that, our (i.e. those of us in the western tradition) entire conceptions about interpreting metaphysical/ontological language have been shaped by western religious conflict and an impossible to enumerate number of people being very, obviously, proudly incoherent, preserved in writing at massive, massive cost. The terms we use—faith, belief, god(s), spirit, afterlife, heaven/hell, sin, evil, guilt, salvation, &c—are difficult to detach from the above conflict and often have zero parallel in the metaphysics of people outside this culture.

This also results in people not realizing how much they've internalized the connotations of what might be basic descriptive words for common internal phenomena outside of the framing of religous rhetoric—for instance, you often see atheists proudly rejecting the concepts of faith and belief entirely, unaware that their own worldviews are formed around confidence about metaphysical concepts formed on less-than-certain grounds. as Hume would point out, and as should not be a surprise to anyone who identifies as an empiricist—we all have faith or belief that the sun will rise tomorrow without any line of reasoning to allow us to find deductive, 100%, absolute certainty in this. After all you never know when a pulsar might just completely obliterate our solar system, or that the laws of physics won't arbitrarily change. This might seem facetious until you realize that language only binds to reality in terms of personal confidence that these words are actually descriptive, regardless to what extent this is actually relevant to reality wrt established inductive reasoning.

Meanwhile, if you go back far enough, or even just speak in another language that hasn't marinated in christianized latin for millennia, "gods" and "spirits" might as well just be code for "unknown force that drives the mechanisms of the world and human relations". Anthropomorphization of these forces is a social process that allows people to reason about these concepts in abstract ways. Atheism in this context wouldn't necessarily mean you're rejecting a "sky wizard who wants you to deny evolution" (for a particularly facetious example); such beliefs might be perceived closer to a person abandoning the sole basis people had for reasoning about the world without providing an alternative other than "skepticism" (particularly in the case of Socrates, whose actual worldview we have very scant knowledge of). It takes a lot of time, resources, and pain for people to create concepts we take for granted today—even things like "truth" and "encoding words and numbers to strings of symbols we can algorithmically reason about" had to be invented. Of course this would have been bootstrapped on whatever reasonable substrate was available, if only for the sole purpose of communicating your reasoning to others.

Naturally this is just my 2¢.

[BurningFrog]

I suspect it's what someone who claims to be a knowledge authority comes up with when everyone asks how the world was created.

I mean, if you're that guy, you can't just say you don't know!

[debit-freak]

The costs of propagating such a text are significant enough this act implies serious buy-in from the community (if only its ruling class).