Atheism and Liberation (Antonio Perez-Escalarin 1974)

[struggle4progress]

This is an excerpt from an originally Spanish text written in 1974 and translated into English in 1978, when it was published by the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America.

Chapter V ...

Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke, sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn ... If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech, if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness and the gloom shall become for you like midday (Isa. 58:3—10).

The primary role and task of religion is the establishment of a world based on just relationships. To overlook that fact is to prostitute religion. By the same token, every commitment to a more humane world and to the eradication of oppression is “anonymously” religious. It is after the heart of all true religion. According to the prophets, faith in G-d must be convened into the concrete praxis of liberation. It has political, economic, and social dimensions. To believe in G-d is to work for justice and to serve those in need. To be authentic, religion must be fleshed out in the struggle for a more humane world. G-d is on the side of people and their liberation, fighting against structures that continue to oppress them. To accept G-d is to opt for liberation and to take a stand on the side of the people ...

Chapter VI ...

Christian love can he meaningful only as a revolutionary commitment to the liberation of one’s fellow human beings. If love seeks a world of brothers and sisters, a world without classes, then it will fight for the liberation of the oppressed ... Love for the oppressors means fighting against them as oppressors in order to restore their nature as human beings to them. Thus with their combative love in quest of liberation, the oppressed also make it possible for the oppressor to be liberated and humanized ... Guilio Girardi, an Italian priest ... has this to say: The gospel commands us to love our enemies but it does not say that we are not to oppose or fight them. Not only does love not rule out class struggle, it actually demands it. We cannot love the poor without lining up on their side in their struggle for liberation ...

Conclusion ...

One can be an atheist while professing faith in God, and a believer while professing atheism. -- H De Lubac

... After twenty centuries of Christianity, the world is essentially anti—Christian. The great precept of love calls for justice and underlines the essential equality between human beings. It would have us regard all human beings as brothers and sisters and other Christs and turn the world into a haven of communion. Today it remains an idle word and a vain slogan. The most serious aspect of the matter is that the very part of the world that considers itself Christian and has grown up in the Christian tradition seems to be the most inhuman and exploitative part of the world ...

Interesting here is the view of what constitutes "true religion," consistent with the view that: everyone has a religion -- though not everyone tells you accurately what their religion is.

[heidler1]

1. I long ago accepted that Christianity is a haven for pretense.

[struggle4progress]

2. Most views that people claim to hold are havens for pretense:

people's ideas are usually inconsistent and reflect accomodations to social pressures and instincts, as well as echoing traditional platitudes formed fifty or hundred years earlier as ways of summarizing conditions that no longer exist. Much of what people say they believe, they say to justify themselves or to melt into the crowd -- and this is not only true of religious expressions.

It is one thing to denounce someone else's hypocrisy, which is cheap and easy -- and quite another another thing to decide consciously how one wants to live life, and for what purposes, and then to try to do that consistently.

[heidler1]

3. I like the way you put it.

One of my sons who claims to be an Atheist and says he believes in global warming will argue that it's ok to do nothing about either issue, but thinks it's very important for people to voice and claim correct belief. To me if you do nothing personally to help prevent global warming or some other issue, then you do not actually believe in it. IMO this is all too common, but very human.

[Goblinmonger]

9. Wazzah?

I believe that there is a tsunami headed for Japan. I am doing jack shit about it right now. Therefore I don't believe in it?

Global warming is a reality, it isn't belief in a supernatural being. It IS. Whether you do something to solve it or not does not take away the reality. Kind of like saying "I don't believe in gravity" doesn't make it go away.

And just a word of friendly advice, stop using the phrase "claims to be an atheist" around your son. Whether he says it or not, I imagine it pisses him off and it really is demeaning. Does he go around saying, "My mom, who claims to be a _______(insert your religion)"?

[bananas]

48. What's wrong with pissing off an atheist?

If they have no soul, then what's the problem?
It's like pissing off my computer,
they are just a robotic automata, a machine,
why should I give a shit?
I kick the tires to check their pressure,
unconcerned that it might piss off my car.
No soul, no matter.

[charlie]

50. You might get smacked in the head, for one thing

So the soulless are devoid of inner experience, then? But if Belief arises in that non-experience, they become ensouled? That's a remarkable bit of bootstrappery. You'd better hope your car never catches on to that Belief thing or you'll miss work while it sulks in the garage.

[bananas]

51. Are we born with soul, or do we acquire it through soulful experiences?

I think it's a mistake to assume that everyone has soul.

[charlie]

52. How do you acquire or "have" yourself?

A whole lot of people are counting on going to heaven when they die, and think it's "their" souls that'll make the trip. If a soul is something they'll need to "get" or already "have", they're in for a raw deal. It's like having your toes ascend to the great beyond while you're left dead.

[Name removed]

54. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Goblinmonger]

55. Even though your follow up post did not indicate it

I will give you the benefit of the doubt that this was sarcasm.

But as a general response, people can piss me off if they want. The poster above may want to approach things differently with their offspring, though.

[bananas]

59. Yes, it was sarcasm. nt

[trotsky]

4. "everyone has a religion" - Oh the number of times I've heard that sentiment.

Basically it's the religious mind trying to force its worldview onto everyone. The insistence that every mind MUST be like the god-believer's. From this we get the notions of "god-shaped holes" and the like. Funny thing is, no one bothers to take the atheist at his or her word. I don't have a religion, I don't worship anyone or anything, I'm just a non-believer.

Kudos to liberation theology, don't get me wrong. But please don't try to pigeonhole me.

[struggle4progress]

5. I'm indicating something about what I mean when I use the word "religion":

to give a crude contrast, I would consider a genuine "love your neighbor" atheist a better religious example than an indifferent person who spouted pieties.

Frankly, I often don't care much whether people express a belief in G-d or not, and I think there's enough in the OP to make it clear that the topic offered for discussion was, in part, the possibility that professing belief or non-belief in G-d may tell us almost nothing about the person who makes the utterances.

I suppose I will continue to say that everyone worships something, since everyone makes decisions about what will be important in their lives or decides that making such decisions is just too difficult, and since people by their actions tell you what their true loves are --whether they love other people or the products they consume or their own intellects or whatever. Of course, this may have very little to do what traditionally passes as religion, but much of what passes as religion is idolatry or superstition or belief in abracadabra, none of which interests me in the slightest.

If you don't find this language useful, then of course you will not use it. I will disclose that when you say "I don't have a religion, I don't worship anyone or anything, I'm just a non-believer ... please don't try to pigeonhole me," my reaction is that you haven't understood what I am saying, but experience suggests to me that laboring the point will be unproductive.

On the other hand, I mustr confess that I have no idea what you are saying when you refer "the g-d-believer's" mind or "g-d-shaped holes" -- though the first sounds like a phrase from some collection of pretentious pieties and the latter like pure sophomoric drivel -- so perhaps we are even.

[trotsky]

6. What you're doing is trying to apply the lens of the believer to everyone.

Thus someone who is a decent person has a good "religion" instead of just being a decent person, without any baggage of religion or creed or anything like that. You apparently don't want to accept that possibility, so you have to use your labels on others. Perhaps you can understand why some of us feel uncomfortable?

And when you use the word "worship" to mean making decisions "about what will be important in their lives," then you've watered down the word to mean essentially "value." Is that what you want to do? Because when I look up the definition of worship, there are words like "devotion" and "reverence" and "extravagant admiration" used to define it. Those to me sound a lot more intense than just deciding what's important in one's life.

So obviously no, I don't find your language useful, I find it narrow-minded, limiting, and disrespectful toward non-believers. And the "god-shaped holes" bunkum comes from the Josh McDowell level of theology - Kindergarten stuff. But that concept - that everyone has a void in their lives that they need to fill with something they "worship" - I find you expressing right here. Interesting, huh?

[struggle4progress]

7. In fact, "worship" seems to be exactly the right word for the "devotion" ..

.. many people show towards various objects or ideals.

Self-worship, for example, is extremely common, both among those of us who claim to follow a standard religion and also among those who claim no such thing -- and "devotion" and "reverence" and "extravagant admiration" are often accurately descriptive of the attitude of the worshipper towards the object self-worship. I myself have always tended to adore the natural world: "reverence" towards, and "extravagant admiration" of, the astonishing and beautiful products of evolution, for example, has always seemed to me an entirely appropriate response. Certain people seem to me clearly to worship football or auto-sports.

I have had good friends who were avowedly atheists who very consciously and deliberately decided to work for environmental causes or nuclear disarmament or workers rights, for example, and it seems to me that they have had a real "devotion" to their ideals and a real "reverence" for the people or places they sought to protect. Perhaps "just deciding what's important in one's life" is itself important and deserves continuing intensity, not only in the decision itself but in the work done putting the decision in motion, but of course you are entirely free to be neither passionate nor intense about "what's important" in your life, should you so choose.

[trotsky]

8. So you're just going to continue to use your concepts to define others.

That's mighty tolerant of ya! Just whack and whack and whack until that square peg fits into the round hole you want it in.

Let me know when you want to try seeing things from someone else's point of view.

[struggle4progress]

12. I prefer to regard it as anthropology: many nominally non-religious

or irreligious activities serve a religious function for their devotees.

This is not surprising, since what is commonly called religion is a complex of many different elements, in different combinations for different people.

Potential elements include not only superstitition or magical thinking, normative or ethical constraints, ritual, tradition, unverifiable beliefs, &c.

None of these elements occurs solely in contexts ordinarily described as religious. Superstition, for example, is common among gambling addicts, all social groups impose normative constraints, and unverifiable beliefs regarding political and social and economic topics are very common

It seems appropriate to me to describe complexes of such elements as religious, even if they occur outside of ordinary religious contexts. As I said before, if you don't find the language useful, don't use it.

[BurtWorm]

13. If you're nominally religious, then you're also religious about nominally

non-religious things? So you worship your god, but you also worship buttered toast or Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, to name two such nominally non-religious things? You just worship all the time?

[struggle4progress]

15. Huh?

[BurtWorm]

25. You are asserting that even we atheists "worship" nominally non-religious things.

Maybe you didn't mean anything as "banal" or mundane as hot buttered toast or Jon Stewart, but why not include them in the list of nominally non-religious things? Isn't that what they are? Or is there is a class of nominally non-religious things more worthy of worship you want to exclude these mundanities from?

[struggle4progress]

28. The question, whether a person might worship buttered toast, seems

uninteresting, and might be more fruitfully replaced by the alternate question, Why would anyone spend the limited time of their finite life discussing whether worship of buttered butter were a hypothetical possibility?

What people actually venerate, or have devotion to, or show reverence for, in the concrete actions of their lives can appropriately be called their practical religion, and what people simply say they believe, or do not believe, provides no real information on those behaviors.

People who dislike such usage of the words religion and worship will of course no use words this way. But, as I've said before, I find it a useful semantic.

[BurtWorm]

32. Useful for your own satisfaction, I can see. But it's not useful as a term

for communicating. Except that it does communicate loudly and clearly that you've shut the door on alternative interpretations, even when they are almost certainly more in tune with objective reality than your uniquely private one.

The shame of this wall you've put up is that your original post did have some common-ground ideas worth talking about. But the way you've presented it is not going to help us find that common ground.

[struggle4progress]

33. Religion, Economics, and the Market Paradox

R&L: In your latest book, you compare economics to religion. Why?

Nelson: Because economics is a belief system with powerful moral implications. I use the term religion in a broad sense, as something that provides a framework for one's values or some purpose to one's life. I am convinced that people must have some sort of religion, that no one can live entirely free from a framework of meaning. Of course, not all religions require a G-d, as Judaism or Christianity do ...

R&L: How do economists function as theologians?

Nelson: There are two types of economic theologians. The first is an economist who functions as a theologian of the religion of progress by helping to provide an ethical foundation for society. If economic progress is the route to salvation, these “priests” will be the experts on how to achieve that progress. Because society looks to economists for this knowledge, they logically become the leading priesthood of the age. The second way to be an economic theologian is to study economics from a theological perspective. I strive to be something of an economic theologian of this type.

http://www.acton.org/publicat/randl/interview.php?id=407

http://www.acton.org/publicat/randl/interview.php?id=407

[BurtWorm]

34. Nu?

:shrug:

How is Nelson's comparing economics to religion relevant to your claim that atheist's "worship" nominally non-religious things?

[struggle4progress]

36. A more expansive use of religious language is not "uniquely private" to me:

other people have found such language useful.

[BurtWorm]

38. As I meant to imply in the previous post, metaphor is not the same as conflation.

Comparing economics to religion is entirely different from comflating being and worship.

[struggle4progress]

35. Goodbye to All That?

Volume 53, Number 14
September 21, 2006
By Tony Judt

... neither Marx nor the theorists who followed him intended or anticipated that a doctrine which preached the overthrow of capitalism by an industrial proletariat would seize power in a backward and largely rural society. But for Kolakowski this paradox merely underscores the power of Marxism as a system of belief: if Lenin and his followers had not insisted upon (and retroactively justified in theory) the ineluctable necessity of their own success, their voluntaristic endeavors would never have succeeded. Nor would they have been so convincing a prototype to millions of outside admirers. To turn an opportunistic coup, facilitated by the German government's transport of Lenin to Russia in a sealed train, into an "inevitable" revolution required not just tactical genius but also an extended exercise of ideological faith. Kolakowski is surely right: political Marxism was above all a secular religion ...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19302

[BurtWorm]

37. I may agree with Judt about Marxism as secular religion.

I hope you don't make the mistake of thinking Marxism = atheism. ;)

[struggle4progress]

39. I may disagree, consider Marx was a genuinely religious person, and

find his arguments for atheism some of the most intelligent and persuasive commentary I have read on the subject.

But of course I do not consider that Marxism and atheism synonymous or even necessarily related.

[BurtWorm]

47. Genuinely religious because of his atheism?

So now you want to equate intelligence and persuasiveness with religiosity?

Or do you imagine you detect the remnants of the rabbi's grandson in him?

[Goblinmonger]

17. WHOOOOOOOSH

Apparently s4p needs to look behind him on the wall for that one.

Nice one, though, even if the receiver didn't get it.

[struggle4progress]

21. Hurling buttered toast is not a substitute for intelligent conversation.

[Goblinmonger]

24. Well, did you get it or not.

Are you religious about Jon Stewart? How about Post-it Notes? If you are going to push "religousness" onto atheists, then you gotta admit to some of it in yourself, too. Or is this the old "god-shaped hole" that we are trying to fill, BS.

[struggle4progress]

26. I generally stay out of the way when toast is hurled

But the issue you allege I am ducking, I already confessed in an upthread reply to TRotsky who objected to my use of the word "worship":

... Self-worship .. is .. common .. among those of us who claim to follow a standard religion ... I myself have always tended to adore the natural world ...

Nevertheless, when the discussion degenerates to hurling toast, perhaps the natural reply is to sneer, Missed me!

[Goblinmonger]

27. You got the insult wrong.

I wasn't saying that you were ducking anything, but that the comment was above you. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[struggle4progress]

29. So you admit your intent was to insult.

[Goblinmonger]

40. It was a good-natured slam

you really didn't get that?

[struggle4progress]

43. Ri-i-ight.

[Goblinmonger]

44. Same thing I say

to my kids when they don't get something as well as my best friends in the English department where I teach. I won't lie and tell you that you are as close to me as that, but it's not like I called you a fucking dipshit or something. But don't believe me, no skin off my back.

[kiahzero]

46. I disagree.

I think you're both overrating intelligent conversation and understating the satisfaction of sending toast flying. Especially radioactive toast.

[BurtWorm]

22. I'm going to see if I can rephrase it

to see if he can get the point. (Though I thought the point was pretty clearly made for being on such a muddy topic. ;-) )

[trotsky]

14. I guess you're not whacking that square peg then.

You're just filing the round hole bigger. Diluting, changing what words like "religious" and "worship" mean so you can fit the activities of anyone you choose under them.

Like I said, I don't find this useful, I find it narrow-minded and insulting. But obviously you're going to continue your armchair anthropology on those who hold different opinions no matter what THEY tell you, so have fun.

[struggle4progress]

18. The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of 'Religion' in International Law

Harvard Human Rights Journal
Volume 16
Spring 2003

T. Jeremy Gunn

... Definitions of religion necessarily involve assumptions about its underlying nature ... An essentialist definition identifies the elements that are necessary for something to be designated as a “religion" ... The second type of definition, the polythetic, does not require that all religions have specific elements in common. The most widely known illustration of a polythetic approach to definitions generally is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s explanation of the meaning of “game.” Wittgenstein described the wide variety of activities for which we use the term “game,” but notes that there is no single feature that all games have in common ... Religion as belief pertains to the convictions that people hold regarding such matters as God, truth, or doctrines of faith ... While religion as belief emphasizes doctrines, religion as identity emphasizes affiliation with a group ... A third facet of religion, which is analytically distinct from the previous two but is likely to be tied to one of them in the mind of the religious person, is religion as a way of life ...

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss16/gunn.shtml

The fact that I apparently do not share your definition of religion -- and am willing to consider various behaviors religious which you do not consider religious -- apparently bothers you. Of course, the point of my OP was to define "true religion" as "love your neighbor": I suppose you are free consider this view "narrow-minded and insulting" if you choose.

[trotsky]

20. Believe me, I have no choice in the matter.

The tone you are taking and your unwillingness to actually listen to the people you are redefining forces me to.

[struggle4progress]

31. I simply use certain words differently than you do.

[Goblinmonger]

10. Don't you see

how that is manipulating a word so that you can use it WAY out of context.

Theists worship something. Atheists don't. Theists have a problem with that concept. They can't understand a mind in which that happens. Maybe it scares them a little, I don't know and that is a different concept. So, rather than try to understand that the atheists don't worship anything like the theists worship their "thing" they try to stretch, twist, and (a la trotsky) pound the word "worship" into something they think they can make fit into the atheist world. Your atheist friends don't "worship" the environment like theists "worship" their god. They just don't. They think it is important, they do things to help it, but it is NOT worship. To claim it is is to just completely see the world only through the eyes of a theist and give no credence nor respect to what they atheist is trying to tell you.

[struggle4progress]

11. Such assertions about theists as opposed to atheists seem to me unfounded.

I will say once again that in my view whether people profess atheism or some religion provides little or no information. Apparently, you think it provides quite a lot of information, since you believe it possible to make assertions such as "Theists have a problem with ... They can't understand ... " We shall continue to differ on this point, I think.

[Goblinmonger]

16. atheist vs theist tells me nothing

with the exception of their view on the existence of a god. THAT I can tell from those labels.

And that is where the problem is. Theists see the world through the lens that includes believe in a god. It seems to me that they usually want to define atheists through that same lens, i.e. you "worship" this, you have a belief system about god, etc, etc, etc. That is the core of this discussion.

[struggle4progress]

19. Your usual sweeping generalizations: "they usually want to &c&c"

You start with some words "atheist" and "theist" which you use to sort people into boxes according to their answer to some "existence" question, to which the atheist gives one answer and the theist another.

You apparently believe that the answer enables you to determine how people "see the world" and that from a certain answer you can determine "they usually want." I, on the other hand, consider such beliefs ill-founded and say that, in fact, the question is unhelpful and the answers to it typically provide no particular information.

[Goblinmonger]

23. Do you deconstruct EVERY word until it is meaningless

or are you just doing that in this instance. OF COURSE atheist and theist tell me something about how they view the world. It tells me whether they believe in a god/gods or not. Beyond that, I agree that it can tell me very little to nothing.

I posit, and make it clear that it is what I think, that theists have a hard time not trying to push this concept of belief and worship onto atheists.

If you want to deconstruct words into meaninglessness, I'm fine with that. I had a lot of fun with that in grad school. We would do that in the GTA office when we needed a break. But I don't think it furthers our discussion here much.

[struggle4progress]

30. It is perhaps open to question whether you have surveyed an adequate sample

of people answering your existence question, to know what the respondents "usually want."

This is not really a matter of deconstructing words but asking whether the sentences used actually have concrete referents.

[Goblinmonger]

41. OK, enlighten me

what does atheist mean if not a lack of a belief in a god? What does theist mean if not a belief in a god?

Seriously You are arguing that they don't mean what I list above. What do they mean then? Cause all I am saying is that theists, in my opinion, often try to put the concepts of belief, worship, devotion, etc. into what atheists think even if said atheists clearly state they don't think that way.

[struggle4progress]

42. The question is whether you can deduce information about the wants and motives ..

.. of actual concrete human beings from your definitions.

[Goblinmonger]

45. Jesus Fucking Christ on a trailer hitch.

OK, let's take this one at a time so you can stop obfuscating absolutely fucking everything I say.

Yes or no: Atheists have a lack of belief in all gods.

[bananas]

49. No, an atheist denies the existence of god

That's a standard definition, whether you like it or not:
"An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings."
"someone who denies the existence of god"
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=atheist&x=0&y=0

[Goblinmonger]

53. What is this?

Define atheists by theist viewpoints week?

Don't you see how the word "deny" implies that there IS a god and we silly atheists just deny it.

THEIST = belief in god. A = Greek previx meaning without. i.e. simple language knowledge tells us that a+theist means being without a belief in god.

Little thought on dictionaries. The general ones only reflect how the average person uses the term. The average person is a theist and most likely, from this definition, doesn't understand athteists.

How about this. I am telling you that atheist means lacking a belief in any gods. That's how I use it. That's how 99.9% of atheists on DU use it. That's how 99.9% of atheists I have ever met use it. Is THAT good enough for you, or will you continue to try and define us for us.

[trotsky]

56. Hmmm...

"Is THAT good enough for you, or will you continue to try and define us for us."

I'm guessing the answer will be B, Alex. Everyone knows that all other minority groups should never have definitions imposed on them by people not in that minority, EXCEPT for atheists. Theists know better than us what we think, as they demonstrate time and time again, even on "liberal" message boards.

May I proceed to Final Jeopardy now?

[Goblinmonger]

57. Plus

we are just in "denial" about god. Some day, when we REALLY need him, we will believe. And if he really is the god of the OT, we are fucked. We might get help if he is the NT god.

Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish that god-shaped hole in my heart didn't make me see the world so unclearly.

[bananas]

58. That implication is incorrect.

The term "deny" does not imply that what is denied is true.
The word is used every day in news stories - "he denied the allegations".
News editors use "deny" because it is neutral.
Since I was quoting dictionary.com, I checked to see if dictionary.com itself makes that implication; it does not.

That's different from the phrase "in denial", which does imply the allegation is true.

Unlike French, there is no official institute for the English language which sanctions the official meanings of words; English dictionaries simply list the various ways a word is used. When Americans talk about "the English language", are they referring to the words and meanings used by Americans or the words and meanings used by the English?


http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=deny&x=0&y=0

de‧ny Pronunciation Key
–verb (used with object), -nied, -ny‧ing. 1. to state that (something declared or believed to be true) is not true: to deny an accusation.
2. to refuse to agree or accede to: to deny a petition.
3. to withhold the possession, use, or enjoyment of: to deny access to secret information.
4. to withhold something from, or refuse to grant a request of: to deny a beggar.
5. to refuse to recognize or acknowledge; disown; disavow; repudiate: to deny one's gods.
6. to withhold (someone) from accessibility to a visitor: The secretary denied his employer to all those without appointments.
7. Obsolete. to refuse to take or accept.

—Idiom8. deny oneself, to refrain from satisfying one's desires or needs; practice self-denial.

[Goblinmonger]

60. So let me get this straight

First you tell me that my implication for the word deny is completely wrong because the dictionary says so.

Then you tell me that there is no standard for the English language and words mean whatever we intend them to be when we use them.

:crazy:

Pick a side, how about.

So why, with that post you made, are you not taking my, and other atheists, word for what atheism means? Logical consistancy is a good thing.

[bananas]

63. Do you really assume someone is guilty because they deny the charges?

That's just bizarre.

[Random_Australian]

61. Might I point out a little something.

"decided to work for environmental causes or nuclear disarmament or workers rights, for example, and it seems to me that they have had a real "devotion" to their ideals "

1) devotion - if you mean they are determined, then yes. This is hardly a religious sentiment though - I for one doubt that this means any more than belief in a light turning on is religious.

2) "it seems to me"

I think that either there is some conflict between our ideas of religion, or how things seem to you are tinted by how you perceive the world (hardly a controversial idea), or both.

Believe you me, not everyone is religious. :)

[struggle4progress]

62. Might I point out that I was replying to a specific comments in another post,

which apparently objected that such words as "worship" or "devotion" do not apply outside the context of standard religions. Perhaps you are right that the people whom I used as examples wre "determined" rather than "devoted," but I knew them, and perhaps you did not, and in my judgment they exhibited "devotion" to their causes, which they had chosen for their lives' works.

Nevertheless, the broader issue is that there appears to be no single good definition of "religion."

As I said earlier, from an anthropological point of view, there are a number of indicators: these may include superstitious beliefs, magical beliefs, mythologies, untestable assumptions, rituals, traditions, cultural normative standards, ethical teachings, assertions about the purpose and meaning of life, and other ingredients.

But in fact not all may be present in any instance: many Buddhists, for example, have no belief in divine beings; many people who consider themselves religious try to live without superstitious or magical beliefs.

Moreover, these ingredients occur in contexts not usually called religious: in the USA, for example, there has traditionally been an elaborate mythology associated with the belief that Democracy and Capitalism as practiced here represent the one great hope for human progress; and the Free Marketeers frequently assert with fervor unprovable "facts" about laissez-faire economics.

Supposing, for example, that everything normally called religion were suddenly to disappear, one would still find well-established cultural complexes superstitious beliefs, magical beliefs, mythologies, untestable assumptions, rituals, traditions, cultural normative standards, ethical teachings, assertions about the purpose and meaning of life, &c. It is then unclear to me why such things should not be called religions. Devotion to and worship of various objects is not at all uncommon, even if such objects are not ordinarily contemplated as deities. To deny this, I think, is to deny an anthropological fact; whether people call themselves "religious" is an entirely separate question.