Puck

Play nice kids. Don't make it personal.

Puck

Or how much of it is saying the same things in different ways?

Looks like crossed wires to me.

Whoo hoo, hot time on the board tonight! I'm gonna go play for awhile in humor.

seebs

Quite possible. I think there's a tendency to conflate "religion" with "big organized religion trying to eliminate other belief systems". The latter is a problem; the former isn't.

Harumi

You have a very interesting definition of religion there Starboy. Here I've always thought that it was a system of morals or a way of life based off the supernatural (god, gods, some nether world). I've never heard of it. Are you saying then, that a type of belief is a religion?

Humanism?

Adherents to different philosophy?

Would you care to explain this?

himynameisPwn

Starboy, prove to me Wicca and Buddhism directly by their philosophies act intolerant towards others.

Also prove to me that you, being SPECIFICALLY uninvited and unwelcome to a protest, would still go to that protest and show tolerance towards the people that told you that you aren't good enough to protest.

I'd think, as an athiest, if there was a big argument over something regarding liberal christians and fundies, and the liberal christians had a march and I wanted to join in, but was specifically turned away, I wouldn't even bother, but your telling me, that you have that much free time and care that much that you'd be willing to take a vacation, a plane to DC and still protest against the fundies?

Starboy

Harumi, it is not much of a leap. If you posit the existence of gods and so forth, you are indeed also putting forth a way of understanding and explaning your surroundings.

If you were to concoct an ethos that had a directive component (morals) and an explanitive component (perhaps science) IMO it would be a religion. Most people think that the primary purpose of a religion is to deal with the here after. I find that hard to swallow, since religion exists and acts in the here and now. I side with Joe Campbell, the actual purpose of religion is to provide guidance on how to live life well. Joe makes a good case for all religions being very much alike and different. They all provide guidance to people, most of whom share many of the same problems across time and space, but they also reflect the particular circumstances of those people as well. He also points out that, the times they are a changing. The metaphors of the past are no longer suitable for the present. In other words, we are still people but our circumstances and the way we understand our surroundings is very different from that of the past. Supernatural religion is just out of place in this day and age.

Starboy