What is a Religion?

By Wayne Brown
I can never tell if my "hits" are from robots or human beings. Please do me a huge favor and leave a comment, however short, to tell me someone is out there reading this stuff ...

A lot of people claim to be "spiritual" but not "religious". Lots of folks are against "religion", whatever that is.

I think religion is not what people think. You may find my definition a bit odd ...

In fact, sometimes I thnk a skunk smells as bad by any name. What is objectionable about "religion" is objectionable about a lot of other ways of organizing society and thought patterns. It is this core that's objectionable. It's only in the case of religion that this core seems to be essential.

AUTHORITY

To me, it's the blood and bones of a religion is the emphasis on authority. Most commonly, the authority is "God" but since God doesn't really exist, this boils down the authority of a hierarchy of priests. Truth defined by bureaucracy.

This is true even of religions that claim not to be religions because belief in God is optional. For example, in Zen, there are strict rules about who can be a "master". Authority is supposedly passed down through the ages from the original Zen master. That makes Zen a religion.

HERESY

What do we do with those who reject authority? Well, those are heretics. The idea that some are inside and others are outside seems essential to a religion. It seems that we are not interested in profound ideas unless we can find people who disagree with us. We can then change our efforts away from verifying our dogma and devote it to stamping out,  suppressing and killing unbelievers. Ironically, we aim our efforts at people who almost believe the same thing. We fight at the borders. No Pope excommunicated the Muslims. Atheism is a capital crime in Muslim countries but only for ex-Muslims.

This is related to my old idea of the "credal group" (1977) -- one that is based on a purely formal agreement with a basically meaningless creed. What matters is solely who is "in" and who is "out".

What we seem to be missing is any idea of the supernatural. Don't we need something like God, the after life, reincarnation or something spooky for a religion? 

I don't think so.

That's about it. I'll expand on this a bit when time allows. I'll argue that American Exceptionalism and  the NAZI party are examples of religion, while "Mindfulness" is not, but can become one in the eyes of the believer when authority creeps in. Pictures of the Buddha start appearing on the walls ...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Facebook and Bing - A Killer Combination

By Wayne Brown
Image
 This is a partial list of groups I belong to that focus on Generative AI art: Facebook creates community. I use BING as a kind of Generative AI university: BING U.  I prefer the role of student, so my job is to find good teachers. Think of me as the guy who shows you around the campus and knows his way around, but he's a student himself. Microsoft BING is free and very powerful. It's an excellent way to learn Generative AI and a standard tool that everyone in my imaginary school has. The way to find a teacher is to see their work in a Facebook group. Then, save the picture that caught your eye in a Word document (or document editor of your choice). For example ... Joe McIntosh What we have found here is not only the prompt for the picture but a teacher who shares the prompts for all his pictures. Look for artists who work primarily with BING. Don't get distracted by other platforms or techniques. Learn to do one thing well before shopping for better tools. The best Facebo
Read more

A Process ...

By Wayne Brown
Image
She will be 105 in September. She struggles to recognize her four children, let alone her countless grandchildren. Today, she said, "Nobody told me how to die." She has always wanted to die in her own home, an oversized place that has always had room for an endless parade of visitors. She has always been very "social." Although she struggles to remember the old friends dropping by, she chats happily "on automatic." There are a lot of relatives. She was raised on a farm near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where her Russian parents raised 16 children. I asked "AI" - specifically Claude 3 Sonnet , to describe this situation in a short essay. I have taken the liberty of letting Grammarly , my AI writing assistant, make a few corrections to Sonnet's purple prose. This is the slightly edited version: She sits in  the twilight of her extraordinary life, a living embodiment of resilience and grace. At 105 years old, her eyes, dimmed by time, still h
Read more

Warp Speed Generative AI

By Wayne Brown
Image
Jump to Warp Speed Warp 2 Warp 3 Warp 4 "Warp Speed"  Illustration of " Language is a Virus " Laurie Anderson Completed in the time it takes to perform the song For a very long time, I have tried to master information processing tools and "wire" them together into a "machine" that suits my purpose. "Warp Speed Generative AI" combines several powerful families of AI tools to turn an idea into one or more pictures. Along the way, we get an explanation of the original idea, references and a detailed explanation of the style. I call it "Warp speed" because AI seems to give me whiplash as it takes my idea and runs with it. I just hang on and enjoy the ride. "Warp Speed" is a response to the current obsession with prompts: how to write them, when to share them, how to monetize them, what books to read, what courses to take and so forth. AI can write pretty good prompts. "Prompt Engineering" is an endangered speci
Read more