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Over on Facebook, I got myself involved in a debate on religion. I know, I know; I should know better. But it's fun, y'know? Anyhow, what prompted the debate was this article on the BBC about how relgions go extinct. Good stuff.
Anyhow, it got me thinking about my interactions there and over here, and I'm curious about my friends' religious beliefs. Am I just living in an insulated bubble as described in that article, or are those national polls on religion just manipulated? So, a poll!
Here it is, a Google Docs poll so anyone can use it: Are you religious? What social networking tools do you use?
Thanks!
Chris
Anyhow, it got me thinking about my interactions there and over here, and I'm curious about my friends' religious beliefs. Am I just living in an insulated bubble as described in that article, or are those national polls on religion just manipulated? So, a poll!
Here it is, a Google Docs poll so anyone can use it: Are you religious? What social networking tools do you use?
Thanks!
Chris
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Re: Hmmm
By that logic, would you consider a Christian who believes that there's a god-form who incarnated to tell people "Be nice to each other" and who doesn't belong to a church non-religious? Would that change if that Christian talked to hir kids about hir beliefs because they were important to s/he?
Ultimately, I'm not sure how unified and defined the established belief structures are. It seems like the rules are pretty fluid. One group says that gay folks are all right, one says they're not. One says that you can go to Heaven by being nice, one says you have to say the right incantation and have the right intercession. One's quiver-full, one's supportive of birth control. One's solitary and contemplative, one's communal and ecstatic. The net is broad and full of holes.
To disclose further: I was raised outside of all of this, and I've built enough of a religious cover that I can fake my way into seeming quietly more religious than the most religious person in the room, but I really don't comprehend it. It's the equivalent of asking a dog to choose its favorite Linux distro. So, yeah. These are stupid questions, but I'm stupid about faith-forms.
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Ultimately, the same question sits: is one person religious while another's not because s/he pays a subscription fee?
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Re: Hmmm
For instance (I'm pulling this out of my ass btw) let's say there is an organized group of people who worship a supernatural entity called The Great Turnip. The Great Turnip dictates that its followers eat turnips daily and attend services in a garden weekly.
For simplicity sake, well call that The Turnip Religion and its members Turnipists.
Someone who follows the tenets and calls themselves a Turnipist will be considered by themselves and the Turnip Religion (and likely outsiders) to be a Turnipist.
Someone who follows the tenets and *doesn't* call themselves a Turnipist may not consider themselves a Turnipist but the Turnipist Religion (and likely outsiders) would likely call them a Turnipist and act accordingly.
Someone who eats turnips and guardens but who has never heard of the Great Turnip would *not* be considered a Turnipist by either themselves or the Turnip Religion (outsiders may have mixed reactions). The Turnip Religion will likely try to recruit such a heathen.
Someone who was born into a family of Turnipists but who doesn't call themselves a Turnipist (whether or not they eat turnips or garden) might be considered a Cultural Turnipist.
Someone who tears up the guarden and gets banned, likely would not be considered a member by the Turnipist Religion but might still consider themself a Turnipist (and outsiders might too).
So basically, it comes down to the question of claimed membership...
Did the individual claim to be a Turnipist?
Did the Turnip Religion recognize that person as a Turnipist?
Do outsiders label the person as a Turnipist by their actions and claims?
That venn diagram is not 100% overlapping.
Which is why it is so hard to answer your question. The answer, as far as I can tell, is "it depends on the involved parties (person/church/outsiders)".
Toss into that the fact that the First True and Righteous Church of Turnip which splintered off from the Turnip Religion doesn't recognize any of the Turnipists of TR as true Turnipists and doesn't recognize the Parsnip Religion as a religion at all.
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Metaphor: I'll run with it!
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Re: Hmmm
In my metaphor, you are the outsider. What you see and what criteria you draw from your observations may or may not be everything that the Turnipist or Turnip Religion sees as important and defining.
Applying "objective" criteria to a subjective system... is messy at best. When approaching the topic you have to consider what values are used in determining the criteria (ie works vs faith) and what assumptions are being made, such as the assumption that there is one universally recognized set of criteria (ie "There is, and it's mine!").
Different groups come up with different ways to approach that determination. Census groups, for instance, have decided that self-identification is the defining characteristic (ie Did the individual claim to be a Turnipist?). This utterly ignores what the Turnip Religion thinks, what outsiders think, and what the self-proclaimed Turnipist does or believes.
Your comment here makes the assumption that people who do the same things (ie eat turnip and garden) are in the same group. They may or may not be. Depends on what criteria is used.
Perspective matters. It will heavily influence the answer you get and the criteria used. Religion is a heavily subjective system and not ISO complient.
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I think Webster's has it right. "Religion: A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices." For me the truly defining part of that is the word institutionalized.
If you believe the Christian, Mormon, Quaker..etc. doctrine but don't practice it, then I don't think you qualify as religious. I think being religious requires active participation in one of the major branches of religion.
The easiest way I can think of to qualify that is that I have never met anyone that claimed to be religious and wasn't actively practicing one of the major religions. Those I know who claim the faith but don't practice don't claim to be religious.
As for the variety of flavors of major religions...well most of the religious texts like the Bible are open to serious interpretation. It is what binds the religion together and simultaneously gives it's followers grounds on which to separate over the most minute things. Last I looked there were over 34,000 denominations of Christianity and while they like to argue, they all still self identify as Christians.
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Re: Hmmm
You're making it worse, though. Monkey's too busy processing to smile.
If one believes a doctrine but don't practice it... that doesn't exactly sound like belief. That sounds like an immense waste of time and a route to cognitive dissonance. Since the doctrine's a set of attitudes, beliefs and practices, it'd sort of stand to reason that you would have to practice it to believe it unless you were not doing so under duress.
I assume that you've got a set of attitudes, beliefs and practices informed by your spirituality and faith. Otherwise, your spirituality and faith wouldn't serve as anything other than an infuriating thought-exercise. You're saying that's not a religion because it's not Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam?
Machine-ape does not compute. Not a bit.
Another disclosure: The last time I came out as faithless in a public forum was a discussion of marriage. I believe that the state shouldn't recognize marriage as it's presented by any faith-form. I was circumcised at birth by a doctor who was also a rabbi and I don't get a tax credit for it. My wife was confirmed in the Catholic church as a kid and she doesn't get a tax credit for it. Makes no sense that the state should recognize one religious ceremony over another. Rather, there should be a status of personal incorporation in which two or more persons qualified to enter into legal arrangements (over the age of consent, of sound mind and the like) should be granted basic interpersonal rights and privileges as recognized by the state. So, yes, two men or women could incorporate. Two couples could incorporate. Three people of varying or the same gender could incorporate. It provides the social and societal benefits of pair-bonding without being dependent upon a faith-form not necessarily representative of the State or its citizens.
That went over about as well as you'd expect.
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Re: Hmmm
Did you see the ludicrous discussion on my Facebook post that prompted this LJ post? I bet that fella would have a thing or two to say about your crazy ideas about personal liberties ;-)
See the description of my crypto-refs elsewhere on this post.
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Re: Hmmm
I understand the value of pair-bonding and the value of familial bonds to make decisions and address issues of the State. I don't, however, feel that these bonds need to be based on a religion unless that religion is expressly stated as the voice of the State. Since the State recognizes the ability of people to enter contracts with other people regardless of gender, sexual orientation or the like, it makes sense that the state would recognize those contracts, giving the rights due to those involved and expecting the responsibilities served as they would any other contract.
Short form: I'm opposed to gay marriage because I don't think that marriage should be an organ of the State at all. I don't think that anyone has the right to marry because we don't have any other religious rights guaranteed by the State. We do, however, have the right to declare people our beneficiaries or guardians in the event that those are needed.
Otherwise, I want my circumcision tax credit pronto.
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If one believes a doctrine but doesn't practice it there could be a variety of reasons; laziness, apathy, or just turned off by the organization in charge. For example the bible says you should congregate with like minded others, but if you don't like church and choose not to go, that doesn't mean you don't believe in Jesus. Yes that results in belief contradictions and definite dissonance but I haven't met anyone who is completely enlightened and at peace. So is you believe but don't practice I would say you are a person of faith but not religious.
To answer your assumption yes to my attitudes, beliefs and practices around my spirituality. I am saying not that it isn't a religion because it is not one of the 4 listed but because there is no holy text, recognized deity, controlling organization, standard meeting place, heavily defined morality or any of the other trappings that go with what I would qualify as religion.
I completely agree with your stance on marriage and the government by the way. Separation of Church and State ..hmmm seems like that would mean all religious ceremonies.
In a public forum...always risky = Facebook is the only devil I actually believe in.
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- I think that we're colliding on the "doctrine" side, which is fair. Doctrine's a wide chasm.
That being said, I'm not sure that anyone says "I became a Christian because I like to tithe," and I don't recall the New Testament saying anything explicitly about going to church, who sits in what chair and who talks first. Yes, there's "keep the sabbath holy," but that's vague at best. The other books don't go into that ephemera either, that I recall. I'd point to the more specific "This stuff is good, that stuff is bad" side of things as the fundamental doctrine. The rest is just organizational bylaws.
(I've done my reading, incidentally. Because I got tired of staring blankly at people, I jumped into as many of the books as I could so I could get a cultural grounding.)
- To me, you've got as much religion as the Pope. You both have belief systems that (I assume) involve the numinous interacting with the material world in a substantive way. After all, lots of belief systems are oral traditions, many deal with various deities or forces rather than a single Sky-Daddy (Hinduism), lack a central overarching control structure (Judaism) or heavy moral dogma (Buddhism) and are performed in public rather than in a proscribed location (many sects of Islam.)
It seems that you're abandoning some degree of legitimacy by saying "It's not religion because it doesn't have Christian stuff." Your faith speaks to the part of your soul that cries out for connection with the numinous. The fact that you're not a dues-paying member of a club doesn't make it less real, and doesn't turn them into something that's less real for their believers because they do pay dues.
This is why, in my heart of hearts, I refer to it all as "the supernatural." Catholic Mass, snake handling, cartomancy or Goetic meditation, it's all an effort to touch the hem of the numinous and bring it down to the material world. Makes more sense to me, and results in less hair-splitting.
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Re: Hmmm
On a strictly personal level I am very uncomfortable with any association to the word religion as it holds a deeply negative connotation for me. I am a southern baptist, raised in the buckle of the bible belt, minister’s daughter. Religion is about a lot of things and none of it good….manipulating the masses, controlling social behavior, thought and people in general. In fact I consider religion and government to both be “The Man” in no uncertain terms. There is absolutely nothing about religion as I define it that I like. I also think that the major religions continue to prove a huge detriment to our society.
Do I consider myself a person of faith? Yes. Do I consider myself a religious person? No. Were I answering the BBC poll, I would not classify myself as religious person which is why I thought the Poll was very short sighted. I would be very curious to see how many people such as myself classified themselves as a person of faith but not religious.
In the end, by your definition you are absolutely right….but I don’t like it, not tiny little bit.
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Religion's not your problem, it's Church. You're not a Church Person. C'est finis.
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YES!!!!!!!! Two thumbs up.
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I've been getting closer over the years, but it doesn't seem to relate to any existing religion. I expect I'll launch a description of it sometime before too long... will that be a "religion" if I've come up with the set of understandings on my own?
These are the things that go through my head ;-)
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Re: Hmmm
1. Write a book and deem it holy.
2. Recruitment...it's all about recruitment.
3. Get a gathering place.
4. Most importantly start charging membership dues :)
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Yep you and L. Ron! lol