Obviously sparked by the rash of 'atheism is a religion' posts, but leaving that aside. What do you think constitutes a religion?

What I mean is "an attempt to understand whatever part of reality is inaccessible to science" (allowing the possibility that this reduces to attempting to understand nothing), but that's not what most people mean I suspect.

Another definition of being religious which occurred to me was "Accepting a certain set of statements as true without sufficient grounds to persuade a rational skeptic."

I'd be interested to hear what other people mean by religion (hopefully without anyone mentioning atheism and declaring whether it is or isnt captured).

Your definition "an attempt to understand whatever part of reality is inaccessible to science" is too encompassing. Theism has to do with the nature, essence, philosophy of gods or the supernatural; religion is these ideas put into practice within a community of believers.

I told you most people didnt mean this.

I don't consider that a community of believers is necessary to form a religion (there's a sense in which I consider myself religious even when I am not actively attending church and am not otherwise engaged with a community of believers).

Also, in passing, do you think "whatever part of reality is inaccessible to science"="the supernatural"?

Somebody who believes such and such about the nature of gods or the supernatural is a philosopher of sorts, not a member of a religion of one person. Religion is a shared worldview on the nature of gods or the supernatural in some capacity.

No. Also the supernatural can be, and is quite frequently, used to explain things that science has already claimed to explain.

The people citing the supernatural believe that science hasn't succeeded though.

What do you think 'supernatural' means?

So would I be correct in thinking you don't consider me religious, since I don't think anyone shares my beliefs about God (and further I consider them to be incorrect when taken as a set)?

You're a theist but not religious. Religious = member of a religion. This is just how I would use these words. I'm open to changing my mind.

I've pretty much reconciled myself to thinking of the word differently from how most mean it, but I do wonder if some confusion arises from people meaning different things by such a primitive term as 'religion'. There's no doubt many share your view that it's akin to being a member of some defined community, I wonder if there are other meanings though.

The supernatural is a realm 'beyond' nature where gods, spirits, etc, exist. Where made up stuff is, ldo. It isn't inaccessible to us.

But you don't think the supernatural realm is "that (possibly empty) part of reality inaccessible to science".

Do you mean science can study the supernatural realm, that there are some parts of reality inaccessible to science which aren't supernatural or something else?

EDIT: I didnt catch your edit - to be (hopefully) clear, I also dont think it is inaccessible to us, but I do think it's inaccessible to science.

I would define it as a belief system predicated upon worship. I don't even think it has to be the worship of a god, although that's most common.

I think this might capture something I mean by religion which I didnt include in my 'definition'. Cheers

I'm having trouble with this post. What do you mean by science? Logic is a part of reality (sort of) but it is inaccessible to science (empiricism), though it is not supernatural--math too? I think?

What I meant was empiricisim+rationalism (so I would include maths and logic within the scientific method). I would have thought you would consider statements about 'the spirit realm', gods or whatever to be untestable claims - inaccessible to science and probably meaningless or nonexistant. The reason I used that clumsy wording in my OP rather than 'the supernatural' was to pre-empt the next "what do you mean by supernatural?" perhaps I've just made things worse.

However, you're changing my mind now - I'll have to ponder some more. Maybe I think logic and maths are inaccessible to science and dont want to include them as objects of religion.

Having said that, I'm surprised you think logic and maths aren't accessible to science. Wouldnt you say we will be able to explain these things once we've got a better understanding of neuroscience? (ie that they are 'just' constructs of our physically explicable minds).

EDIT: I'm sure it's clear by now, but I don't really have a 'point' so don't participate in this thread if you expect me to be heading anywhere coherent...

I actually have no idea.

I didn't pay enough attention during math and science, and never learned logic*. Just kind of making stuff up as I go along in this discussion, lol. But at this point I think it would be best to have a deeper understanding of these subjects before speculating.

* I dropped out of CSI** it was too hard!
** Not the TV show!

Hmm I may have you confused with someone else. I thought you were in the "If it isn't physical it doesnt exist" camp and since you think maths and logic exist I assumed you therefore thought they were physical (or properties of physical things anyhow).

For my purposes it's been useful (even if you are just making stuff up). I don't think maths and logic are physical and I erroneously included them as supernatural. Now I have to decide whether to keep them there or whether to amend my way of thinking about religion...

Cheers.

That sounds like something I said. Time for more speculation. Logic and maths don't exist "out there" in some Platonic Realm. I don't know think they are properties of physical things either. Just, umm, descriptions, tools, models of reality that we created. It's a tenuous position since I have little idea what I'm talking about but there you go.

You're talking to a theist remember? I didn't even blink.

Ok when you asked "Wouldnt you say we will be able to explain these things once we've got a better understanding of neuroscience? (ie that they are 'just' constructs of our physically explicable minds)" earlier I was confused. So, maybe, yes, this is what I believe, if you could explain what it a bit more. Logic is a construct of mind and study of mind could conceivably explain it. Or something.

If I understand you correctly, I think this is a pretty common physicalist/formalist view. Namely, the belief that mental phenomena are completely described by some (as yet unknown) physical theory coupled with the belief that maths and logic are not discoveries we make about the universe but are concepts which result from playing a mental "game" we've invented (a game which, conveniently, is very useful in making predictions about the world). 2+2=4 will eventually be understandable as the necessary byproduct of some particular physical state of a brain (or perhaps as an emergent property of any suitably configured complex system).

Concepts like truth, proof, axioms, valid, contradictory etcetera are all "just" linguistic consequences of the meta-rules we've invented and decided to call logic. The theorems of maths are superficially similar to statements we make about real world objects, however the similarity is a linguisitic coincidence and not anything more.

The sentence "5 is a prime number" doesnt refer to any actual entity 5 which exists in a mind-independant way, despite looking similar to the sentence "Washington is a capital city", which does refer to a concrete, mind-independant object and purports to describe some of its properties. Rather, the sentence "5 is a prime number" is an abstract object we utilise in the game of maths, the rules of which dictate that we assign a value of "true".

If all of that is a rough account of what maths and logic are, then I dont think we should label maths and logic 'supernatural' and nor do I think they are scientifically inaccessible. I'm not clear how one could consistently hold that 'the only form of existence is physical' without also believing something broadly similar to the above.

Most of that sounds right to me though I don't know that it would actually be possible to create an entirely accurate physical theory, because our only methods of modeling reality are those mental games.* Why our mental games are able to model reality quite well sounds like a sticky issue.** I'm not sure how to explain that, but I also feel that it is definitely not the case that numbers "exist" independent of minds.

* Paradox!
** My guess is just we get good through trial and error, failing over and over. Oh and also is it even true? Unknown unknowns certainly dwarfs our current knowledge, unimaginably so even .

It's possible I'm constructing strawmen, but I don't think the claim is that any such theory will ever actually be created, just that there's nothing in principle stopping a physical theory from being complete. (ie there's no 'soul' or similar - a physical description of reality could potentially be complete).
Again I'm wary of putting up a strawman, but I believe the 'standard' answer is that we chose our rules precisely because they worked well in making predictions and building models of the world.
I think the hardest thing for you to account for is the astonishing congruence between the mathematics of radically different cultures. If it's a linguistic or social construction why doesnt it have the same variance as other linguistic/social conventions? The theorems of the mayans are provable using the methods of the chinese, even if it's an area the chinese never thought of studying.
I'm a little ignorant of the early history, however I dont know that there was much trial and error in formulating the laws of logic and maths. I think we're learning more and more, but the basic rules seem to me to have been static since the ancient greeks (and even before - I think they just codified them).

Yeah, and I don't know *anything* about the history of math, the philosophy of math, or how to do much math (even though I once passed calculus, hehe). But it just seems obvious to me, for no reason I can exactly explain, that numbers are not real.

I'm going to investigate this a bit more, as much as I can without, you know, knowing math. Fictionalism sounds interesting. I need a dictionary. And my brain hurts.

Paths of Faith, by John Hutchison is an excellent scholarly text on religions of the world that I read years ago, it is still published (fourth edition). Hutchison defined religion based on what most world religions historically have in common. He came up with a reasonable and coherent general definition that a religion usually had (IIRC):

Some form of sacred text or holy book or set of doctrines.

A founder(s), sometimes a single charismatic leader or master, or a body of masters that formed a basis or beginning to a religion and its teachings.

Some form of worship or meditation or gathering together of the faithful.

A path or guide to living, usually with the attainment of some goal- ultimately a transcendental one.

Some form of transcendental, supernatural, and/or revelation component to the set of beliefs. This could be in the form of god or gods or some element of belief in beings with supernatural powers.


Obviously this is useful as a general guide and not all components are necessary or all details will fit all religions, but I think this is an excellent start on what a religion is. Based on the choice of the title for his book, the author stressed that ultimately all religions provided some path that followers must trod through life and be faithful to, to reach some goal, again, usually a transcendental one.

-Zeno

Grunch:
A religion is a belief that

always
a) assumes or concludes that supernatural phenomena exists
b) is organized (amongst more believers than one)

almost always
c) relies on symbols and rituals
d) contains norms

Atheism can ofcourse be part of a religion, one does not have to believe in god(s) to be religious.