Brief Review
Some Brief Notes for Those Who Can't Be Troubled to Look It Up Themselves
Austin Cline, formerly a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and Publicity Coordinator for Campus Freethought Alliance, for About.com:
The article is already on the record in this discussion.
Sociologist Anthony J. Blasi considered the definition of religion for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society; the article is longer than we might reasonably quote, but just to give you a taste: "The definitional literature can be organized around four approaches: substantive, functional, verstehende , and formal."
Arie Molendijk, of University of Groningen, noted:
And many, of course, look to Émile Durkheim, who, as Molendijk explains,
And it only gets more complicated from there in Molendijk's telling. To wit, he recounts Talal Asad's criticism of Clifford Geertz, and considers Mircea Eliade's statement that, "The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the 'religious' from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern" (5).
Paul Tillich, a Christian existentialist, asserted in 1951 that "God does not exist", and that "to argue that God exists is to deny him" (qtd. in Wikipedia).
And, in addition to the absence of God in a major religion otherwise known as Buddhism, there is actually a splinter of the Society of Friends (Quakers) wherein people identify as "nontheist Friends"; we might suggest that to them, although it's not quite what John Lennon meant, God is a concept. And since the Order of the Jedi is now recognized, we might note the godlessness of that particular religion.
And despite invoking the Jedi, I will skip the Dragaeran Halls of Judgment, despite a fascinatingly obscure discussion in the Khaavren Romances about differences between how people regard "gods". Besides, Verra and her Sisters, Barlen, Ordwynnac, and others of that pantheon have not yet made the leap into real-world religions. To the other, I do recommend the Taltos cycle and Khaavren Romances to atheists who like a bit of adventure and don't mind a bit of magic; eventually they will get to empathize with a character in the moment that he realizes his patron goddess is afraid of him.
The reality is, however, that there isn't much to insisting on deliberately narrow definitions of religion. It is intellectually lazy, at best, to simply complain and expect to be taken seriously according to merits one refuses to demonstrate.
Given the vast body of scholarly literature considering the definition of religion, it seems arrogant to the point of stupidity to arbitrarily declare it all worthless in order to insist on one's own deliberately limited definition.
I'm pretty sure we have a word (or many words, at that) to describe people who ignore the scholarly literature in order to insist on their own reality.
____________________
Notes:
Cline, Austin. "What is Religion?" About. (n.d.) Atheism.About.com. November 19, 2013. http://atheism.about.com/od/religiondefinition/a/definition.htm
Blasi, Anthony J. "Definition of Religion". Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. (n.d.) HIRR.HartSem.edu. November 19, 2013. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/defreligion.htm
Molendijk, Arie L. "In Defence of Pragmatism". The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Contexts, Concepts, and Contests. Ed. by Jan G. Platvoet and Arie L. Molendijk. Leiden, Boston, and Köln: Brill, 1999. Books.Google.com. http://books.google.com/books?id=gmcjPkrGTQ8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Some Brief Notes for Those Who Can't Be Troubled to Look It Up Themselves
Austin Cline, formerly a Regional Director for the Council for Secular Humanism and Publicity Coordinator for Campus Freethought Alliance, for About.com:
Definitions of religion tend to suffer from one of two problems: they are either too narrow and exclude many belief systems which most agree are religious, or they are too vague and ambiguous, suggesting that just about any and everything is a religion.
A good example of a narrow definition is the common attempt to define “religion” as “belief in God,” effectively excluding polytheistic religions and atheistic religions while including theists who have no religious belief system. A good example of a vague definition is the tendency to define religion as “worldview” — but how can every worldview qualify as a religion?
A good example of a narrow definition is the common attempt to define “religion” as “belief in God,” effectively excluding polytheistic religions and atheistic religions while including theists who have no religious belief system. A good example of a vague definition is the tendency to define religion as “worldview” — but how can every worldview qualify as a religion?
The article is already on the record in this discussion.
Sociologist Anthony J. Blasi considered the definition of religion for The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society; the article is longer than we might reasonably quote, but just to give you a taste: "The definitional literature can be organized around four approaches: substantive, functional, verstehende , and formal."
Arie Molendijk, of University of Groningen, noted:
The concept and definition of religion have occupied the minds of scholars for a long time. The American psychologist James H. Leuba could easily list 48 definitions of religion in an article published in the Monist [over] a century ago. His intention was to show the futility of defining religion. Nevertheless, on another occasion he defined the 'religious sense' as 'thye feeling of unwholeness, of moral imperfection, of sin, to use the technical word, accompanied by the yearning after the peace of unity'. Sometimes it seems inevitable that we should specify precisely what we are talking about. The case of Leuba suggests that we should be suspicious of all universal definitions but, on the other hand, it also suggests that we cannot do without stipulative definitions, in order to demarcate the subject in a particular context. This is not to say that we may simply define religion in any wa we like, or should not discuss the usefulness of particular proposals. One might convincingly argue, for instance, that Salomon Reinach's definition of religion as 'the whole fo scruples which constitute an obstacle for the free exercise of our (human) faculties' is not the best starting point for scholarly research. And Schleiermacher's characterization of religion as 'Sinn und Geschmack fürs Unendliche' [sense and taste for the infinite] is probably not of much help in discussions of the public role of the churches. Debates about religion take place always in a specific context and refer to specific phenomena. This fact calls, according to the editors of this volume, for a pragmatical, contextualized approach to the problem of defining religion.
(3-4)
(3-4)
And many, of course, look to Émile Durkheim, who, as Molendijk explains,
had already suggested, for instance, that a religion is not so much the idea of gods and spirits, but should be defined as 'a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practicces which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them (4).
And it only gets more complicated from there in Molendijk's telling. To wit, he recounts Talal Asad's criticism of Clifford Geertz, and considers Mircea Eliade's statement that, "The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the 'religious' from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern" (5).
Paul Tillich, a Christian existentialist, asserted in 1951 that "God does not exist", and that "to argue that God exists is to deny him" (qtd. in Wikipedia).
And, in addition to the absence of God in a major religion otherwise known as Buddhism, there is actually a splinter of the Society of Friends (Quakers) wherein people identify as "nontheist Friends"; we might suggest that to them, although it's not quite what John Lennon meant, God is a concept. And since the Order of the Jedi is now recognized, we might note the godlessness of that particular religion.
And despite invoking the Jedi, I will skip the Dragaeran Halls of Judgment, despite a fascinatingly obscure discussion in the Khaavren Romances about differences between how people regard "gods". Besides, Verra and her Sisters, Barlen, Ordwynnac, and others of that pantheon have not yet made the leap into real-world religions. To the other, I do recommend the Taltos cycle and Khaavren Romances to atheists who like a bit of adventure and don't mind a bit of magic; eventually they will get to empathize with a character in the moment that he realizes his patron goddess is afraid of him.
The reality is, however, that there isn't much to insisting on deliberately narrow definitions of religion. It is intellectually lazy, at best, to simply complain and expect to be taken seriously according to merits one refuses to demonstrate.
Given the vast body of scholarly literature considering the definition of religion, it seems arrogant to the point of stupidity to arbitrarily declare it all worthless in order to insist on one's own deliberately limited definition.
I'm pretty sure we have a word (or many words, at that) to describe people who ignore the scholarly literature in order to insist on their own reality.
____________________
Notes:
Cline, Austin. "What is Religion?" About. (n.d.) Atheism.About.com. November 19, 2013. http://atheism.about.com/od/religiondefinition/a/definition.htm
Blasi, Anthony J. "Definition of Religion". Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. (n.d.) HIRR.HartSem.edu. November 19, 2013. http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/defreligion.htm
Molendijk, Arie L. "In Defence of Pragmatism". The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Contexts, Concepts, and Contests. Ed. by Jan G. Platvoet and Arie L. Molendijk. Leiden, Boston, and Köln: Brill, 1999. Books.Google.com. http://books.google.com/books?id=gmcjPkrGTQ8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
