I was thinking about LouBelle's post where she asked if the world would be better without religion and started wondering what is meant when someone refers to a something as religion. Are they referring to a structured belief system. Or are the referring to anything other that the belief that this life is all there is and once it is over there is nothing else.
What is religion anyway?
by I quit! 33 Replies latest jw friends
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John Doe
Religion is the systematic belief in the absurd.
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I quit!
So what do you call a systematic belief in something that isn't absurd?
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Witness 007
Religion= Imaginary "super-being" who is protecting us from death and suffering......yes you can live forever if you believe in him...millions now living will never die!
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LouBelle
religion is the indoctrination of the masses that some god/divine (whoever/whatever it is) is needed to make their life worthwhile, or that will save them. It frees the masses of taking responsibility for their actions & takes away freedom of thought and expression (in the grand sense). The masses adopt it as their way of life.
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PEC
A waste of time and money!
Philip
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poppers
It is a box of sorts with a particular dimension that limits how life is seen and experienced. In this respect it is like other sorts of belief system/boxes, except this particular one takes pains to exhort others to change the dimension of their box to the point of violence. It's easy to stack boxes of like dimension, but problems arise when boxes of other dimensions are present.
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BurnTheShips
A religion is a set of stories, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to an ultimate power or reality. It may be expressed through prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos, and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.
The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system," [ 1 ] but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors, respectively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
A very complex and varied subject.
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I quit!
Thank you for your replies. Now I'm wondering if Russell considered religion to be a "snare and a racket" what did he consider his belief system. I also remember encounting this as a JW with some born again people I knew. They too would claim that what they believed wasn't a religion.
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drwtsn32
No one would call their own religion "mythology," but many would not hesitate to cast that label on any other religion (especially if it was quite different).
I think some use the word "religion" in a similar way, viewing it as a negative word. That's why some (Russell, etc) applied that word to all other religions, but not their own.