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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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).
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
Let's try explaining this with a story (vaguely true but with liberties to make a point):
My aunt has always been a cat person. One of her cats in particular was infamous for coughing up hairballs all over the house. In fact, over a lifetime, the total size of the hairballs exceeded the size of the cat itself!
Some people collected as much hair as they could, showing it off. Some people acted like they had never seen the cat, but if you looked at their clothes, you could easily find cat hair. As for me, I had no interest in cat hair. Whenever I wanted, I could just open the photo album and look at the pictures of the cat (I was in many of the photos). Sometimes the photo was blurry or overexposed, but you could still easily tell what it was a picture of (especially when personal memories were added). But of course I was looking forward more to actually visiting her so I could pet the cat again.
This ad-hoc parable covers: 1. superficial Christians, 2. secular society, 3. Christians and the Bible, and 4. what Christians are looking forward to.
One thing that is commonly misunderstood is that the Bible is somehow supposed to persuade people to become a Christian. It isn't. It's for those who already believe, and are determined to order their lives around their belief, their creed (I was aware of that Latin word already). The short, memorizable "creeds" are suitable for an illiterate audience to memorize and proclaim, but in this era of widespread literacy, why would any one of us settle for less?
Intellectually I can acknowledge it, but it just doesn't "make sense" to me that people wouldn't choose to look at pictures of Cat. (If you do want to try, I recommend spending a month or three browsing Matthew 5-7 - some of the most accessible and practical chapters, whether someone has no Christian background or a lifetime of it. Remember, this is meant to be applied; think about what that would look like.)
---
As for other things you said ...
> James bible for a reason—not because it's a good translation
The KJV isn't actually that bad, even though it has its weaknesses (especially in the OT where scholarship has advanced since) and biases (but since the biases weren't aimed at a modern audience, they tend to miss) and outdated language (but this is almost always obvious). But as someone who regularly does read the Greek, it's actually better than many modern translations (the NIV in particular is infamous for making stuff up out of thin air, like one of those photo filters that covers your face with a dog. And no, it's usually not a manuscript difference. One passage that almost everyone gets wrong is Luke 22:31-32.) If you read the translators' preface they were explicitly aware of the effect they would have.
> 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,
I don't dispute the first half of this at all. As for the latter ... whenever people blame the Catholics for curating the Bible, I must ask - why did they leave so many verses in that explicitly criticized what they're doing? (there are about 4 that any child who is exposed to the Bible can point out immediately)
> understanding of biblical Greek you do, and presumably neither of us know Aramaic or Ge'ez... which is fine, because neither do most christians.)
It's not like I have any formal training - you learn what you practice. I just picked it up after a couple hundred times looking up words in a Strong's Concordance. Hebrew is admittedly harder (I refuse to call it "Aramaic" for the same reason I refuse to listen to people who say "nobody spoke English after ~1066, we're actually speaking a Norman variety of French"), but the oldest OT we have is actually the LXX (Septuagint, in Greek), and that's fairly accessible if you look for it (the main problem being random words that don't have Strong's numbers, and thus are much harder to search for).
> I'm just saying I don't see why gnosticism is any more "problematic" than any other interpretation.
Because I don't want a cat, I want this cat. And if the cat hair is a completely different color there's no point in even looking at it. I utterly reject the idea that any cat will do.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism