It might be helpful if you begin by saying what you think is the difference and at least provide an idea of what you understand the words to mean aside from providing examples. It seems by the use of examples that you've applied some principle to distinguish metaphysics from religion.

As for me, I would say metaphysics is a broader category than religion such that religious dogma is contained in the set of metaphysics. Religion also typically involves ritual whereas metaphysics does not. Theistic belief can be irreligious insofar as it commits to a metaphysics but not ritual practice.

In the simplest terms, religious claims about the world are the metaphysical (the necessary) and contingent (the finite, states of the world) confused. Metaphysics deals in logic: in what is true regardless of what exists in the world. Religious claims about the world (at least the sort that you seem to be referring to) are confusion of an imagined existing state (e.g. God) with the metaphysical. This can consist in the claim that some state of existence is logically necessary (e.g. that the Creater Being must exist, or else the world does't make sense) or the claim that an undefined or non-existent Being must be (e.g. the "unknowable", "unobservable" God).

This error is not limited to religious claims though. Humankind has delivered many examples of this confusion about the world and metaphysics. Essentialism, Utopianism, etc.,etc. Basically, anytime someone says "this must necessarily be" when talking about a state of the world, they are committing some version of this error.

Very interesting post.

Both metaphysics and religion are matters of faith; they do not have truth-value but rather represent commitments - ways of being. Your short genealogy of metaphysics and religion is proof of exactly this. Schopenhauer's philosophy represents a way of being in the world. Christianity another. They are different in the practical commitments that they entail, and in the particular ways of relating to existence that they necessitate.

One does not choose a way of being based on reasons because a way of being is always already presupposed by any reasons whatsoever. One does not reason in a vacuum.

Because ways of being are a priori to reasons, it means, undeniably, as pointed out by Hume (later taken on by Hamann, Wittgenstein, Heidegger), that such ways of being are not amenable to rational criticism - rather the ways of being define what is taken to be rational criticism in the first place - they are the bedrock.

That the sun will rise up tomorrow is not a matter that can be determined rationally. It is a commitment - a faith. In-so-far as it is a faith, it has no truth-value, even though it relates to the empirical world - the proposition is neither true, nor false. It is your commitment - the sun will rise tomorrow, so I will go to sleep, wake up tomorrow, pull the curtains, and go out to enjoy the sun. That's what it means - the role it has in your language usage.

Narratives - religion, metaphysics, etc. - are prior to reason, and hence reason cannot question them, without putting itself into question - cartesian doubt - can't even get off the ground. It is a matter of aesthetic sensitivity, education, culture and language and the manner in which one desires to live that determines the choice of narrative each makes. But we all have a narrative - it is part of being a language-using animal.

Wittgenstein was smarter than Kant - Kant's Critique works, but it forgets that it only works if it has the very fine distinctions between synthetic a priori, analytic a priori, etc. But these distinctions are borrowed, and depend on language for their existence. By showing that language is prior to reason (and thus conditions reason itself), metaphysics is once again rendered a matter of faith.

There is a major difference between metaphysical and religious narratives insofar as the first kind are speculative, based on what we can imagine might be the case and the second are based on traditions built up around purported incidences of divine revelation.

Purely analytic metaphysics, which is sometimes derogatorily referred to as "neo-scholastic metaphysics" even if it deceptively purports to be "naturalistic" (and as such based on science rather than merely on commonsense "folk" intuitions) is pretty vacuous, although it is OK if it is considered merely as an exercise in modal logic or imagination (which amount to the same thing) not to be taken too seriously.

The only metaphysical narratives worth taking seriously are those that are consonant with and/or suggested by, our current scientific understandings.

Clifford Geertz defined religion as:

(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."

Of these, only (3) appears to be metaphysical, in the sense of this thread.

Very few philosophers, I am aware of, have ever died for their faith in their metaphysics. Socrates, who could have gone into exile and G. Bruno, who unlike Galileo was burned at the stake (I had a little old, but rhetorically thunderous professor, who said Bruno was an idiot).

I don't think there is much to compare. Tell me how many Atheists have died for their 'faith'.

So, what is the difference between these claims, other than one has a religion based upon it and the others don't? — darthbarracuda

The difference is that metaphysical claims are critical and religious claims non-critical. They may share the same unverifiable status, but one proceeds by logical argumentation and the other by appeals to authority.

Like others, I think that, despite any similarities, there are clear differences. Metaphysical claims are claims about the world, but only a subset of religious narrative is taken to be metaphysical. How much will depend on interpretation. If you're a biblical literalist, then you'll find plenty of metaphysical passages; but if you're not, then you won't find as much. I don't think that ethical, figurative or metaphorical passages count as metaphysical. At least, not necessarily.

That the sun will rise up tomorrow is not a matter that can be determined rationally. It is a commitment - a faith. In-so-far as it is a faith, it has no truth-value, even though it relates to the empirical world - the proposition is neither true, nor false. It is your commitment - the sun will rise tomorrow, so I will go to sleep, wake up tomorrow, pull the curtains, and go out to enjoy the sun. That's what it means - the role it has in your language usage. — Agustino

The example of the claim that the sun will rise up tomorrow is convenient for your position, but is insufficient to prove your point. Many people rightly judge claims about what will be the case in a different light to those about what is the case.

If you are of the extreme position that any metaphysical claim, that is, any claim about what is the case, about the world, factual matters, necessarily has no truth-value, then I think that you're mistaken, and I think that the argument is self-defeating, because you can't consistently claim that it's true, and if you cannot do so, then you cannot commit to the position, and you're forced into a disingenuous position of extreme scepticism in which you only have your professed doubt, which your behaviour, day-to-day thinking, and conversations consistently betray.

Hume also wrote that a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence, and the evidence suggests that there are many truths. That I am alive, that I live on a planet called Earth, and so on.

In my view metaphysics is still part of philosophy, whereas religion is itself.

Questions "beyond physics" still should be thought of in a logical rational way, even if we cannot get a proof or a theorem as an answer for a metaphysical question. That we cannot answer a metaphysical question, i.e. give a proof, still doesn't mean that the topic is something that is just a matter of belief.

Religion is first and foremost a matter of belief. No religion deducts it's faith from logic.