X-Message-Number: 22206
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 23:29:07 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Religion

Going back to Keith Henson, #22186:

>I strongly suggest that anyone who is interested in either defending
>against religion or making one up should get a copy of Pascal Boyer's
>_Religion Explained

I obtained the book recently and started reading. It is definitely worth 
reading, I'd say, though certainly not perfect. The book says, as has been 
noted, religion "is about the existence and causal powers of non-observable 
entities and agencies" (p. 8), and "is made up of a limited catalogue of 
possible supernatural beliefs" (p. 11). The Beit-Hallahmi review which has 
been cited also says, by way of agreement, "religion is a collection of 
fantasies about spirits." If all this is true, then there would be no 
rightful place for anything you could call a religion in the thinking of 
many people, including myself. But I don't see it that way, and it brings 
up the issue of how one should define "religion."

Opinions vary. Some definitions insist on a tie-in with beliefs in the 
supernatural or "fantasies about spirits," but I think that misses the 
point, and I am not alone. You can see what I mean by doing a Google search 
on "definition of religion." A definition of my own that reflects this 
different and (to me) more enlightened and positive view is as follows. "A 
religion is a body of attitudes, beliefs, and practices whose intended 
purpose is a meaningful engagement with what can reasonably be regarded as 
having transcendent or ultimate significance." I won't say this is 
unobjectionable. Refinements and/or explication seem in order, though I 
will have to hold off for now. But I think it does capture what "religion" 
is reasonably about, in a way that avoids any necessary belief in the 
supernatural.

To close quickly, I think modern, scientific immortalism opens new, 
exciting possibilities in the field of non-supernatural religion, and that 
is one of the major themes I am trying to develop in the forthcoming book 
on Venturism.

Mike Perry

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