I agree that the definition of religion is not a system of worship of a god or gods, but I do not agree that there is no definition of religion. I think a philosophically functional definition of religion is the method of coming to terms with ones own mortality. This definition does apply to everything we call religion, whether or not a god is involved in any given religion. The interesting thing is that this definition also applies to people who are atheists, because everyone, ultimately, must come to terms with their own mortality, and atheist apologists, in particular, have a unique way of finding meaning in mortality. With this thought, it is also possible to understand how people can mix their cultural belief system (notice that I did not say religion) with their science, as this speaker points out. And I think it is okay to let people do this, because this is a form of developing hypotheses. The scientist should not look down on this behavior. However, the scientist should encourage people to figure out how to test their belief in such a way that it is repeatable by others. It should be testable as to whether a god or some belief-system-defined cause is integral to an observable phenomenon. This also reveals that science can involve leaps of faith, using observation with inductive reasoning (think evolutionary theory) or even using modeling (think global warming). Of course, this expression uses the word faith loosely. This is more a leap of reasoning. But when you think about it, isnt the methods whereby people come to terms with their own mortality just simply leaps of reasoning? Even for those who say they have had a spiritual experience, arent they just reasoning that the thing they experienced had some supernatural cause, rather than a natural cause?
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 23:57:36 +0000
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