We began our discussion by attempting to define religion. The three major suggestions included:
1) A system of beliefs and practices related to one’s conception of the nature and purpose of reality
2) An attempt to get help in dealing with (or controlling) the world (or life)
3) Belief in an unseen (possibly non-physical) order and adjusting ourselves thereto
There was also an emphasis on the group aspects of religion
We then set out to define several terms which are necessary when beginning a discussion about religion. These included:
1) World – before Copernican revolution this meant everything; afterword it meant planet
2) Universe – A unitary set of all things (could be considered all physical things)
3) Cosmos – An ordered whole (could include non-physical aspects of reality if there are any)
4) Prakriti – Sanskrit term meaning all of physical reality
5) Purusha – everything other than physical reality (the transcendental)
We then moved on to the problematic task of defining the word belief. Several proposals were made:
1) Something held true
2) Held true regardless of empirical evidence
3) Held true strongly
4) Held true plurality-istically (most probable option based on available info, can include, but does not require, the feeling of certainty)
5) An axiom (potentially only provisional)
6) Held true beyond empirical knowedge
7) Something personal in nature with a heart (or will)-mind distinction
8) Held true with consequences in behavior
We concluded that due to the problematic nature of the term, we would not use belief in our discussion but would instead use the phrase “proposition which is held to be true”
Next we engaged in an epistemological discussion on the definition and criteria for knowledge. It was suggested that the standard philosophical definition of “justified true belief” should be supplanted in our discussion instead with the weaker definition of “something held true for a reason” (note this means you can have knowledge of something even though it is false). Whether knowledge required certainty, or that it required the proposition to actually be true was hotly debated. Some held that we don’t actually have knowledge of anything but just varying levels of confidence. We concluded that we would still use the term “know,” but in its weaker sense.
At that point we moved on to looking at different examples of what are called religions to try and find commonalities between all of them. We found that common conceptions of religion as a belief in a god or gods, or the belief in the supernatural do not apply to all accepted cases. Many eastern religions especially have quite different ontologies and metaphysics, some of which do not include gods or supernatural forces. The three areas which all major religions seemed deal with were the “philosophical,” the “praxional,” and “communal.” Under the philosophical area, two major components seem to be the mythos (or narrative) and the logos (or analytic use of reason). The praxional consists of rituals and other practices performed by individuals and groups in both structured and unstructured ways. An example of the communal would be the criteria for which you consider yourself a member of a religious community aside from any practices or beliefs you might hold.
As a final example we took contemporary rabbinic Judaism:
Philosophical: monotheistic, covenantal
Praxional: Halakha, circumcision, mitzvah, tzadaka
Communal: Minyan, closed community, matrilineal, and use of Rabbis.
The discussion ended by saying that we would describe religion based on these three areas, without giving it a strict definition.
Blog contributed by RS
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