Cross-posted at Street Prophets
Hi. Let's talk a little bit about religion, and politics. There's been some people here, and elsewhere, lately, who thought that they needed to talk about the evils of religion.
Fair enough. Religion certainly has its share of evil ascribed to it, both fairly and unfairly. We should never hesitate to call out the evil we see. The place where some of these people went wrong, is in their semantics.
Epistemology in the extended section.
See, the problem is that when people like demagend and gaijin99 talk about "religion," they have something specific in mind. What it is, I'm not sure. I've read over the threads from wiscmass's diary, and from DarkSyde's story, and the truth is that I can't really nail down what our friends think constitutes "religion," "faith," "religionist," "rational" and its antithesis "irrational," along with their synthesis "nonrational."
Yes, I know that's a ridiculous abuse of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis process. Sorry.
It would also help if our friends defined what they meant by "science," "atheism," and "agnosticism," since I can't figure out what the hell they're talking about when they use those terms.
So, let's offer some definitions, and try to bring some clarity to the debate. I'll go first.
- Religion: A mechanism by which a person grapples with the large metaphysical questions of human existence, however they choose to define them.
- Faith: A religion that is built around a supernatural or unproven phenomenon.
- Religionist: A holder of a religion who seeks to convert others to that same religion, by any means necessary.
- Rational: Based on a duplicable thought process.
- Irrational: Based on a non-duplicable thought process.
- Nonrational: Based on a duplicable thought process, but dependent on a faulty assumption.
- Science: A mechanism by which a person grapples with physical questions, however they choose to define them.
- Atheism: A religion that denies the validity of faith.
- Agnosticism: A religion that forms no conclusions on the validity of faith.
So, those are my definitions. Feel free to debate them, examine their ramifications, offer counter-definitions, define additional terms that may prove vital, etc. The goal here is to attempt to reach some sort of consensus regarding what things mean, so that we're not talking past each other.
[EDIT] The "religion" definition is poor. That's a strong consensus. As a result, the definition of "atheism" and "agnosticism" is invalid. But the large point was to define "religion" in such a way that it was not "science." That, at least, is successful. The problem is that it's far too broad to accomplish anything.