That's half an answer. What is the other half? What is it that you have left, after you take the history, metaphysics, authority and all away? — Banno
There is no god. — Banno
If there is no God.... there is no good. — Hanover
brilliant tune, don't you think? — Banno
I think this is a good summary of the ongoing debate here. And for all our rehashing of this theme I'm not sure we've really explored it in depth. Maybe I haven't been her long enough or paid close enough attention. — Tom Storm
Yes, you and ↪Wayfarer are correct, and I will accept my share of the blame, for lowering my replies to the repetition of old moral arguments, and being distracted by musical critique. — Banno
...having been brought up in the Baptist tradition... — Tom Storm
I was raised as a Christian and we celebrated Christmas. Now I'm an atheist. I still bring a tree into my home during the holiday season, but I don't do it to celebrate the birth of some man that claimed to be the son of a god. I do it because it is fun for me and my family. So it's not a religious ritual. — Harry Hindu
So the very first human was a Jew? Wouldn't that make every human a Jew and therefore meaningless? If not then how did the first Jew become a Jew?You are a Jew if your mother was a Jew. Judaism is not even based upon your belief system. — Hanover
This is the same as saying, "religion" is just scribbles on this page."Religion" is not a term with an essence. — Hanover
To use something we must have a goal in mind. What is the goal in using the term the way we do?All we have is the way we use the term. — Banno
So the very first human was a Jew? Wouldn't that make every human a Jew? If not then how did the first Jew become a Jew? — Harry Hindu
This is the same as saying, "religion" is just scribbles on this page. — Harry Hindu
If there is no God, there is no teleos and there is no good. "Good for what? " is a meaningless question if there is no what, no aim, no objective. — Hanover
Why does life need to have an end or purpose beyond life? How is that purpose known? How do you know it is a purpose that is discovered or given to us rather that one we make? — Fooloso4
Right there you've done an exposé of religious scams. All the religions of the world piggyback on fun things to do. The Trojan horse, my friend. Here's a gift for you! Wait a minute, what's the (malicious) payload? — Agent Smith
There is good here, now. That much we know. 'Good' is a malleable word. — ZzzoneiroCosm
A bunch of notions that seem incapable of producing any account that would serve to define the concept of religion. — Banno
Despite this murkiness, all three of these versions are “substantive” definitions of religion because they determine membership in the category in terms of the presence of a belief in a distinctive kind of reality. In the twentieth century, however, one sees the emergence of an importantly different approach: a definition that drops the substantive element and instead defines the concept religion in terms of a distinctive role that a form of life can play in one’s life—that is, a “functional” definition.
. . .
What is counted as religion by one definition is often not counted by others. How might this disarray be understood? Does the concept have a structure? This section distinguishes between two kinds of answer to these questions. Most of the attempts to analyze the term have been “monothetic” in that they operate with the classical view that every instance that is accurately described by a concept will share a defining property that puts them in that category. The last several decades, however, have seen the emergence of “polythetic” approaches that abandon the classical view and treat religion, instead, as having a prototype structure.
. . .
A central theme of his essays is that the concept religion (and subcategories such as world religions, Abrahamic faiths, or nonliterate traditions) are not scientific terms but often reflect the unrecognized biases of those who use these concepts to sort their world into those who are or are not “like us”
. . .
In some cases, the point of rejecting thing-hood is to deny that religion names a category, all the instances of which focus on belief in the same kind of object—that is, the slogan is a rejection of substantive definitions of the concept (e.g., Possamai 2018: ch. 5). In this case, the objection bolsters a functional definition and does not deny that religion corresponds to a functionally distinct kind of form of life.
. . .
Like the concept of witches or the concept of biological races (e.g., Nye 2020), religion is a fiction (Fitzgerald 2015) or a fabrication (McCutcheon 2018), a concept invented and deployed not to respond to some reality in the world but rather to sort and control people.
. . .
These post-structuralist and nominalist arguments that deny that religion is “out there” have a realist alternative. According to this alternative, there is a world independent of human conceptualization, and something can be real and it can even affect one’s life, whether or not any human beings have identified it. This is true of things whose existence does not depend on collective agreement, like biochemical signaling cascades or radioactive beta particles, and it is equally true of things whose existence does depend on collective agreement, like kinship structures, linguistic rules, and religious commitments. A realist about social structures holds that a person can be in a bilateral kinship system, can speak a Uralic language, and can be a member of a religion—even if they lack these concepts.
This realist claim that social structures have existed without being conceptualized raises the question: if human beings had different ways of practicing religion since prehistoric times, why and when did people “finally” create the taxon?
. . .
— "SEP
. . .
One also sees a functional approach in Paul Tillich (1957), who defines religion as whatever dominant concern serves to organize a person’s values (whether or not that concern involve belief in any unusual realities). Tillich’s definition turns on the axiological function of providing orientation for a person’s life. ..
For example, the Thai villager who wears an apotropaic amulet and avoids the forest because of a belief that malevolent spirits live there, or the ancient Roman citizen who takes a bird to be sacrificed in a temple before she goes on a journey are for Durkheim examples of magic rather than religion, and for Tillich quotidian rather than ultimate concerns. . . .
— SEP
You are a Jew if your mother was a Jew. Judaism is not even based upon your belief system. — Hanover
Then you are not necessarily a Jew if your mother was a Jew and Judaism IS based on a belief system because now you've shown that what makes one a Jew is based on one's belief system.If you're asking for the biblical account, no, Adam wasn't Jewish. The Hebrews were chosen to receive the Torah at Mt. Sinai after fleeing Egypt, so the story goes.
If you're looking fur a more historically accurate account of when rabbinical Jewish law developed dictating who is a Jew, I'd assume after the 1st century CE after the fall of the second temple.
I'm also not advocating here the Orthodox definition of who is a Jew over other viewpoints, but only indicating it is one. The Reforn have a very different view — Hanover
No need to get feisty. It's not my fault that you are incapable of being consistent.This is the same as saying, "religion" is just scribbles on this page.
— Harry Hindu
There can be 20 potential criteria that every religion has, with 2 particular examples not having any overlap, meaning 2 examples would not share an essential similar trait
My point here is that even if you wish to maintain your antiquated essentialist views, your above criticism does not logically follow. — Hanover
However in my view it offers a coherent undestanding of 'mind and cosmos' as it provides for a vision within which h. sapiens has a role, rather than being the 'accidental byproduct' as it is depicted by scientific materialism. And if indeed it can be discerned across so many cultures and periods of history in the forms of literature of those traditions, then that literature should be regarded as evidence and not simply dismissed as myth. — Wayfarer
but isn't a type of freeloading built into the human experience in as much as we benefit from the work/ideas/civilization of all who came before us, without making a single contribution? — Tom Storm
This is the same as saying, "religion" is just scribbles on this page. — Harry Hindu
Then you are not necessarily a Jew if your mother was a Jew and Judaism IS based on a belief system because now you've shown that what makes one a Jew is based on one's belief system. — Harry Hindu
However in my view it offers a coherent undestanding of 'mind and cosmos' as it provides for a vision within which h. sapiens has a role, rather than being the 'accidental byproduct' as it is depicted by scientific materialism. And if indeed it can be discerned across so many cultures and periods of history in the forms of literature of those traditions, then that literature should be regarded as evidence and not simply dismissed as myth. — Wayfarer
Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed the entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world. — Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a) Attributed to Hillel
I don't see why we would need to use the term, "metaphysical" here. It's just a fact that I would be a citizen of X because being a citizen of X is a human conceptual invention - not something discovered in nature that has existed prior to humans, like planets vs dwarf planets, or life vs non-life when talking about the origins of life.Pretend for a moment, if you will, that we aren't talking about religion and instead are talking about government. One day you are born - from that moment onwards, you are a citizen of one state or another. You haven't made a choice, it doesn't matter what you believe, it doesn't even matter what your momma or pappa believes, but you are citizen of X. In some respects, this is tantamount to saying there is a metaphysical fact that you are a citizen of X.
What do we make of this fact? Do we say that because if there were no humans alive aside from you that you would not be a citizen of X it means that you aren't a citizen of X? Do we acknowledge that we can create facts through social convention? Do we hold the fact that you are a citizen of X to be something that has legitimacy only if claimed by group Y rather than group Z? — Ennui Elucidator
That's the point in me asking the questions I am asking - of what criteria others are using to define "religion" so that I can then say whether I am religious or not. If they can't give me any criteria then they are simply moving the goalposts so that I can NOT be a member of their group. They haven't given me any reason to believe that I would be a member of their group if they can't define the criteria for being a member. When there are no criteria, or an infinite number of criteria, that define a concept then no one is religious or everyone is religious, which isn't useful.Non-voluntary membership in a group based upon the criteria of others is not unique to religion. Having the world treat you fundamentally different based upon those criteria is not unique to religion. The only difference between being a citizen of X and being a member of religion A is the extent to which such status changes your relationship to the world. — Ennui Elucidator
It seems that you haven't read my other posts in this thread. If you had you would have noticed that I made a distinction between socially constructed facts and natural facts. The former is invented by humans while the latter is invented by nature. Hanover is the one that is being vague and inconsistent in defining the criteria of what "religion" means. I'm the one asking for the criteria that's being referred to when using the word. Religion is a concept invented by humans, just as currency, states, and presidents are. What we need to be careful of is when distinctions between definitions of "religion" and "democracy" are along the lines of one's own religion or political leaning. We can't have only Muslims defining "religion", nor can we have only the left defining "democracy". The definitions of these terms can only be objectively defined by people that are not religious (atheist) or don't have a political leaning (a-political). In other words, they can only be properly defined by those that are not influenced by some group and can think for themselves. In asking different people of different religions or governments how they define "religion" or "government" you attempt to find the common criteria and start from there, but you have to already acknowledge that your religion or government is not the one true religion or government - that there might be other types but they all must share a common characteristic for them to be categorized as a religion or government.If your goal is to say that there are no such things as socially constructed facts (let alone socially constructed metaphysical facts), then great. Go be a mereological nihilist and describe your world that way. Relationships aren't for you.
If, on the other hand, you are willing to acknowledge that some pieces of papers (or binary configurations) are currency and that some are not, you seem to be engaged in that thing around here people like to say... "Special pleading" is it? Uniquely critiquing religion using criteria you do not apply in other contexts means that you are inconsistent rather than the other-way round. — Ennui Elucidator
If you had you would have noticed that I made a distinction between socially constructed facts and natural facts. — Harry Hindu
I don't see why we would need to use the term, "metaphysical" here. — Harry Hindu
The definitions of these terms can only be objectively defined by people — Harry Hindu
by people that are not religious (atheist) or don't have a political leaning (a-political) — Harry Hindu
but they all must share a common characteristic for them to be categorized as a religion or government. — Harry Hindu
Most of the attempts to analyze the term have been “monothetic” in that they operate with the classical view that every instance that is accurately described by a concept will share a defining property that puts them in that category. The last several decades, however, have seen the emergence of “polythetic” approaches that abandon the classical view and treat religion, instead, as having a prototype structure.
. . .
Polythetic definitions are increasingly popular today as people seek to avoid the claim that an evolving social category has an ahistorical essence.[14] However, the difference between these two approaches is not that monothetic definitions fasten on a single property whereas polythetic definitions recognize more. Monothetic definitions can be multifactorial, as we have seen, and they can recognize just as many properties that are “common” or even “typical” of religions, without being essential. The difference is also not that the monothetic identification of the essence of religion reflects an ethnocentrism that polythetic approaches avoid. The polythetic identification of a prototypical religion is equally ethnocentric. The difference between them, rather, is that a monothetic definition sorts instances with a Yes/No mechanism and is therefore digital, and a polythetic definition produces gradations and is therefore analog. It follows that a monothetic definition treats a set of instances that all possess the one defining property as equally religion, whereas a polythetic definition produces a gray area for instances that are more prototypical or less so.
— SEP
As sexy as it can feel to 'know' it - I know you know this is unknown. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Alright, so for all here who have settled upon relativistic morality — Hanover
One need not posit an absolute moral authority in order to regard rape as wrong. — Fooloso4
Ethics are either a code of conduct set by a culture, based on values, traditions and evolving attitudes, or they are handed down by a transcendent source - (deity or idealism). — Tom Storm
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