Religion: my response to pt4

Sorry about taking so long to respond. Life gets in the way of things like this that you do sometimes.

Alright, so I think we should attempt another definition exempting the words “worship” and “presupposition”. Here is my next shot:
Religion is “a commitment to a set of beliefs concerning the nature of reality that both informs and influences one's life experiences.”

Not specific enough. Sorry. That can apply to things that are totally secular and not at all religious. I know computer programmers that are totally commited to the Object-Oriented model of computer programming, and refuse to do any other type of programming. For them it really is "a set of beliefs regarding the nature of reality that both informs and influences their life experiences".

You don't seem to like my use of the word worship, so I need another word for it that means the same thing I was trying to convey. When you put your shoes on in the morning, that is not worship like I was using it. Nor is driving to work, nor is mowing the lawn, nor is changing the oil in my car. But praying to a god is, and so is singing songs of praise, and so is going to church services, and so is any activity whose primary or exclusive intended function is in service of a god. Now, you may argue that when I do all those tasks that they are worship whether I realize it or not, but I hope you can agree that their primary or exclusive intended function when I do them is most definitely not worship. When I eat breakfast in the morning, I'm not doing it to worship a non-existent god of secular humanism; I'm doing it because I'm hungry! And so on. So acts that are distinct in having the intent of serving some kinda god are worship, and as such are part of a religion. I of course want to emphasize that I'm not trying to impose this definition on you; I'm just trying to explain the way I see things.

So we can agree to “a set of beliefs” I think, now we approach what those set of beliefs is about. I think that we might be able to agree that the set of beliefs is about “the nature of reality”. Whether Christian, naturalist, atheist, or Buddhist, our beliefs are about what we think exists and runs throughout reality, including its origin and meaning.Kinda. Probably not specific enough, but probably good enough for starters :)

The third phrase is still tentative to me. The wording is still awkward. What I am trying to say is that those beliefs (about reality) then manifest themselves through how we live our lives. Much of what we do is a result of these beliefs. And so for each belief system, their lifestyles “live out” what their beliefs are. These “manifestations” of belief are obviously very diverse, according to the belief system, and yet one thing is consistent, and that is that each is a result of what they believe.

That kinda works. I think of a belief as a mental model of our past experiences. We use them to inform our decisions abut future actions. Past experiences are funny things though. They fade with time, and our mental models of them may be more or less accurate, depending on the circumstances. And the experience may be a lesson in a classroom, or a sermon in a church, that may or may not relate to reality. So our mental model of that past experience(our belief) may in fact have a totally false basis, and we may still hold it near and dear!! Sometimes we as humans, unfortunately, have to deal with the traumatic experience of having events happen in our lives that throw those beliefs into doubt, and force us to re-evaluate them, and sometimes even repair or re-construct those mental models so that they really do map better to reality. Traumatic and hard, but sometimes necessary.

So what think ye?

I think it's an intriguing discussion so far, and I appreciate the invitation to join in on it. I like the format I think.

P.S. I will post later my responses to your previous blog, but we are preparing for company so time does not permit. They were great comments and are deserving of response. And though it might eventually become irrelevant to our topic at hand they are all subjects that we will certainly hit upon later, so they are worthy of further discussion.

We might want to consider posting our responses in the responses section of the blog. Especially since it seems to be just the two of us for now. As side topics spin off, it might be easier to keep track of what we are doing by using the comment sections for our own benefit.

Have a great one!

You too, man. And don't feel like you have to respond fast. I really put a lot into this post, and it may take time to digest and respond, and that is fine. No need for us to rush this :)