I figure Jim will have to decide that question for herself.

In the context of the shared language we now use to agree or disagree, the expressions of religious differences generally refer to one personal view of the world versus another. The reason we can use theism versus atheism as a division that doesn't require much qualification is because of a broad acceptance toward seeing the matter through the lens of what a person accepts or denies to be happening.

That common ground is not a great fit with the "religion as a language community" that was expressed through centuries of mortal conflict with other "languages."

In the key of talking and the desire for language, I am reminded of my favorite prayer: "Lord, please situate a table between me and my enemies."

The general focus of this thread, perhaps, is the tension between what it means for religion to be just another language community and religion as a locus for the discussion of things of ultimate concern. — Ennui Elucidator

You'll find a deal of sympathy here for the notion that religion is all talk; but I would suggest that it is primarily a social (and occasionally unsocial) practice in the first place. In the good old days, the rituals of the Catholic Church were conducted in Latin, and incomprehensible to almost all the congregation -Kyrie Eleison and all that. But we peasants were illiterate even in our own tongue. We went through the motions with more or less devotion, and meaning was a very vague and fairly unimportant aspect.

In the good old days, the rituals of the Catholic Church were conducted in Latin, and incomprehensible to almost all the congregation -Kyrie Eleison and all that. — unenlightened

Kyrie Eleison is Greek, sorry. For "Lord Have mercy." As for the rest of the mass, helpful translations into English were included in each St. Joseph's Missal back then, along with the Latin. I'm just saying. Old altar boy, you see.

religion as a locus for the discussion of things of ultimate concern. — Ennui Elucidator

Ah, those things. What are they, by the way?

I think a quick detour is in order. A language community is not meant to be simply "people who are using language with one another limited to the context of the use of language", but rather a community that broadly gives meaning to symbols (be that a Mass or a war or a word like "dog") in similar ways (without delving into whether each member of the community uses or interprets each symbol or collection of symbols in precisely the same way). So yes, historically religious conduct is much larger than words (or "language" in that type of context), but it was not my intent to limit language communities to just words.

As for Jim deciding for herself whether or not her conduct is religious, I wonder what Jim's opinion ads to our understanding. For instance, in the case referenced, the chaplain is a member of religious order, but there still seems to be quite the debate as to whether his atheism precludes his religiosity regardless of his views on the matter. If meaning is use and Jim calls herself religious, I suppose it is one more piece of evidence in favor of Jim being so, but as participants in the language community (or at least this forum), don't we get to evaluate Jim's conduct for ourselves?

The things of ultimate concern, Ciceronianus? I believe they include Epicureanism, Eudaimonia, and cats on mats, no? Or maybe it is desire is the root of all suffering and self-abnegation is the way out. I never can remember.

As for Jim deciding for herself whether or not her conduct is religious, I wonder what Jim's opinion ads to our understanding. For instance, in the case referenced, the chaplain is a member of religious order, but there still seems to be quite the debate as to whether his atheism precludes his religiosity regardless of his views on the matter. If meaning is use and Jim calls herself religious, I suppose it is one more piece of evidence in favor of Jim being so, but as participants in the language community (or at least this forum), don't we get to evaluate Jim's conduct for ourselves? — Ennui Elucidator

I take your point that Jim is presenting his case in front of a community whose language connects meanings in ways that include him and his listeners. I did not mean to introduce the element of the personal as an example suggesting otherwise but as evidence, of a kind, that might support your view.

I can accept some elements of your thesis while objecting to other parts of it at the same time.

,

I've re-read your posts a few times, but I'm still not quite sure how to respond. Do you mind elaborating the point you wish to discuss?

"Lord, please situate a table between me and my enemies." — Valentinus

With food & wine on it if it's not too much to ask. :lol:

Linguistic meaning is about what words refer to. Existential meaning is about purpose (use), life's purpose to be precise. Two entirely different concepts.

However, the great Ludwig Wittgenstein was of the opinion that meaning is use. :chin:

@Banno. Heeellllllp!

The things of ultimate concern, Ciceronianus? I believe they include Epicureanism, Eudaimonia, and cats on mats, no? Or maybe it is desire is the root of all suffering and self-abnegation is the way out. I never can remember. — Ennui Elucidator

Cats, whether on or off mats, certainly. Epicureanism has its charms, but isn't what I'd call religious. Stoicism has a religious component, if Cleanthes is any example of a Stoic, and a Divine Reason is more attractive in a religious sense than Epicurus' sublimely disinterested deities.

But I suspect what is of ultimate concern to us is ourselves, our well-being, our continued survival in comfort (even after death), and our significance to others and the world, and these concerns aren't solely or peculiarly the focus of religious discussion.

As a historical matter, what community discussed these things besides religious communities? Even in philosophy, I would venture that much of the conversation was had in expressly religious contexts until fairly recently.

Banno. Heeellllllp! — TheMadFool

Far too big a knot to try to untie. Sure, treat religion as a form of life; then what it means is what it does.

Which in the main is fleecing the sheep.

Far too big a knot to try to untie. — Banno

Come now, Banno. Surely Alexander can provide some inspiration and a deft word or two will be the knot’s undoing.

Is it at least a pretty knot? There is more to the aesthetics of an argument than its ability to be readily scrutinized with analytical philosophy.

Although there are good reasons to abandon religion (or at least stop taking about stuff in a religious context), aren’t there some good reasons to go on using the word “religion” where it is accurately and efficiently communicates something of substance? Dismissing the idea with “language is what language does” is sometimes insightful, but maybe in this case we can at least pretend that there is something of value to be had.

Your prose is far too clever for a me to discern your meaning.

What are you suggesting?

Nothing so fancy, Banno. I had hoped my allusion to the gordian knot and alternatives to untying would amuse you.

My suggestion is no more or less than my original post. If I am using a defensible sense of “religion” and it proves useful in our descriptions, should we apply it to contemporary situations where the word is not typically used? Do we lose something by calling humanists a religion? Do we gain something by it? Do we gain something by sticking communal meaning making into the religion bucket? If not a religion, what do we call a group of people engaged in meaning making regarding areas of ultimate concern?

Picture this - a group of people stand around a dead body and engage in pre-established pattens of behavior regarding mourning and disposing of the body. Without hearing a word or seeing their iconography, do we err in suspecting we are witness to a religious act? If it isn’t religious, what should we call it? And if we pick something narrow (like death rites), what larger bucket do similar sorts of lifecycle rites fit in?

On the one hand, this matter is likely of little philosophical interest to you, on the other, you may enjoy (or at least let me enjoy) the conversation about it if you pretend like it is worthy of your attention.

One might say that existential meaning is what we orient to while symbols are what we use to convey meaning. Symbols (or words) do not merely refer (i.e. point) - they can (and often) do something.

So yes, we can mean different things by the symbols we employ, but it isn’t equivocation to treat what meaning we convey with symbols as the same sort of thing that we mean by orienting (or living, if you prefer).

a group of people stand around a dead body and engage in pre-established pattens of behavior — Ennui Elucidator

What use is calling this religious? What's the point?

The same as the point of calling it religious 200 years ago, no? What is the point of calling anything anything?

My use is hardly here or there, it is how the word is used at large. Why I think it adds something to the conversation is because it makes it clear that those people aren’t doing math, science, or calisthenics and that the context of the behavior is most usefully placed along with other religious behavior.

Why are my personal motivations instructive? Do we typically ask literature teachers why they call something literature or musicians why they call something music? We call things by certain words when we have communally decided that there is something useful about doing so, even if we can’t articulate all of the uses or completely account for all of the marginal cases.

If not a religion, what do we call a group of people engaged in meaning making regarding areas of ultimate concern? — Ennui Elucidator

I would call that a celebration. Religion is a word so poisoned by its associations that it may be better not to use it. In Australia we often call football a religion - mainly because people are irrationally devoted to their random team winning. It's ultimately meaningless but fanatical, so perhaps religion is suitable. I find a word like religion is best used ironically.

Such is the problematic nature of the word religion that even many believers deride it, as in, "I'm spiritual, but definitely not religious." Some words are unsettling and dubious.

I get the temptation to jettison religion, but isn’t there more than just Islam and Christianity? Like if we go into a department of comparative religions and strip away the West and near East, do we still have a subject matter? Is that element of culture that is the subject of study simply an artifact to be assigned to the dust bins of history as no longer relevant to any contemporary human behavior?

The idea of “spiritual” is really a major problem. It is the biggest bunch of non-sense one can imagine wrapped in a bit of anti-establishmentarianism. Besides the nonsense on its face (transcendence thrown in with some bad metaphysics), it is clearly culturally received conditioning that is not an independent invention (or experience) of the person espousing spirituality. Furthermore, what do the humanists do?

Someone is born, you want to celebrate. Someone dies, you want to mourn. Not because either event necessitates such a reaction, but because that is what we have been acculturated to do. You can’t go to someone’s memorial and say that you are doing math or psychology or counseling. You can’t claim that your activity is something else. And you surely aren’t celebrating (unless that is your thing - feel free to celebrate if someone dies). You are mourning and the space in which we have historically discussed mourning ritual is religious, not secular. Yes, some people have sterilized mourning and try to speak of it devoid of a particular sect’s perspective, but the source they go to is categorically religious practice. Just the other day I heard that some non-Jewish person was having a shiva for their non-Jewish family member because the person was non-religious but preferred the shiva format to their wake upbringing. It wasn’t as if they opened their book on “Being and Time” and suddenly knew how to solicit and receive community attention for their grieving.

There is an entire sub forum here with regards to the philosophy of religion and it feels more like an antiquities department mixed with a touch of world religion debate and god (typically the Christian god or the god of the philosophers) football. Once we get past the fact that Christianity sucks in popular imagination and Islam is terrifying, have we fully exhausted the field of what is to be said on religion?

Religion historically occupied the field for huge swaths of human conduct. When people go on about justice, rights, etc., and make an appeal to universal values outside of religion, are they any less universalists than the “religious” folk that claim that their god’s agenda applies to all human’s in all circumstances? And besides thumbing your nose at Christianity, what is the actual difference between saying, “God says be nice” and “Secular values say be nice?” Or that children should be taught one or the other?

I imagine that philosophy has something to say about whether the death of religious education and the rise of secular Maoist education share intellectual space. It isn’t as if the political theorists that advocated such positions were ignorant of what they were up to - replacing god with state and creating communal religious practice around state instead of god.

I am not asking the question from a sociological perspective (wherein I think the question of religion is not so readily dismissed as non-useful), but a philosophical one. The same sort of philosophical perspective that decides that metaphysics is now a waste of time and ontology is where it is at or that semiotics doesn’t belong in a discussion among serious philosophers. That is to say, do the methods of philosophy and the paradigms typically discussed include “religion” going forward? And if they do, what do you all think that looks like and what constitutes “religion” for your purpose?

If god is dead and religion is god talk, I don’t see where we are going.

One might say that existential meaning is what we orient to while symbols are what we use to convey meaning. Symbols (or words) do not merely refer (i.e. point) - they can (and often) do something.

So yes, we can mean different things by the symbols we employ, but it isn’t equivocation to treat what meaning we convey with symbols as the same sort of thing that we mean by orienting (or living, if you prefer). — Ennui Elucidator

@Banno

I wasn't trying to say you were equivocating as such. A frisson of excitement passed through my body when I realized that the question, "what is the meaning of life?" is to find one's purpose which is to discover how one might best use what is a brief sojourn in the land of the living. Needless to say, religion provided one of the most satisfying answers to that existential query.

However, this was not meant to last - religion lost ground and nothing substantive took its place and in that vacuum, life became meaningless but that's another story.

Now, juxtapose that with Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of meaning (of words) as use. A striking resemblance, no?

It's as if "what is the meaning of life?" and "what is the meaning of words?" were two different ways of asking the same question, "what is meaning?" I'm sorry but I'm experiencing analysis paralysis. That's all I got for you. Hope it's helpful.

The idea of “spiritual” is really a major problem. It is the biggest bunch of non-sense one can imagine wrapped in a bit of anti-establishmentarianism. — Ennui Elucidator

Spirituality is more nuanced and generally refers to people's connection to place, people, culture or, if necessary, their idea of higher consciousness. It's what gives them hope and joy. Most people have a sense of the numinous and, as an atheist myself, I talk about people's spiritual life without irony. But I understand that some people are convinced spirituality is a synonym for God stuff and woo.

Someone is born, you want to celebrate. Someone dies, you want to mourn. — Ennui Elucidator

The trend today is that both are celebrations. You celebrate the life that has ended rather than wallow in Victorian-style grief rituals. That said, remember, some cultures have very extensive mourning protocols (such as Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians).

If god is dead and religion is god talk, I don’t see where we are going. — Ennui Elucidator

God is dead is a saying purloined from a partially remembered/understood philosopher. I don't think it has the impact some think and it seems clear that religions and God are still a major and growing influence in world politics and culture - from Trump to the Taliban.

I imagine we agree on a variety of things, but don’t you think it a bit odd to divorce “spirit” from “spirituality” in a conversation where I am investigating what use some philosophy people might have for religion without god?

Here is Wiki’s take…

Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organized religious institutions. This may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension." — “Wiki on Spirituality”

So we’ve got people who are happy to do “spirituality” without animation/breath/soul but not religion without god. I wonder what is covered by “disorganized religious institutions” and if that constitutes religion in some way. I would point to my earlier posts and suggest that it is a pretty obvious extension that any communal spiritual activity is inherently religious and calling it non-religious is reactionary rather than descriptive.

Regarding current trends in celebration, I’m not sure what trends you are following. I’m curious if you have statistics showing that people with no religious affiliation have celebrations for death rituals as a rising trend or that people with religious affiliation are converting from mourning rituals to celebration rituals as a trend. I know that some people these days are dancing the dead off into heaven (or having “coming home” parties), but assuming for a moment that the focus of our conversation is on non-religious/secular culture, I’d love to see any sort of “movement” or “trend” that can be accounted for as other than individual fits and spurts.

As for god being dead, whence god? In any “serious” conversation in contemporary philosophy, can you point me to where god is actually alive? Not as an object of study, but as an animating principal for the substance of the conversation. Nietzsche is dead, too, so whatever he meant, he long ago lost claim to how that phrase is employed.

A striking resemblance, no? — TheMadFool

Oh, indeed - has the penny dropped?

If meaning is use, then the meaning of your life is what you do.

...religion provided one of the most satisfying answers to that existential query. — TheMadFool

Well, I won't agree with that. Religion perhaps provides a cookie-cutter replacement for meaning. It's for folk who want a prefabricated answer, one that avoids having to be critical or think for oneself. that may be satisfactory for you, but not for me.

If meaning is use, then the meaning of your life is what you do. — Banno

Indeed.

It's for folk who want a prefabricated answer, one that avoids having to be critical or think for oneself. — Banno

So let’s say I did this with the comment animating the exchange…

“ ...electronics provided one of the most satisfying answers to that engineering query.”

Does your re-contextualized comment sound like something you’d find compelling? Why is it that in matters of “ultimate concern” religion can’t be shorthand for most problems (a heuristic, if you will) while individuals tailor it to their unique circumstance as warranted? Like, “thousands of years of smart people have done a bunch of thinking and this is where things stand on the topic, so it is probably instructive in your case.” If there can be expertise in any other field, why not on issues of meaning? In the same way that fiat currency is just a social convention regarding monetary value (the meaning of slips of paper cut just so and dyed the right way), how is it that there is no social convention regarding meaning to which others might have better information than the individual in a vacuum of expressions of meaning?

I am not arguing that meaning for all people is the same, but that if meaning exists at all, it must be on the communal level (where individuals do with it what they will). So where is it that we give content to meaning besides communal practice regarding such? And why isn’t that communal practice religion?

feel free to disagree with yourself privately — Ennui Elucidator

Only privately?

The idea of “spiritual” is really a major problem. It is the biggest bunch of non-sense one can imagine wrapped in a bit of anti-establishmentarianism — Ennui Elucidator

Non-sense! Wrapped up in anti-establishmentarianism (what word!).

Only privately? — Prishon

You could do so publicly, but then Banno would think you missed the joke.

Well, I won't agree with that. Religion perhaps provides a cookie-cutter replacement for meaning. It's for folk who want a prefabricated answer, one that avoids having to be critical or think for oneself. that may be satisfactory for you, but not for me. — Banno

When a small boy I believed in God. Then no more. And now again I believe in even more than one. They are there but I dont give a fuck about them (so basically, they dont give a fuck about themselves). I care about their creation though.

I often work closely with funeral directors, so my thoughts are based on lived experience. But I'm in Australia which has a somewhat more secular culture.

In any “serious” conversation in contemporary philosophy, can you point me to where god is actually alive? — Ennui Elucidator

I don't know what 'serious' or 'contemporary philosophy' means to you but I don't think that is the right question. The point I am making is that gods and religions continue to have a hold on much human behaviour, choices, politics, culture and wars, regardless of what a few academics think. Nietzsche's madman can walk into markets all over the world tomorrow and find that there's a good chance he will bump into fundamentalists. So the right question (as far as I can tell) is how is it that the gods survive alleged secularism?

I would point to my earlier posts and suggest that it is a pretty obvious extension that any communal spiritual activity is inherently religious and calling it non-religious is reactionary rather than descriptive. — Ennui Elucidator

This idea seems important to you. You already know I disagree with your choices. But I will ask you, what does it mean?

I'm reading The Darkening Age. Again, it seems to me that religion is a way of avoiding issues of ultimate concern rather than addressing them.

Again, and as others have implied, I still do not see a theme to this thread.

In Australia we often call football a religion — Tom Storm

The blind faith, the ritual - it has all the hallmarks.

But if we are looking for exaltation in issues of ultimate concern, for Australians I think the sun is our spiritual centre.