[soc.religion.christian] Omnipresent religion?

henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl syllogistic Henning) (03/25/91)

Barbara Vaughan writes:

>Every human society that ever developed had some kind of religion. Obviously
>more people thought of it independently than thought of calculus.

When you say this, you use "religion" to cover a great variety
of belief-systems, whereas calculus is much more specific.  This
corrupts your comparison, I fear.

While it is a safe generalization that all human societies have
developed belief-systems to explain Things/Life/the World beyond
those life-skills of which they would have been able to achieve
a more or less scientific (to use "science" in a broad sense of
applied knowledge through repeated attempt) understanding (fishing,
hunting, agriculture, shelter, medicine, e.g.), it is misleading
to suggest that all such belief-systems consitute religions, or
imply that they share many "advanced functionalities" of religion
(salvation[TM], e.g.).

This would become apparent, if you were to attempt to offer even a
rudimentary definition of "religion" which could fit your statement
above.  Not all "religions" (if we must use it as a blanket term)
function in a uniform manner, in terms either of people relating
to a perceived deity/pantheon, or the universal problem of regulating
social interaction.

There are certainly "families", or clumps of similar religions,
though.  Thus, much closer parallels could be drawn between, say,
Xianity and Islam, than between Xianity and Buddhism, or Islam
and the Tao, or either Buddhism or the Tao and Shinto.  Indeed
it is a fundamental conceptual abuse of the Tao, or Shinto, or
Confucianism, to force them upon the Procrustean bed of religion,
in the sense of Xianity or Islam.  Yet they are certainly belief-
systems in some sense.

Xians tend to be too precious of their perceived "uniqueness"
among religions, to accept the fact that theirs bears any kinship
to any other religion, unless it be a qualified relation to Judaism
(the "old law" allegedly superseded by jesus) or Islam (the most
successful -- in terms at least of numbers of adherents -- of the
"heretical" spinoffs of xianity).

kph
-- 
Doris: But without God, the universe is meaningless.  Life is meaningless.
   We're meaningless.  (/Deadly pause/)  I have a sudden and overpowering
   urge to get laid.		-- Woody Allen, "God (A Play)"