On Tuesday 02 June 2015 15:01, Rustom Mody wrote: > eg Would it make sense to you if you were told that there are widespread > religions like Buddhism that are agnostic or Jainism that are strictly > atheistic?
No of course it wouldn't make sense. But nothing to do with religion, spirituality and superstition makes sense, the whole point of them is that they speak to the emotions, not logic. (You note that I am carefully not commenting on whether this is a good thing or not.) Draw up two sets of overlapping axes, and label the vertical axes "Agnosticism / Gnosticism" and the horizontal axes "Supernatural / Natural". Belief systems can be found in all four quadrants. Agnostic religions are easy, they're just in the Supernatural+Agnostic quadrant. If you define religion to be merely any belief system, then even an atheist religion is understandable: it could be anything on the Natural half of the graph. Personally, I consider that redefining religion to refer to belief systems which do not include supernatural divine gods is an abuse of language (except informally, as in "football is my religion" or "the religious war between Vi and Emacs users"). it's like the food processor that is advertised as being a "three speed food-processor" because there are three settings on the control: High, Low and OFF. -- Steve -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
