The dangers of religion

[Cerin]

Windy, thanks for your clarifications! I believe we have an understanding.

I am agreeing with what I believe is a powerful analysis that assigns the definition of "essential" and "core" to certain commonalities precisely because of the fact that they are found in all religions throughout history.

The more I thought about this, the less sense it made to me.

Suppose someone compiled a list of commonalities found in all fantasy fiction (which would presumably include Tolkien's LoTR). Now suppose someone were to say that those commonalities exclusively define what is essential and core to, what are the only worthwhile aspects of any work of fantasy fiction. Is that an idea many of us would agree makes sense?

It makes more sense to me that some of the unique aspects of LoTR -- the things one doesn't find in other works of fantasy fiction -- are more important aspects of the work, at least for some of us, are what we consider the essential and core aspects of the work that make it special to us. Generally speaking, isn't it possible if not likely, that the unique qualities of a thing are at least as essential and core to its being as its generic qualities?

In other words, shouldn't the thing about a work -- or a faith -- that sets it apart from, as opposed to the things that make it the same as others of its kind, be viewed as at least as, if not more, definitive of its essence and core?

Of what else besides belief systems, would we accept that only its generic aspects are of value? It seems counter-intuitive to me.

Let's take politics. What if I used the same lowest common denomenator theory and reduced both the basics of the Republican Party's and the Democratic Party's apparent goals to the generic values they share as parties in the American political system, so that I ended up with one platform of the things they can both agree on. I would have very few actual policies and lots of rhetorical pablum. And wouldn't I essentially be taking Ralph Nader's line, that between the two parties, it doesn't matter who we elect because the essentials are the same? Yet we know (many of us would agree) that it matters a great deal who we elect. Because the particulars matter. The particulars define. The particulars have an effect on our quality of life. The particulars represent real, important differences.

So this idea, if I've got it correctly -- that the generic ideas shared by all the world's religions are the only important ones, are exclusively representative of the essence and core of each of the individual religions because of the fact they are found in all of them -- seems a little off to me.

[Primula Baggins]

Just what I was going to say.

Really.



The least common denominator approach can lead us to a few principles that certainly worthy and are unlikely to start religious wars, but the result is going to be weak porridge. It would be hard to found one's life on them (or if one did, one would not really be doing much).

[Windfola]

Least common denomenator! On the contrary Cerin!

Darn. Just when I was ready to believe you when you said that we had achieved some understanding. :D

I don't think your analogies work at all in this situation.

In the search for truth, would you be more likely to accept only the isolated conclusions drawn by a single group? Or would you be more likely to accept those core conclusions reached by every group who had ever searched for that truth?

Your choice of the phrase "least common denomenator" is an interesting one. Huxley, in his introduction to "The Perennial Philosophy" (indeed in its very first paragraph) uses the phrase "Highest Common Factor". I think that is a much more apt description:

Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of Asia and Europe.

Cerin said:

So this idea, if I've got it correctly -- that the generic ideas shared by all the world's religions are the only important ones . . . .

No. They're not the only important or even useful ones, they're the only essential ones.

[Jnyusa]

The least common denominator approach can lead us to a few principles that certainly worthy and are unlikely to start religious wars, but the result is going to be weak porridge.

But I think this is exactly the aspect that Windy was trying to illuminate, because she was responding to Nin's observation that all religions do very bad things.

All religions do very bad things, but they don't all do the same bad thing; and they can't really, because what is common to all religions is unsuited to corruption.

The unique content of Christianity is what makes it valuable to its members ... and indeed it would lose all value to its members if that uniqueness were removed ... but it is not the unique content of Christianity that makes it a religion as such. We are able to categorize Christianity as a religion because it shares things in common with other ideas that we call "religion." Nin's observation was not that Christianity is bad but that religion is bad. What I understand Windy to be saying is that if we look at those characteristics that cause us to classify something as a religion, those are not the characteristics that cause the abuses from which Nin has recoiled.

All churches are bad in different ways because they get corrupted along the fault lines that are unique to them. But if you look at the ways in which all churches are good, you find shared ideas of what constitutes goodness.This may not matter to a Christian who has already found sufficient reason to accept his/her own faith no matter what it has done in the past, but it can matter to an agnostic who is trying to clarify in his/her own mind the more general question of the nature of religious belief.

eta: cross-posted with Windy! Highest Common Denominator -- yes, that is how I understood the argument.

[baby tuckoo]

Yes, I believe I value your right to disbelieve as fervently as I value my own right to believe.

(Please forgive my re-wording, but I couldn't quite embrace the notion of 'fervently tolerating').

The oxymoron was intentional. It gives contrast to the heat of religious "fervor" and the cool ideal of "tolerance." It would be hard to protect them with equal conviction.

I thank you, Cerin, for the value you give my non-belief as equal to your own. Few people worldwide perceive them as such. Most place a greater value on the supernatural urge, even if it is stated generically. And many would die for their right to believe, especially if it were about to be taken away; few would die for my right not to.


No, I don't have precise statistics. I have the example of Western civilization in the common era, and I have the result of surveys in which people are asked that very question.


Yes, I state the case more strongly than is likely to occur for any individual. Not these days. Not around here. We're different from the European immigrants to New England in the late 1600's. Very, very different.

[Cerin]

Darn. Just when I was ready to believe you when you said that we had achieved some understanding.

I think we had achieved an understanding of what you were saying.

I didn't say I agreed with it.

In the search for truth, would you be more likely to accept only the isolated conclusions drawn by a single group? Or would you be more likely to accept those core conclusions reached by every group who had ever searched for that truth?

I don't think I would necessarily be more likely to conclude something was true because a greater number of people believed it, than something else.

Again, I have to reject your use of 'core'. Let me repeat the second question above without 'core'.

Or would you be more likely to accept those conclusions reached by every group who had ever searched for that truth?

If every group that had ever searched for a certain truth had accepted certain conclusions, that fact would not necessarily convince me that those conclusions were necessarily true, and there certainly would be nothing to suggest that they represented the only essential truths of that kind.

I suppose I might conclude that these were the ideas that seemed most obviously true. But as I said, the notion that only generic concepts can be essential concepts does not make sense to me. Common does not equate to core, or essential. Common means common.


Regarding 'denominator', I agree that the religions construct doesn't necessarily recommend 'lowest common denominator'. On looking up 'denominator' I get 'a common trait', and on looking up 'common denominator', I get 'something on which all in a group can agree'. So leaving out 'lowest', I trust you agree that we are talking about denominators and common denominator with respect to the world's religions, according to this standard definition? Common traits of all the world's religions, the things on which all of the world's religions agree?

I suppose Mr. Huxley might have been reluctant to use the word 'denominator' because of the very tendency I just demonstrated, of people to think of the common phrase, 'lowest common ...' and an inferior connotation. In looking up 'factor', there are no non-numeric definitions offered that seem to apply as well as 'denominator' does to our discussion, so I'm going to stick with denominator and common denominator to describe this idea of concepts that all the world's religions have in common. I'm happy to stipulate that there is nothing 'low' about them.

All religions do very bad things, but they don't all do the same bad thing

I think people do do basically the same bad things in the name of various religions, and also non-religious ideologies. I think this might have been the point, or related to the point Frelga was making in using a quote about an imaginery religion.

We are able to categorize Christianity as a religion because it shares things in common with other ideas that we call "religion."

I didn't think Windy was saying, these are the ideas that classify something as a religion, these are the things that define the nature of a religion. I could agree with that. I thought she was saying something quite different -- that these are ideas common to all religions, which nevertheless also represent the only essential ideas of each and every individual religion.

In other words, not, these are the things that make a fruit a fruit, but, these are things common to all fruits AND the only things essential about each and every individual fruit. In fact, I think you've made me see that one can't claim both for the same ideas/characteristics; one can't claim that the basics that classify something as part of a group of things are also the only essential aspects of each individual member of that group. Would any of us agree that there is no property that distinguishes apple from orange, that we would consider essential or core to the experience of apple or orange? If there were nothing essential to each that differentiated one from the other, we would not have two different words to describe them. We would be content to refer to both with the same word; we would never crave one and not the other.

Nin's observation was not that Christianity is bad but that religion is bad. What I understand Windy to be saying is that if we look at those characteristics that cause us to classify something as a religion, those are not the characteristics that cause the abuses from which Nin has recoiled.

So you are saying that Nin and Windy disagree? Or are using different appellations for the thing they think is bad? Nin's 'religion' is Windy's 'outer trappings'?

edit for grammatical correction

[Windfola]

I don't think I would necessarily be more likely to conclude something was true because a greater number of people believed it, than something else.

Unfortunately, this is an artifact of me trying to combat your earlier analogy with an imperfect one of my own.

In fact, the argument is not that these certain core truths have been recognized because a greater number of people believe them, nor is there anything "generic" about them (to the extent that this means simply common). It has nothing to do with numbers at all, but has to do with the ample evidence provided by the lives of those "first-hand exponents of the Perennial Philosophy" from all the great religions whom we have generally called saints, prophets, sages, and enlightened ones. These are the people who have managed to make themselves sufficiently loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit to be able to directly and immediately apprehend divine Reality.

And it is the words and example of these people, who come from many different faith traditions and who have lived across the ages and throughout the world, that Huxley uses in his anthology. He concludes, and I agree, that "there is good reason for supposing that they knew what they were talking about". As Wampus Cat so wisely noted, they tend to come from the mystical traditions of the world's great religions.

And what they teach us is that there are certain essential and necessary conditions recognized by all of the world's religions which must be fulfilled in order to apprehend the ultimate Reality.

Now . . . the more I say on this subject, the more disservice I do to the concepts I am trying to relate to you. I can tell by your posts that I've already warped your understanding of what I have tried to communicate.

So I won't say any more on the subject. You really must read the book and read for yourself the words and wisdoms which Mr. Huxley has collected for us in order to truly understand my point or to make a persuasive argument against it. I know you would never do this, but one can always dream.

Nin's 'religion' is Windy's 'outer trappings'?

I can't be sure, but this could be right.

[Cerin]

Windy, when I used 'common' in my last post, I meant common to all (religions), as we had been using it previously (not commonplace), and that is also the meaning I intended for 'generic' -- common to or characteristic of a whole group or class.

[Jnyusa]

So you are saying that Nin and Windy disagree?

Yes, I took Windy to be disagreeing with Nin .... but disagreement isn't quite the right word. I took Windy to be offering to Nin a different way of looking at the question whether religion as such was good or bad.

[Windfola]

I took Windy to be offering to Nin a different way of looking at the question whether religion as such was good or bad.

Yes Jnyusa. That was my intent, though I'm not sure I did a very good job of it!

[Nin]

I understood it the same way, that what I see as an essential part of religion - in opposite to faith - would be for what you are "outer trappings", deviation of what religion is. Maybe I understood wrong. But you can surely define religion in different ways, like also the question if faith and religion mean the same in the end.

I doubt to be able to read Mr Huxley's book in English, unfortunately.

However, at least for now, and especially today again after having read about the latest publications of the Vatican, little can be done about me and my rejection of religions.

[Primula Baggins]

Nin, I hope you don't think anyone here is trying to "do anything" about your rejection of religions. You have a perfect right to do so, and that right will be respected here.

We all, I hope, present our points of view with the idea of clarifying our own beliefs rather than persuading others to accept them.

[Nin]

Yes, of course, Prim, for what reason would I have posted it? I'm sorry if it sounded that way, I have no fear of being converted.

[Primula Baggins]