What is a "good" religion?

[Unknown Soldier]

The problem isn't that I've never heard of religion before, but that there are multiple, competing definitions of religion out there.

I asked what a good religion is in the OP.

It does address the topic, by showing that the topic is ill-formed.

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

It's like asking "what is an ethical rape?"

Are you comparing religion to rape?

There is no point where it is good to abandon doubt, so by the trust-based definition of religion at least, there can be no such thing!

I even doubt my axioms. The only thing I don't doubt is that there is a voice I hear inside my head and I can make it speak and when and how I make it speak makes the meat that I see with my eyes move, such that I call that meat "me", but really, I am the voice that speaks to it, and I unequivocally exist so as to speak!

I reject solipsism on the basis that I am apparently not alone and even were I, I am then together with "myself", and that version of me does not always consent, and I don't know their safe word anyway. So I must accept some other things like "universe" and so on which seem to be the only alternative to "all ever just me". I'm open to alrernatives.

There's no religion there. There isn't even religion in my theories on faeries, or of demons (what good wizard doesn't have a few chapters in their head on demonology!).

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

So there is no good way to ask whether there is good religion. To me it is a dumb question, and so speaks to Politesse's point: you can find definitions of religion which can find exceptions in any direction, but then you're just fishing for a definition by which you can say "my religion is good" despite the fact that your definition of religion is sloppy and doesn't hold up, and is really just a special pleading.

I'm still not sure what you're talking about!

 

[Jarhyn]

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I'm still not sure what you're talking about!

That's because you don't understand enough about the subject to understand that some questions, questions shaped like "What is a Feen Blonve?" Are bad because there is mutual accord on neither Feen nor Blonve.

It is easy to see when the word has no mutuality at all, when it's just nonsense. But when there is something as contentious as what religion is, as Politesse pointend out eloquently, is that there can be no mutual accord.

Likewise with "good".

The word, like "god" is not pinned down for any one conversation and so arguments are across those definitions, and the arguments go nowhere.

 

[Politesse]

I didn't really post arguments but posted what my position is

Yes, I noticed.

 

[Politesse]

Then what constitutes a religion falling short of being "altogether 'good'"? You keep dodging that issue.

I'm not dodging anything. My position is what I stated it as, that it doesn't really make sense to try and categorize a religion as good or bad. Religion is a over-simplifying abstraction wrapped around the lives of billions of people. Those people do "good" things, they do "bad" things, religion is involved at many and various steps. Even a tiny religious tradition will contain within its many communities every kind of personality, every quality kind of moral act, and many experiments in social organization wrapped into its superstructure. It makes as much sense to me to say "this is a good religion" as it would be to say "this is a good continent" or "this is a good social class" or "this is a good gender". Humans are not irreducibly complex, but they are more complex enough that ill-thought through generalizations are not a reliable guide to social phenomenon, let alone masssive social insitutions. People who think that all they need to understand the social world is a pile of labels and culturally-specific clichés are not interesting to me.

TLDR: I don't approach any religious tradition expecting it to be categorically better or worse than any other, because all human philosophical traditions have the same basic ingredients: us. Our hopes and our failings, our idealizing best and our avaricious worst.

 

[TomC]

L

Does that title leave you wondering what we're supposed to be discussing here?

Not exactly.
It leaves me wondering if you're clear on what we supposed to be discussing here.

You use the huge term religion. You seem to mean religious organizations. The many and various denominations and institutions that fall into the category "religious". Many of us make a distinction between religion and religious institutions.
A distinction that is very important when your plan is to cast judgement, the way you are obviously doing.

Anyway, contrary to what you say, it is quite true that most people know well what religion is, and if they're game, they might end up here in this forum to defend it tooth and nail against naysayers like myself.

To me, religion is an awareness and appreciation that there is more to reality and the human experience than the material world and our limited human perceptions.
Religious organizations are groups of humans. As such, they suffer from the same faults and weaknesses as the humans who comprise them. More so, maybe, since the point of organizations is to magnify human abilities. But it isn't like only religious organizations have these issues. From political parties to pro ball clubs to corporations, it happens all the time. Heck, even smaller groups like families generally have similar weaknesses and blindness.

It's a human thing. Not a religious thing.

Misrepresentation of religion as the worst aspects of various denominations is just an anti-religious screed. I can well understand why so many people find it uninteresting.
Tom

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It leaves me wondering if you're clear on what we supposed to be discussing here.

You use the huge term religion. You seem to mean religious organizations. The many and various denominations and institutions that fall into the category "religious". Many of us make a distinction between religion and religious institutions.

Well, then please don't leave me wondering what that distinction is. If the two terms are distinct, then, for example, can you tell me whether Catholicism is a religion or a religious institution?

A distinction that is very important when your plan is to cast judgement, the way you are obviously doing.

Yes, I do judge religion and "religious institutions."

Anyway, contrary to what you say, it is quite true that most people know well what religion is, and if they're game, they might end up here in this forum to defend it tooth and nail against naysayers like myself.

To me, religion is an awareness and appreciation that there is more to reality and the human experience than the material world and our limited human perceptions.

That sounds more like philosophy to me than religion, but I suppose it can be seen as "religious philosophy."

Religious organizations are groups of humans.

Religions are groups of people, too. So I still fail to see the distinction between religion and religious institutions.

As such, they suffer from the same faults and weaknesses as the humans who comprise them. More so, maybe, since the point of organizations is to magnify human abilities. But it isn't like only religious organizations have these issues. From political parties to pro ball clubs to corporations, it happens all the time. Heck, even smaller groups like families generally have similar weaknesses and blindness.

If you can see faults and weaknesses in human groups like religions (or religious institutions), then why are you unable to understand how they can be good?

It's a human thing. Not a religious thing.

I'd say it's both because people create and maintain religions. What you've posted here is a false dichotomy. Also, most people are good most of the time, so I don't think that human groups are hopelessly bad. They can be good at the very least in principle.

Misrepresentation of religion as the worst aspects of various denominations is just an anti-religious screed.

Who said that?

I can well understand why so many people find it uninteresting.
Tom

I'm not sure what you mean.

In summary, I'd say that you may have unwittingly revealed that you know very well not only what religion is but what good religion is. As I pointed out above, since you can see the bad in religion without trouble, then you obviously know how a religion can be good or at least not bad. So please don't waste my time taking me off on a tangent.

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Some of the people here have disagreed with my characterizing religion as bad in a broad sense. Some religions, at least, are arguably good--aren't they? To address this issue, we should define a good religion by listing its traits. A good religion:

1. Encourages general knowledge and discovery and discourages ignorance.
2. Encourages social harmony by characterizing people both within and without the religion as worthwhile, respectable persons.
3. Is openminded toward views that may not be consistent with what it tells its followers.
4. Never solicits funds without fully disclosing what the funds will be used for and avows that the human limitations of the religion make fundraising necessary.
5. Never interferes with science or education in general.
6. Tells its members that they have every right to judge the religion according to what they see fit and never ridicules nor denounces its critics especially if those critics are former members.
7. Encourages people to enjoy life and seek purpose in their lives according to what they see as worthwhile ventures.
8. Never interferes with anybody's sex life unless that person's sexual activity is illegal or obviously risky or harmful.
9. Is always honest with its members never pretending to know what it doesn't know and corrects its errors dropping any doctrine if there is insufficient evidence for it or good reason to doubt it.

It looks to me that a good religion isn't much of a religion at all, or at least there are no such religions. It looks like a religion cannot be good, or if it is good, then it won't last long.

The only religion that fits for most of your free thinking universalist points is Gnostic Christianity.

If you want unity that includes gays and women, a universalist religion, with a heaven but no hell, and peopled by esoteric ecumenists and naturalists, it is Gnostic Christianity.

Regards
DL

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Some of the people here have disagreed with my characterizing religion as bad in a broad sense. Some religions, at least, are arguably good--aren't they? To address this issue, we should define a good religion by listing its traits. A good religion:

1. Encourages general knowledge and discovery and discourages ignorance.
2. Encourages social harmony by characterizing people both within and without the religion as worthwhile, respectable persons.
3. Is openminded toward views that may not be consistent with what it tells its followers.
4. Never solicits funds without fully disclosing what the funds will be used for and avows that the human limitations of the religion make fundraising necessary.
5. Never interferes with science or education in general.
6. Tells its members that they have every right to judge the religion according to what they see fit and never ridicules nor denounces its critics especially if those critics are former members.
7. Encourages people to enjoy life and seek purpose in their lives according to what they see as worthwhile ventures.
8. Never interferes with anybody's sex life unless that person's sexual activity is illegal or obviously risky or harmful.
9. Is always honest with its members never pretending to know what it doesn't know and corrects its errors dropping any doctrine if there is insufficient evidence for it or good reason to doubt it.

It looks to me that a good religion isn't much of a religion at all, or at least there are no such religions. It looks like a religion cannot be good, or if it is good, then it won't last long.

The only religion that fits for most of your free thinking universalist points is Gnostic Christianity.

If you want unity that includes gays and women, a universalist religion, with a heaven but no hell, and peopled by esoteric ecumenists and naturalists, it is Gnostic Christianity.

That's good, I suppose, but it looks like the one criterium for goodness almost any religion would lack is criterium 9. No doubt gnostic Christianity claims to know what it couldn't possibly know.

 

[Jarhyn]

Some of the people here have disagreed with my characterizing religion as bad in a broad sense. Some religions, at least, are arguably good--aren't they? To address this issue, we should define a good religion by listing its traits. A good religion:

1. Encourages general knowledge and discovery and discourages ignorance.
2. Encourages social harmony by characterizing people both within and without the religion as worthwhile, respectable persons.
3. Is openminded toward views that may not be consistent with what it tells its followers.
4. Never solicits funds without fully disclosing what the funds will be used for and avows that the human limitations of the religion make fundraising necessary.
5. Never interferes with science or education in general.
6. Tells its members that they have every right to judge the religion according to what they see fit and never ridicules nor denounces its critics especially if those critics are former members.
7. Encourages people to enjoy life and seek purpose in their lives according to what they see as worthwhile ventures.
8. Never interferes with anybody's sex life unless that person's sexual activity is illegal or obviously risky or harmful.
9. Is always honest with its members never pretending to know what it doesn't know and corrects its errors dropping any doctrine if there is insufficient evidence for it or good reason to doubt it.

It looks to me that a good religion isn't much of a religion at all, or at least there are no such religions. It looks like a religion cannot be good, or if it is good, then it won't last long.

The only religion that fits for most of your free thinking universalist points is Gnostic Christianity.

If you want unity that includes gays and women, a universalist religion, with a heaven but no hell, and peopled by esoteric ecumenists and naturalists, it is Gnostic Christianity.

That's good, I suppose, but it looks like the one criterium for goodness almost any religion would lack is criterium 9. No doubt gnostic Christianity claims to know what it couldn't possibly know.

And now you are getting to what is, for me and in my discussion on the topic, the core defining factor of "religion": uncritical doubt.

Even gnostic Christianity has a hard time showing it's work.

The below are the seven tenants of TST, which actually satisfy your rules for a "good religion" but do not satisfy mine insofar as they spray critical doubt back on all of it, so it isn't really under my concept of "religious", and while they ALSO do not show their work very readily, I've already done most of not all that work that they didn't show.

I discovered TST AFTER I spent years posting HERE about the basis for these tenants.

I
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II
The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III
One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV
The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
V
Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
VI
People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
VII
Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Some of the people here have disagreed with my characterizing religion as bad in a broad sense. Some religions, at least, are arguably good--aren't they? To address this issue, we should define a good religion by listing its traits. A good religion:

1. Encourages general knowledge and discovery and discourages ignorance.
2. Encourages social harmony by characterizing people both within and without the religion as worthwhile, respectable persons.
3. Is openminded toward views that may not be consistent with what it tells its followers.
4. Never solicits funds without fully disclosing what the funds will be used for and avows that the human limitations of the religion make fundraising necessary.
5. Never interferes with science or education in general.
6. Tells its members that they have every right to judge the religion according to what they see fit and never ridicules nor denounces its critics especially if those critics are former members.
7. Encourages people to enjoy life and seek purpose in their lives according to what they see as worthwhile ventures.
8. Never interferes with anybody's sex life unless that person's sexual activity is illegal or obviously risky or harmful.
9. Is always honest with its members never pretending to know what it doesn't know and corrects its errors dropping any doctrine if there is insufficient evidence for it or good reason to doubt it.

It looks to me that a good religion isn't much of a religion at all, or at least there are no such religions. It looks like a religion cannot be good, or if it is good, then it won't last long.

The only religion that fits for most of your free thinking universalist points is Gnostic Christianity.

If you want unity that includes gays and women, a universalist religion, with a heaven but no hell, and peopled by esoteric ecumenists and naturalists, it is Gnostic Christianity.

That's good, I suppose, but it looks like the one criterium for goodness almost any religion would lack is criterium 9. No doubt gnostic Christianity claims to know what it couldn't possibly know.

I disagree. Try me and you will see quite a difference.

Gnosis and the information and facts they render are the only things we believe.

It is a reality and natural belief system that frowns on anything of the supernatural.

We are and were more like the people spoken of in the following. We deal in facts, not fiction.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental efforts that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.

Please google

The Jesus Myth - Timothy Freke​

Regards
DL

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Even gnostic Christianity has a hard time showing it's work.

Yes and no, but mostly wrong.

It is the listener that has a hard time accepting reality. Especially if used to supernatural garbage that they hide behind instead of engaging with logic and reason.

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

Covid and contributing to to the good health of the common negates this.

Get your vaccine and please tell the stupid and selfish right wingers to do the same.

We live in commons and it is to all f us to keep each other healthy and safe.

No Covid sidetracks please. I just wanted to show how I think.

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

Freedom is a strange word to me as none of us are free of our tribes and communities.

Remember that the U.S has a Statue of Liberty, not a statue of freedom.

We all gave up freedom the moment we joined our tribes/community.

Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

Psychology is speculative science, but I agree with your position.

We do have to sort of guess a bit, given that 96% of us think in a material dualist way. We almost all think in a body/soul way. Most here likely do as well.

Regards
DL

 

[Jarhyn]

Even gnostic Christianity has a hard time showing it's work.

Yes and no, but mostly wrong.

It is the listener that has a hard time accepting reality. Especially if used to supernatural garbage that they hide behind instead of engaging with logic and reason.

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

Covid and contributing to to the good health of the common negates this.

Get your vaccine and please tell the stupid and selfish right wingers to do the same.

We live in commons and it is to all f us to keep each other healthy and safe.

No Covid sidetracks please. I just wanted to show how I think.

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

Freedom is a strange word to me as none of us are free of our tribes and communities.

Remember that the U.S has a Statue of Liberty, not a statue of freedom.

We all gave up freedom the moment we joined our tribes/community.

Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

Psychology is speculative science, but I agree with your position.

We do have to sort of guess a bit, given that 96% of us think in a material dualist way. We almost all think in a body/soul way. Most here likely do as well.

Regards
DL

Oh things get fucking weird inside my head. "What I am" or at least of what I care about of what I am, that's highly specific to what for all intents seems to be a pattern spinning reliably around and around amid systems of my brain for which the pattern itself, not merely confined to the thing hosting it in this moment, is capable of behavior and modeling.

There is a ghost in the machine, but the ghost is just a machine itself, or a configuration for the machine as the case may be.

So it ends up just being "machines which talk to each other via constrained layers of communication".

There is a constraint layer and some immediately available systems which sum to "me", and if you shoved it into something shaped like a human body, and which communicated in the same way across the constrained layers that the "me" talks out to those distal systems on. It's not about psychology so much as neurological models of thought. There's an organization to the meat, and the meat in my head isn't the only thing that can host the thoughts my head has, nor the meat outside my head the only meat that can be there.

Thus I am not uniquely confined to this body in my definition of "vital self" by necessity; it is merely by circumstance that I am stuck here for now in this meat.

Honestly, I'm more likely to keep my stick and my bag and my jacket and my hat than my meat.

 

[TomC]

Well, then please don't leave me wondering what that distinction is. If the two terms are distinct, then, for example, can you tell me whether Catholicism is a religion or a religious institution?

I'm so glad you asked about Mother Church, instead of of some heathen outfit like the Mormons or Hindus or Lutherans.
I know far more about Her and her billion children.

The Roman Catholic Church is definitely an institution. The oldest, biggest, most influential, and most diverse human institution on the face of the planet. Arguably, in all of human history. But the institution is not Catholicism.

Secondly, whether it's religious or not is a subjective opinion. There are people who don't think it is religious. Those are people who think all religious beliefs match their own opinions about God and such. Catholicism is laced heavily with pagan concepts, rituals, and members. So, it's not religious. It's satanic or something.

Similarly, there are Catholic people who don't think it's a religion, exactly. It's The Religion! It was founded by God Himself, as described in the New Testament.

Mostly though, the RCC is a religious institution. Catholicism is a religious group of a wildly diverse of people. It's a community composed of everyone from non-theistic gay guys(like me) to apatheists to vaguely pagan/Catholics to the hard cores.

Maybe you think that's a religion. Maybe you don't. We Catholics generally don't care.
Tom

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

The Roman Catholic Church is definitely an institution.

Is it correct in showing Satan as female?

It it moral in asking us to sin to be saved, by abdicating our own responsibility for our sins, and going against what Jesus taught?

Here are the logic, immorality and what Jesus taught.

On Jesus dying for Christians. Try to think in a moral way.

It takes quite an inflated ego to think a god would actually die for us, after condemning us unjustly in the first place.

Christians have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil they make Jesus to keep their feel good get out of hell free card.

It is a lie, first and foremost, because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.

To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.

Christians also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

There is no way that Christians would teach their children to use a scapegoat to escape their just punishments and here you are promoting doing just that.
Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fiber as Yahweh. Tsk tsk.

Regards
DL

 

[Unknown Soldier]

And now you are getting to what is, for me and in my discussion on the topic, the core defining factor of "religion": uncritical doubt.

Don't you mean uncritical belief?

The below are the seven tenants of TST, which actually satisfy your rules for a "good religion" but do not satisfy mine insofar as they spray critical doubt back on all of it, so it isn't really under my concept of "religious", and while they ALSO do not show their work very readily, I've already done most of not all that work that they didn't show.

I discovered TST AFTER I spent years posting HERE about the basis for these tenants.

What is "TST"?

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

Does that go for children? If a parent decides to have her children vaccinated, can they refuse the shot?

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

I disagree. One person's freedoms end where another person's freedoms begin. Otherwise, none of us would have the freedom to resist what another person wants to freely do to us.

 

[Jarhyn]

And now you are getting to what is, for me and in my discussion on the topic, the core defining factor of "religion": uncritical doubt.

Don't you mean uncritical belief?

The below are the seven tenants of TST, which actually satisfy your rules for a "good religion" but do not satisfy mine insofar as they spray critical doubt back on all of it, so it isn't really under my concept of "religious", and while they ALSO do not show their work very readily, I've already done most of not all that work that they didn't show.

I discovered TST AFTER I spent years posting HERE about the basis for these tenants.

What is "TST"?

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

Does that go for children? If a parent decides to have her children vaccinated, can they refuse the shot?

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

I disagree. One person's freedoms end where another person's freedoms begin. Otherwise, none of us would have the freedom to resist what another person wants to freely do to us.

So you know, TST is The Satanic Temple. Their whole goal is to wrap secular ethics in the thinnest sheet of religious flavoring they can, because this is a brick they can walk in the front door with, and toss back out through the window of "religious freedom".

There are some things that create conflicts in their ethics, but the most important part, as you corrected me, is the lack of uncritical belief: one of the tenants demands critical application of reason even against the structure of the tenants themselves.

I generally boil it down to "mutually compatible self-actualization is the most powerful basis of strategy for non-specifically goaled closed system game theory", which strips away the conflicts around vaccines nicely.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Well, then please don't leave me wondering what that distinction is. If the two terms are distinct, then, for example, can you tell me whether Catholicism is a religion or a religious institution?

I'm so glad you asked about Mother Church, instead of of some heathen outfit like the Mormons or Hindus or Lutherans.
I know far more about Her and her billion children.

No doubt you are not alone in calling the Catholic Church a mother.

The Roman Catholic Church is definitely an institution. The oldest, biggest, most influential, and most diverse human institution on the face of the planet. Arguably, in all of human history.

Yes, the Catholic church has a lot of members. Are you saying that makes the claims of Catholicism true?

But the institution is not Catholicism.

Why isn't it?

Secondly, whether it's religious or not is a subjective opinion.

My subjective opinion is that anything involving belief in God(s), worship, prayer, or alleged miracles is religious. Catholicism involves all four.

There are people who don't think it is religious.

Those people no doubt are reluctant to admit that Catholicism is religious.

Those are people who think all religious beliefs match their own opinions about God and such. Catholicism is laced heavily with pagan concepts, rituals, and members. So, it's not religious. It's satanic or something.

Without paganism, there would be no Catholic church. There were Gods, demons, afterlives, and priests long before Catholicism.

Similarly, there are Catholic people who don't think it's a religion, exactly. It's The Religion! It was founded by God Himself, as described in the New Testament.

Where does the New Testament say God founded the Catholic Church?

Mostly though, the RCC is a religious institution. Catholicism is a religious group of a wildly diverse of people. It's a community composed of everyone from non-theistic gay guys(like me) to apatheists to vaguely pagan/Catholics to the hard cores.

I imagine some Catholics have been atheists, too.

Maybe you think that's a religion. Maybe you don't. We Catholics generally don't care.
Tom

I'm still wondering what the difference is between religion and religious institution. It appears there is no difference.

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

And now you are getting to what is, for me and in my discussion on the topic, the core defining factor of "religion": uncritical doubt.

Don't you mean uncritical belief?

The below are the seven tenants of TST, which actually satisfy your rules for a "good religion" but do not satisfy mine insofar as they spray critical doubt back on all of it, so it isn't really under my concept of "religious", and while they ALSO do not show their work very readily, I've already done most of not all that work that they didn't show.

I discovered TST AFTER I spent years posting HERE about the basis for these tenants.

What is "TST"?

One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.

Does that go for children? If a parent decides to have her children vaccinated, can they refuse the shot?

The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.

I disagree. One person's freedoms end where another person's freedoms begin. Otherwise, none of us would have the freedom to resist what another person wants to freely do to us.

So you know, TST is The Satanic Temple. Their whole goal is to wrap secular ethics in the thinnest sheet of religious flavoring they can, because this is a brick they can walk in the front door with, and toss back out through the window of "religious freedom".

There are some things that create conflicts in their ethics, but the most important part, as you corrected me, is the lack of uncritical belief: one of the tenants demands critical application of reason even against the structure of the tenants themselves.

I generally boil it down to "mutually compatible self-actualization is the most powerful basis of strategy for non-specifically goaled closed system game theory", which strips away the conflicts around vaccines nicely.

Are they as homophobic and misogynous as the right wing mainstream? Christianity and Islam?

Regards
DL

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

I'm still wondering what the difference is between religion and religious institution. It appears there is no difference.

You are the flag you fly, be it religious or political.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, --- in what Shuhan calls the religious stratosphere.

That is Why I so proudly wear my Gnostic Christian label.

All who want to graduate to being good Christians, know where to find an example of a Christ mind by my label.

Regards
DL

 

[Politesse]

Well, then please don't leave me wondering what that distinction is. If the two terms are distinct, then, for example, can you tell me whether Catholicism is a religion or a religious institution?

I'm so glad you asked about Mother Church, instead of of some heathen outfit like the Mormons or Hindus or Lutherans.
I know far more about Her and her billion children.

No doubt you are not alone in calling the Catholic Church a mother.

The Roman Catholic Church is definitely an institution. The oldest, biggest, most influential, and most diverse human institution on the face of the planet. Arguably, in all of human history.

Yes, the Catholic church has a lot of members. Are you saying that makes the claims of Catholicism true?

But the institution is not Catholicism.

Why isn't it?

Secondly, whether it's religious or not is a subjective opinion.

My subjective opinion is that anything involving belief in God(s), worship, prayer, or alleged miracles is religious. Catholicism involves all four.

There are people who don't think it is religious.

Those people no doubt are reluctant to admit that Catholicism is religious.

Those are people who think all religious beliefs match their own opinions about God and such. Catholicism is laced heavily with pagan concepts, rituals, and members. So, it's not religious. It's satanic or something.

Without paganism, there would be no Catholic church. There were Gods, demons, afterlives, and priests long before Catholicism.

Similarly, there are Catholic people who don't think it's a religion, exactly. It's The Religion! It was founded by God Himself, as described in the New Testament.

Where does the New Testament say God founded the Catholic Church?

Mostly though, the RCC is a religious institution. Catholicism is a religious group of a wildly diverse of people. It's a community composed of everyone from non-theistic gay guys(like me) to apatheists to vaguely pagan/Catholics to the hard cores.

I imagine some Catholics have been atheists, too.

Maybe you think that's a religion. Maybe you don't. We Catholics generally don't care.
Tom

I'm still wondering what the difference is between religion and religious institution. It appears there is no difference.

Religious institutions are social and political entities; religion is a broader concept, that though nebulously and controversially defined, generally includes personal, psychological, philosophical, and/or aesthetic elements beyond the mere social.