Definition of religion

From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 17 Mar 1995 02:41:05 GMT

Hey, memeticists.  Would you like a challenge?
Why don't we, as a group, attempt to answer this question.

Once we've managed to achieve some sort of consensus lets
cross post to sci.anthropology. (and perhaps all the religious
groups as well ... I'll bet they could use a good memeing)

JP Bailhe <71202.2712@CompuServe.COM> wrote in sci.anthropology:
>
> I wonder if anyone wants to take a crack at definning religion.
> This awesomely powerful cultural force found throughout human
> culture is a slippery goose. I thought about posting this in one
> of the religious groups, but I'm looking for more scientifc
> responses.

Any takers?????

From: hingh@xs4all.nl (Marc)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 18 Mar 1995 12:37:06 GMT

Richard Pocklington  <pockling@sfu.ca> wrote:
>Hey, memeticists.  Would you like a challenge?
>Why don't we, as a group, attempt to answer this question.
>> I wonder if anyone wants to take a crack at definning religion.

I doubt that we can find a definition of religion in terms of memes that 
does not include other meme complexes as well (e.g. political ideologies).

To distinguish religions from other complexes, we would have to look at 
the 'contents', i.e. specific memes that can be found in all religions.
I think anthropologists are more qualified to do that than we are.

That does not mean that I don't think replicator models would make a 
useful contribution to the social sciences.  There are already some 
anthropologists (e.g. Michael E. Rainy) that have tried to apply memetics 
to the evolution of rituals.

Marc

From: scott9609@aol.com (Scott9609)
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 18 Mar 1995 13:44:37 -0500

It seems to me that for the sake of utility a definition of religion would
have to do two things:

First, it would have to be such that it would admit all ordinary usage;
that is, when a person uses the word it matches to a first degree what
folks ordinarily consider to be "religious" in nature.

Second, it should stipulate a quality or qualities that allows it to be
distinguished from other activities, such as political ideology,
aesthetics, etc.

Here's my offering, culled from the field of anthropology...Religion is "a
behaviour, process or structure whose orientation is at least partially
supernatural."

Comment?


Scott Hatfield (kennesaw@ccfnet.com)

From: 3twc2@qlink.queensu.ca (Cook Thomas W)
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 19 Mar 1995 04:37:41 GMT

Scott9609 (scott9609@aol.com) wrote:

: Here's my offering, culled from the field of anthropology...Religion is "a
: behaviour, process or structure whose orientation is at least partially
: supernatural."

Interesting ... how do you define "supernatural"?

  I would suggest that a religion, as opposed to a typical meme-complex, is 
one that attempts to explain the body/mind duality.
  Spirits, souls, ghosts, etheral forces influencing people - it seems 
to me that these could all be interpreted as attempts to visualize the 
dynamics of ideas.

Thomas.

From: Forman@ix.netcom.com (Frank Forman)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.atheism,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 19 Mar 1995 18:14:56 GMT

The best definition to date, from the second page of H.L. Mencken, 
_Treatise on the Gods_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, revised 1946):

Mencken also noted (in the end of the introduction to the revised 
edition (1946)(some sentences omitted)):

From: cpenning@gradient.cis.upenn.edu (Craig A Pennington)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.atheism,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 19 Mar 1995 20:37:49 GMT

Frank Forman (Forman@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: The best definition to date, from the second page of H.L. Mencken, 
: _Treatise on the Gods_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, revised 1946):

: 	Nevertheless, it [religion] is quite simple at bottom. There is 
: nothing really secret or complex about it, no matter what its professors 
: may allege to the contrary. Whether it happens to show itself in the 
: artless mumbo-jumbo of a Winnebago Indian or in the elaborately refined 
: and metaphysical rites of a a Christian archbishop, its single function 
: is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny, 
: and its single purpose is to induce those powers to be friendly to him. 
: That function and that purpose are common to all relgioins, ancient or 
: modern, savage or civilized, and they are the only common characters 
: that all of them show. Nothing else is essential.

By this definition, science is a religion. The "powers which seem to
control his destiny" are just the demonstrable laws of the universe.
Perhaps this is the definition that Publius uses and he confuses
science with atheism. If so, he is seeking a seperation of science and
state. He should just say so.

[deletions of what religion might also do but still be religion.]

: Mencken also noted (in the end of the introduction to the revised 
: edition (1946)(some sentences omitted)):

: 	It would be folly to underestimate the power of religion upon 
: the unhappy *Simidiiae* known as man, even today. That its grip is 
: lessening I show by plain evidence, but this lessening is to be seen 
: only in relatively small minorities, admittedly damned. The great masses 
: of people still follow theologicans as they follow politicians, and seem 
: doomed to be bamboozled and squeezed by both for many long ages to come. 
: Having been born without any capacity for moral indignation, I can only 
: record this fact in a scientific spirit, letting others, if they choose, 
: deplore it--or rejoice in it. Religion itself is commonly thought of as 
: a moral engine, but I am convinced that that aspect of it is largely 
: fortuitous. (I have dealt with the subject of ethics at some length in a 
: companion volume called "Treatise on the Gods".) Men do not derive their
: ethical ideas from the powers and principalities of the air; they simply 
: credit those powers with whatever laws they evolve out of their own 
: wisdom or lack of it. Religion, in its essence, is thus not a scheme of 
: conduct, but a theory of causes. What brought it into the world in the 
: remote days I try to conjure up by hypotheses in Section I were man's 
: eternal wonder and his eternal hope. It represents one of his boldest 
: efforts to penetrate the unknowable, to put down the intolerable, to 
: refashion the universe nearer to his heart's desire. My belief is that 
: it is a poor device to that end--that when it is examined objectively it 
: testifies to his lack of sense quite as much as to his high striving. 
: But that belief is just a belief. The immense interest and importance of 
: the thing itself remains.

He seems to be implying something is inherent in his definition
that seperates religion from science. I do not see where he draws
the line. Perhaps it is in his definition of the forces?

--
Craig Pennington		| "Now you go right to sleep Billy or
cpenning@gradient.cis.upenn.edu |  I'll have to knock three times and
				|  summon the Floating Head of Death."
				| -Gary Larson

From: John Power <jp@hep.anl.gov>
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.atheism,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 19 Mar 1995 21:03:02 GMT

cpenning@gradient.cis.upenn.edu (Craig A Pennington) wrote:
> Frank Forman (Forman@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> : The best definition to date, from the second page of H.L. Mencken,
> : _Treatise on the Gods_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, revised 1946):

> : its single function
> : is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny,
> : and its single purpose is to induce those powers to be friendly to him.
> : [snip]....and they are the only common characters  that all of them show.
>
> By this definition, science is a religion. The "powers which seem to
> control his destiny" are just the demonstrable laws of the universe.

Mencken says " its single purpose is to induce those powers to be
friendly to him," how does science try to do this?  It is true that science
seeks to understand the laws of nature that control men's destinies, but
so what?  This line of reasoning would seem to say that scientist are no
different than religious zealots because they both have to breathe.

-----John Power

From: publius@gate.net (Publius)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.atheism,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 20 Mar 1995 15:34:54 GMT


  My connection with all this is not that I am seeking to "separate
  State and Science" - an absurd proposition - but separate
  Science from pseudo-science. Atheism is a Religion and must
  be treated as such in our schools - at the direction of
  the State.   PUBLIUS

From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,sci.anthropology
Subject: Defining Religion
Date: 19 Mar 1995 20:34:18 GMT

Update (19/3/95) re: Definition of Religion.

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
=====
Marc de Hingh
To distinguish religions from other complexes, we would have to look at 
the 'contents', i.e. specific memes that can be found in all religions.

{annotation}
Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
are these 'core memes' definitive because
of their function or because of their common origin
fins might be a character that defines sea creatures, but they have
arisen independantly when organisms shift into aquatic habitats
long gene sequence homologies however are good identifying characters
because they are unlikely to arise independantly
=====
scott9609@aol.com (Scott9609)
First, it would have to be such that it would admit all ordinary usage;
that is, when a person uses the word it matches to a first degree what
folks ordinarily consider to be "religious" in nature.

Second, it should stipulate a quality or qualities that allows it to be
distinguished from other activities, such as political ideology,
aesthetics, etc.
=====
Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
When attempting to categorize ideologies do we wish to categorize 
them according to their phenotypic similarity, or should we instead
use the cladistic type approach in attempting to have our 
classification system mimic the evoltuionary history of the taxa?

This is a fundamental distinction.  It is akin to distinguishing
the category 'sea creatures' from the category 'fish'.  When we 
speak of sea creatures we base our classification on outward
similarity (which can arise through convergent evolution), while if
we try to distinguish the group 'fish' we wish to identify a group
of organisms which all have a common history.  
========
PROPOSED DEFNITIONS
=====
Jerry Moyer <74453.3612@CompuServe.COM>
> >Religion is a system of beliefs by which a people reduce anxiety
> >over natural phenomena through some means of explication.

{annotation}
Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Is this a confusion over the distinction between meme and religion?
=====
scott9609@aol.com (Scott9609)
Here's my offering, culled from the field of anthropology...Religion is "a
behaviour, process or structure whose orientation is at least partially
supernatural." <note: please include sources for all references>

{annotation}
3twc2@qlink.queensu.ca (Cook Thomas W)
 how do you define "supernatural"?
=====
3twc2@qlink.queensu.ca (Cook Thomas W)
I would suggest that a religion, as opposed to a typical meme-complex, is 
one that attempts to explain the body/mind duality.
  Spirits, souls, ghosts, etheral forces influencing people - it seems 
to me that these could all be interpreted as attempts to visualize the 
dynamics of ideas.
==============
Forman@ix.netcom.com (Frank Forman)

The best definition to date, from the second page of H.L. Mencken, 
_Treatise on the Gods_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, revised 1946):

<the definition:>
1:its single function is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny
2:its single purpose is to induce those powers to be friendly to him.
3:Religion, in its essence, is thus not a scheme of conduct, but a theory of causes.

<the evidence:>
That function and that purpose are common to all relgions, ancient or 
modern, savage or civilized, and they are the only common characters 
that all of them show. 
=======
Jerry Moyer <74453.3612@CompuServe.COM> wrote
> "Religious is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern"
>  -Paul Tillich

{annotation}
Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Sounds like a back-bone for an operational definition of a class
of memetic parasites if I ever heard one.  
======
PROPOSED FUNCTIONS
======
Jerry Moyer <74453.3612@CompuServe.COM>
> >Religion is a system of beliefs by which a people reduce anxiety
> >over natural phenomena through some means of explication.

{annotation}
Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
1:Hmmmm, sounds like a putative 'hook'.  Perhaps religion could be
defined with reference to the various neurological systems onto
which the infomation parasite attatches itself.  
2:Is there any emperical evidence that religion does reduce anxiety?
======

OTHER POTENTIAL THREADS
=====
Jerry Moyer <74453.3612@CompuServe.COM>
> >my definition may be more driven by my agenda to show science
> >as a religious style institution

{annotation}
Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Since science has some roots in religion, it likey has plenty of 
conserved characters which arose in its ancestors.
For example the 'Monism' of modern scientists (well
a lot of us, if not all) is part of a phylogentically conserved
character that was manifest as 'Monotheism' in our recent ideological
ancestors.

From: cpenning@gradient.cis.upenn.edu (Craig A Pennington)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics,alt.atheism,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Religion: definition of
Date: 20 Mar 1995 22:48:50 GMT

John Power (jp@hep.anl.gov) wrote:
: cpenning@gradient.cis.upenn.edu (Craig A Pennington) wrote:
: > Frank Forman (Forman@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: > : The best definition to date, from the second page of H.L. Mencken,
: > : _Treatise on the Gods_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, revised 1946):

: > : its single function
: > : is to give man access to the powers which seem to control his destiny,
: > : and its single purpose is to induce those powers to be friendly to him.
: > : [snip]....and they are the only common characters  that all of them show.
: >
: > By this definition, science is a religion. The "powers which seem to
: > control his destiny" are just the demonstrable laws of the universe.

: Mencken says " its single purpose is to induce those powers to be
: friendly to him," how does science try to do this?  It is true that science
: seeks to understand the laws of nature that control men's destinies, but
: so what?  This line of reasoning would seem to say that scientist are no
: different than religious zealots because they both have to breathe.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought science was a religion, just that
I didn't think that the definition was as clear as the original poster
thought it was. What is the qualitative difference between inducing
powers to be friendly and using the nature of these powers to your
benefit? If there is a difference, it could be argued that sympathetic
magic does not fall within the above definition of religion.

--
Craig Pennington		| "Now you go right to sleep Billy or
cpenning@gradient.cis.upenn.edu |  I'll have to knock three times and
				|  summon the Floating Head of Death."
				| -Gary Larson

Newsgroups: alt.memetics,sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: Defining Religion
From: wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins)
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 11:08:01 +1000

In article <3ki4ga$2eg@seymour.sfu.ca>, Richard Pocklington
<pockling@sfu.ca> wrote:

: Update (19/3/95) re: Definition of Religion. [snipped]
: 
I think that if you are going to use the meme "meme" to characterise the
meme "religion", you might take further guidance from the field of
evolutionary genetics from which Dawkins argued by analogy in the first
place.

Any taxonomy in evolutionary biology relies upon reconstructed
phylogenetics, not upon common traits shared by all related clades. IOW,
it is their history not their properties that defines them. One feature of
evolutionary explanations is that shared derived homologies feature
prominently in taxonomic groupings, but traits can be lost as well as
acquired.

While religions that are synapomorphic should therefore share many
features, there will be no "defining" set that will not include many
things that are not religion.

So there will be no a priori definition, and there will be many cases
where it is unclear whether something (eg, idealistic philosophy) is
religious or not. As with all evolutionary explanations, it is a matter of
history, descent, adaptation and function.

-- 
Unofficially,
John "Chris" Wilkins, Head of Communication Services, Walter and Eliza Hall
Institute of Medical Research, Victoria 3050 Australia
Tel: (+61 3) 345 2421, internet: wilkins@wehi.edu.au
Home Page: http://www.wehi.edu.au/~wilkins/www.html
Also: Assoc. Prof. of Recent Runes, Uni of Ediacara

From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology,alt.memetics
Subject: The GOD gene
Date: 19 Mar 1995 19:01:12 GMT

Jerry Moyer <74453.3612@CompuServe.COM> wrote:
> >1) what about belief in the supernatural and/or a supernatural
> >being. Isn't it part and parcel of all religions to have some
> >beliefs about the existence of the supernatural?

> I would agree with Lennart Regenbro, there are belief systems that
> are clearly religious yet do not believe in the supernatural.
>  Buddhism can be atheistic and what of atheism itself?  Could not
> the belief that there is not God be considered a religious belief.

Is this a confusion over the distinction between meme and religion?

> >Religion is a system of beliefs by which a people reduce anxiety
> >over natural phenomena through some means of explication.

Hmmmm, sounds like a putative 'hook'.  Perhaps religion could be
defined with reference to the various neurological systems onto
which the infomation parasite attatches itself.  

Is there any emperical evidence that religion does reduce anxiety?

>Mathew Micene has a good
>definition yet I noticed that he is defining religion by the
> function it serves.

When attempting to categorize ideologies do we wish to categorize 
them according to their phenotypic similarity, or should we instead
use the cladistic type approach in attempting to have our 
classification system mimic the evoltuionary history of the taxa?

This is a fundamental distinction.  It is akin to distinguishing
the category 'sea creatures' from the category 'fish'.  When we 
speak of sea creatures we base our classification on outward
similarity (which can arise through convergent evolution), while if
we try to distinguish the group 'fish' we wish to identify a group
of organisms which all have a common history.  

> >my definition may be more driven by my agenda to show science
> >as a religious style institution

Since science has some roots in religion, it likey has plenty of 
conserved characters which arose in its ancestors.
For example the 'Monism' of modern scientists (well
a lot of us, if not all) is part of a phylogentically conserved
character that was manifest as 'Monotheism' in our recent ideological
ancestors.

> Could I go one step further and ask, is it possible that
> people are religious by nature?

I expect that 'by nature' means the genetic predisposition to 
allow the phenotype to be indoctrinated (ie the neural networks
are soft until configured through extensive social learning).
Thus the genes design a phenotype that is designed to be plastic,
at least to some degree, and religion is one consequence of this 
genetically determined plasticity.
 
> What do you think of this definition?
> "Religious is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern"
>  -Paul Tillich
Sounds like a back-bone for an operational definition of a class
of memetic parasites if I ever heard one.  

From: scott9609@aol.com (Scott9609)
Newsgroups: alt.memetics
Subject: Re: The GOD gene
Date: 20 Mar 1995 18:17:18 -0500

I think Tillich's "ultimate concern" is too weak of a definition.  It robs
the word "religion" of any real descriptive power to excise its quality of
supernatural dependence.

If you define religion this loosely, then "science" or "America" or
"baseball" can become a fellow's religion.  However, I would say that any
scientist who came to regard science as their religion would be a poor
excuse for a scientist.

Religion appeals to modes of explanation that Gregory Bateson (MIND AND
NATURE: A NECESSARY UNITY) aptly characterized as "abductive" rather than
"deductive."  It has too, because of its appeal to the supernatural, which
always leads to tautologies.

I would also say that higher Buddhism is neither supernatural in focus nor
"abductive" in reasoning style.  Unlike the animistic and polytheistic
forms of Buddhism which still abound, Zen and similiar practices seek
inner knowledge in ways which are acknowledged (and even encouraged) as
irrational, rather than asserting that an irrational premise is rational
by appeal to circular reasoning.  In this sense, I would say that Zen is
NOT a "religion" but is something else entirely; I might add that, like
the scientist guilty of scientism, the fellow who follows Zen
"religiously" does not have Buddha-nature....:)

Cordially...Scott Hatfield (kennesaw@ccfnet.com)

Newsgroups: alt.memetics
From: hanss@tudelft.nl (Hans-Cees Speel)
Subject: the god meme
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 12:12:22 GMT

>From hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl
I think one of the main essentials of a religion is the 'freezing' of 
arguments.
In every religion some cultural things are given some sort of 
not-open-to-discussion status. Some cultural rules are above discussion, they 
are to be accepted or you can't be a follower of the religion.
The same goes for science, only in science there should be room to discuss 
everything. If this is not possible, often the case, the question can be asked 
if it has become a religion in this sense.