On Tuesday, June 2, 2015 at 11:34:34 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > 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.
Emotions dont make sense? In what sense of 'sense'? If understanding rather than pronouncing is your intention this may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain [You may remember a recent poster with the moniker 'PointedEars' in his name making wild emotional outbursts. So much for 20th century movie-mythology] (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. > I am reminded of the TinTin(?) comic: Telescope informs about a giant alien coming to invade from outer space. Further examination of telescope shows 'alien' to be a bug (not the software variety) in the telescope. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
