What is "religion"?

[alexander]

Z, which one of the dictionaries, i can use 3-4 and come up with different meanings, like Clay has shown above

[Qfwfq]

I fear we've been pretty much missiong each other's points Alex. Your current:

Originally Posted by alexander

2) they all follow precise system of beliefs in an elevated spiritual being/place/power

is a bit more like it, although I wouldn't say it's necessarily an elevated X, I would just put it as being belief about something metaphysical or spiritual. This still leaves the first and third points to bash each others heads about.

Originally Posted by alexander

If your definition considers atheism to be a religion

No, mine doesn't really and I wasn't trying to prove that your friend is religious, indeed I had suggested the possibility that:

Originally Posted by alexander

he does not follow the spirituality of buddhism and (....) and yet he lives by the rules and philosophy of buddhism.

for which I had mentioned the distinction between religious and philosophical Buddhism, a distinction which is recognized for other religions too. So, we can definitely say that your friend practices philosophical Buddhism but isn't religious. Which brings me to:

Originally Posted by alexander

he says so because how he interprets buddhism does not comply with these points.

That, of course, is not the same as "what Buddhism is". Someone else could say it's just laziness, using the excuse of meditation, doesn't mean that's what Buddhism is.

The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, definitely describes it as a religion. I remember some years ago he had been asked what he thought --as a religious leader-- of tolerance and about religions other than his own; his reply was that many religions are more beautiful than one religion, just as a bouquet is more beautiful than one flower. I would scarcely say these people proselytize. They are certainly pleased to teach it to folks who want to know about it; so are we pleased to teach folks about science, you wouldn't say that we proselytize, would you? I had also mentioned that some religions definitely do not proselytize and don't encourage conversion at all.

I don't see salvation being offered by all religions either, for instance those that believe in reincarnation don't necessarily offer it and I don't see how most Animist religions do.

[alexander]

Revision 3

1) they all offer salvation
2) they all follow precise system of beliefs in a spiritual being/place/power
3) they recruit people into their ranks, as i have said either passively or actively

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

That, of course, is not the same as "what Buddhism is"

I agree, buddhism != (or ~= or <> or not, depending on the language being used) buddhist philosophy, but buddhist philosophy buddhism

does that work better, distinguishing between a religion and a philosophy?

Thus it would be more correct to say that my friend follows the buddhist philosophy, but does not follow buddhism... can we call him a buddhis or do we need a term denoting philosophical movement following vs religious movement follwing?

[sman]

Originally Posted by coldcreation

To answer the question, what is religion(?) one must arguably turn to the origins, the source of religion itself: to the Upper Paleolithic, roughly between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Good thinking.
Pre-pottery Neolithic Jerico & outlying culture (~1000 years into Holocene) PPNA had a peculiar habit of burying their dead relatives in the floorboards of their huts - and later digging them up, procuring the skulls, and putting them back. This is the kind of thing archaeologists label as “religious”. Catal Huyuk, in Turkey, probably better example of ritual et cetera, but I believe it was later on.

Let’s remember that archaeology paints a very incomplete picture. We can be sure this type of behavior is older than these sites, but at least we know its as old as permanent sedentism in humans.

The art and other artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic are more cotroversially linked to religion, as is the 40 thou year mark for this. There are cave paintings in Africa that date to 80.

The aboriginal people of Australia have been dwelling there for 50,000 years (the death-date of a fly - with a rock painting underneath it). There is no gross difference in the brains or behavior between these populations and those of the !San of Africa. They speak the same language - differing only in some phonologic & syntactic traditions. How do their religions compare for similarity?

Halfway in between, in highland New Guinea, is a nest of 1000s of isolated languages and cultures and religions. How do these compare? Are there any common denominators?

Here is a link listing the languages of Highland New Guinea (the known ones). For every one there is a culture.

Ethnologue report for Papua New Guinea

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by sman

Pre-pottery Neolithic Jerico & outlying culture (~1000 years into Holocene) PPNA had a peculiar habit of burying their dead relatives in the floorboards of their huts - and later digging them up, procuring the skulls, and putting them back. This is the kind of thing archaeologists label as “religious”. Catal Huyuk, in Turkey, probably better example of ritual et cetera, but I believe it was later on.

Okay, now we're getting to the root of the issue.

There are similar types of archeological finds as the one you mention, and others too. I will post this link, the same as above, for those who missed it. Fascinating stuff:

Anthropology and religion: what we know, think, and question*By Robert L. Winzeler

I have a book in Paris that I read about 10 years ago, along a similar line. I think the author is a behavioral anthropologist. I should be getting my hands on this book shortly. From what I remember, according to the author, much of the ritualistic behavior involved in religious practices resembles that of people afflicted with mental illness (the author of the link above seems to corroborate this through archeological evidence). So the origin or certain practices may have originated by monks, or shamans, who themselves were, how should I say, 'way out there.' More on that soon...I need to read up on it again, so as not to say something offensive to those who follow these types of practices.

Originally Posted by sman

Let’s remember that archaeology paints a very incomplete picture. We can be sure this type of behavior is older than these sites, but at least we know its as old as permanent sedentism in humans.

Good point. We can only interpret the available archeological evidence, and keep looking for more.

Let's take it further back still. Not so much from the archeological/paleontological/geological perspective, but from a behavioral one.

In this Wiki article Evolutionary origin of religions, for example, it is written:

Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived between four and six million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor. Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of "self" and a concept of continuity...

Dr. Frans de Waal and Barbara King both view human morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Though morality may be a unique human trait, many social animals, such as primates, dolphins and whales, have been known to exhibit pre-moral sentiments. According to Michael Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and other social animals, particularly the great apes:
"attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group".

And further down:

The earliest evidence of religious thought is based on the ritual treatment of the dead. Most animals display only a casual interest in the dead of their own species.[20] Ritual burial thus represents a significant advancement in human behavior. Ritual burial represent an awareness of life and death and a possible belief in the afterlife. Philip Lieberman states "burials with grave goods clearly signify religious practices and concern for the dead that transcends daily life."

The earliest evidence for treatment of the dead comes from Atapuerca in Spain...

The latter would date back 600,000 to 400,000 years ago.

Of course that does not answer the OP, what is religion? But it leads to insight about the origins of it; perhaps deeply ingrained in the human psyche, past on through evolutionary processes from our distant ancestors. The point of interest would be to see what still remains today, from its inception, whenever that was.

[edit] No matter what religion is, I think it is still very primitive, animal, primal. Despite advances in science, it remains attached to it's roots, to the psyche. If one thing has changed over time, it is the massive amounts of money involved.



CC

[coldcreation]

This I just happened upon. Kind of interesting too:

MU anthropologist develops new approach to explain religious behavior, Physics.org/news, Sept. 2008

"Instead of studying religion by trying to measure unidentifiable beliefs in the supernatural, we looked at identifiable and observable behavior - the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims," said Craig T. Palmer, associate professor of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science.

"We noticed that communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim tends to promote cooperative social relationships. This communication demonstrates a willingness to accept, without skepticism, the influence of the speaker in a way similar to a child's acceptance of the influence of a parent."

And further down:

"Almost every religion in the world, including all tribal religions, use family kinship terms such as father, mother, brother, sister and child for fellow members," Steadman said. "They do this to encourage the kind of behavior found normally in families - where the most intense social relationships occur.

Once people realize that observing the behavior of people communicating acceptance of supernatural claims is how we actually identify religious behavior and religion, we can then propose explanations and hypotheses to account for why people have engaged in religious behavior in all known cultures."

This still does not define religion though.



CC

[HydrogenBond]

Words attempt to label and differentiate things, actions and meanings. The dictionary is full of words and their meanings. The word God is very unique, because it is not readily subject to any exact differentiation of meaning, which is agreed upon by all humans, because the word is implicit of infinite possibilities. Even the atheists, by claiming god is a figment of the imagination, has added additional definitions. In language, god represents the outer limit of all words, in terms of all its possible human meanings if we consider the word through human history.

When language was forming, one could point and say tree, run, water, etc. We may argue the sound of the word, but end of story. But once they said God, a debate breaks out as the human mind tries to add detail to evolve or change previous definitions. The human mind constantly tries to put the squeeze on the word, God, so it becomes like the other words, very differentiated. But it is never stays static. Religion carries on the tradition of the word. In the beginning there was the word and the word was God. God is the only "the word", alive.

[freeztar]

IMHO, religion is a belief system that incorporates worship.

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by freeztar

IMHO, religion is a belief system that incorporates worship.

Nice definition freezy.

Let's look again at religion from the anthropological/archeological/paleontological/geological perspective.

Certainly, some form of religion dates back as far as human civilization; when exactly the first religion began nobody knows. Prior to that the archeological record is sketchy at best.

For all we know it may have been germinating in the mind of Ardipithecus ramidus, aka Ardi, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago.


Reasonably, we can go back to the Egyptians, Judaism, the Mesopotamians, and even earlier to the Chinese, to some degree of accuracy.

Animism, though much more primitive, bares characteristics of more modern religions: Objects in the environment (including humans) are thought to be inhabited by Spirits. This would appear consistent with aboriginal beliefs mentioned above by sman, dating back circa 60,000 years.


Sheila Coulson (Associate Professor, Oslo University) claims to have evidence that humans began performing rituals 70,000 years ago in Botswana, Africa. This would be the oldest known ritual site ever discovered.

But worship of an object is not exactly the same as worshiping god.

The word religion is derived from "religare," meaning to have union with, or to bind. Homosapiens have been seeking union throughout history.

See too Urreligion.

So the search for union with some form of supernatural 'entity, or the spiritual, appears to be something all religions have in common.

The oldest information written down of religious nature (in Sanskrit) would be Hinduism (c. 5,000 years ago).

Tracing back in time to the roots of "religion" undoubtedly leads to a better understanding of not just its origin, and how it has evolved over time, but of the meaning or raison d'être of religion itself. Thus religion can be better defined.

Finally, on a personal note, it is this primitive signature of religion (which lingers still today) that I dislike, that leads me to believe religion is outdated, obsolete, archaic, something that should be vacated from contemporary society, misinformation, misinterpretation of natural processes, should be definitively exposed and debunked, replaced by a more pragmatic world-view, one not at variance with empirical evidence, one free of the supernatural, free of the monetary momentum engendered by religious groups - from sects to the Vatican. Then, and only then, will humans be at harmony with nature (however unattainable), free of deception, misconception, misbelief.

So, in answer to Alexander's OP, if I could define religion with one word, it would be delusion.

CC, aka Resident Bright

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by alexander

Thus it would be more correct to say that my friend follows the buddhist philosophy, but does not follow buddhism... can we call him a buddhis or do we need a term denoting philosophical movement following vs religious movement follwing?

You could definitely say that he embraces philosophical Buddhism but not religious Buddhism.

There are religions which definitely don't proselytize, with Judaism being one of them:

Judaism 101: Jewish Attitudes Toward Non-Jews

However, unlike Zoroastrianism, it does accept converts who are judged sincere and suitable after rigorous examination by a Bet Din (religious court):

Conversion to Judaism Resource Center
Conversion to Judaism Resource Center
Conversion to Judaism Resource Center

Originally Posted by freeztar

IMHO, religion is a belief system that incorporates worship.

Yes, as I said in the other thread, the Latin word religiòne meant reverent care or consideration of something. Even today we sometimes talk of folks "taking religious care of" something (their books, their stamp collection &c.).

Originally Posted by coldcreation

The word religion is derived from "religare," meaning to have union with, or to bind.

This conjectured etymus of religiòne is the reason why monastics are said to be "living in religion" but it is disputed, the interpretation re-lìgere prevails over that of re-ligàre.

Originally Posted by coldcreation

So the search for union with some form of supernatural 'entity, or the spiritual, appears to be something all religions have in common.

Indeed, I would call it the essence of what is meant today by religion.

Originally Posted by coldcreation

Finally, on a personal note, it is this primitive signature of religion (which lingers still today) that I dislike, that leads me to believe religion is outdated, obsolete, archaic, something that should be vacated from contemporary society, misinformation, misinterpretation of natural processes, should be definitively exposed and debunked, replaced by a more pragmatic world-view, one not at variance with empirical evidence, one free of the supernatural, free of the monetary momentum engendered by religious groups - from sects to the Vatican. Then, and only then, will humans be at harmony with nature (however unattainable), free of deception, misconception, misbelief.

You say all this after having shown how radicated it is in human nature. Personally, I don't even see the point of extirpating religion, the important thing is to avoid bigotry and various forms of abuse which use religion as an excuse.