Clivedurdle

Throughout humanity's history, we have invented ideas and concepts - angels, spirits, norse Gods, invisible pink unicorns, Mickey Mouse. Some are more controversial - God - as to whether this one is an invention or pre existing.

Science has done the same - ether, phlogiston, lamarkian evolution, geocentric universe.

Is religion also an idea that, although we use it every day and think we are very familiar with it, is not actually a useful concept for understanding?

Does religion exist?

Do we precisely define religion as the sum of a set of individual and collective behaviours and beliefs that people agree or are coerced into believing - seeing religion as emergent from our behaviours and beliefs, or do we assume it is somehow "real" like people once thought ether was real?

To be honest, I am not sure I see anything externally real called Islam, Hinduism, Christianity etc. I do see individual people trying to understand their world by themselves and with others, and creating - socially constructing - various coalitions of ideas and practices. They will as part of this process label themselves in various ways or have labels imposed on them, but is not the reality that every single one of us has our individual utterly unique set of beliefs and actions?

Just because there is a huge weight of tradition, massive wealthy institutions, religious structures littered all over the place, does not mean that the mainstream interpretation of these phenomena is correct.

Atheists deny the existence of God - should we not also deny the existence of religion?

Ierrellus

What if religion, devoid of its most inhuman and unhuman acts and assertions, is simply Man trying to see beyond his own hedonistic or nascissistic solypsisms into the possible value of at least one other living being? What if it is the look at physical entropy that allows one to envisage some sense of personal integrity in the face of oblivion? What if it is the sense of empathy without which beings in ecosystems cannot exist?

W. H. Auden's (a spiritual homosexual) famous poem "Sept., 1939" reminds us that "We must love one another or die." I don't seem to see that spirit in so may throw-the-baby-out-with-the bathwater threads here that cannot even address the philosophical depth of why religions persist at all.

J-D

All use of language involves abstraction. Some terms are more abstract than others. Terms like 'Islam' and 'Christianity' are highly abstract; 'religion' is even more abstract. This doesn't mean they're never useful. However, abstraction should always be handled carefully. I find 'Christianity' and 'Islam' to be useful in communication because people generally know what I'm referring to when I use them. This doesn't require that all Christians, or all Moslems, subscribe to exactly the same beliefs and exhibit exactly the same behaviours.

However, if you don't find the terms useful, don't use them!

Clivedurdle

Isn't the problem that most people are somehow lost in the abstractions, as if they were real?

I agree completely that we must love one another or die - it is as simple as that. Maybe all the rest, if it is not attempting to help us get on with each other, is meaningless.

Ierrellus

Right on, Clivedurdle!

Religion is a name we give to whatever assuages our fear of death. If we could only do that for each other! But fear draws us into ourselves, into places of hording or one-up-manships, into solypsism and narcissicim. "Love is all there is."