How Can We Identify a Phenomenon as Religious?

[struggle4progress]

Poll question: How Can We Identify a Phenomenon as Religious?

[nebenaube]

1. you forgot the LSD...

[struggle4progress]

4. You mean I should have included something like "mystical experience"?

[Tormenta]

2. It's not clear what you mean.

[struggle4progress]

3. Lots of different things are called "religions." Similarly, the adjective "religious"

is applied to many different things.

There are conventional uses of the word "religion" and "religious" which may be applied simply because these words have been applied before.

But if the words are meaningful, then one ought to be able to identify when the words apply, in some sort of sociological or operational sense.

[kiahzero]

6. Check out "The Sacred and the Profane" by Mircae Elliade.

It's what we used in my World Religions class, and I've found it to be the best definition I've come across.

If you want my two-cent summary: religion is the heterogeneity of value with respect to time, place, and action.

[struggle4progress]

8. I read some Eliade a long time ago -- really liked his sourcebook

"From Primitives to Zen."

Thanks for the suggestion! Maybe I really should check him out further

[Tormenta]

7. Maybe "religious" isn't the best word to use.

And could you please define "phenomenon"? In the sense that you're using it in your question?

[struggle4progress]

9. Oh, I dunno. What I'm trying to find out is what other people think they are saying

when they say, of something, that that something is religious.

Words like religion and religious seem to be used in different ways. I've heard certain fundamentalist Christians, for example, insist that Christianity is not a religion -- though I think hardly anybody would agree that the word religion was used properly in that claim

[TheBaldyMan]

5. irrational conformity to authority

misreading the signs
genetic/pathological/psychological pre-disposition to religion
incomprhension that humanity may not be central to the cosmos

I could go on.