Do you want to build a snowman? And other conflicts between religion and modernity.

What about societies which center around a particular religion, where the people of that religion do act just like those in society? There have been plenty of those.

LarryC has it right, IMO. Religion has ritual because many people like ritual. People have had ritual since as far back as we have a history. People genuinely differ in their rituals not as a defense mechanism, but because they like different things.

LouZiffer wrote:

People genuinely differ in their rituals not as a defense mechanism, but because they like different things.

Or we're a terribly clannish species who simultaneously wants to be treated as being special and unique all while being part of a larger group.

Terribly Euro/American-centric of you. Where I live, people practice many aspects of multiple religions at a time. You could conceivably be observing Confucianist, Buddhist, and Catholic rituals within the same week, and consider yourself belonging to all those groups at the same time. I don't go to Church because I need to belong to a group (my clan group already does that).

LarryC wrote:

You could conceivably be observing Confucianist, Buddhist, and Catholic rituals within the same week, and consider yourself belonging to all those groups at the same time.

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LeapingGnome wrote:
LarryC wrote:

You could conceivably be observing Confucianist, Buddhist, and Catholic rituals within the same week, and consider yourself belonging to all those groups at the same time.

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If you looked into it, those are compatible belief systems. I'm with LarryC on this one. It takes a very narrow view of religion to fit the box it's trying to be shoehorned into here.

Put aside the fact that Buddha specifically rejected the idea of an omnipotent creator God, which is kind of central to Christianity... Catholicism teaches reincarnation now? There is Hell in Buddhism?

LouZiffer wrote:

If you looked into it, those are compatible belief systems. I'm with LarryC on this one. It takes a very narrow view of religion to fit the box it's trying to be shoehorned into here.

As a Buddhist I don't see a way to believe that Jesus Christ was the one true son of God, that Heaven is a place separate from the rest of the universe we observe, and that humans are born dammed because of original sin unless saved by the grace of God.

Unless by compatible you mean "if you contort a lot of the beliefs, work hard to tweak vagueness in definitions, and generally ignore the history and majority of teachings of the faith."

Weird. The lengths people will go through to cling to some beliefs. The wikipedia pages never really explain or give good example of how

Syncretism involves the merger and analogizing of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion

For example how do they "syncretise" the belief in Jesus as the only path to heaven with the idea that following the eight fold path anyone can reach enlightenment? I assume they just argue those two things are different - that yes you can become an enlightened being but to get into heaven you have to accept Jesus. What is the appeal of accepting Jesus then?

Ain't none of 'em my religion, but my understanding is that for most of humanity's existence, followers of syncretic religions have vastly outnumbered the kind of walled gardens that the three Abrahamic religions introduced.

I believe that is true as well based on what I know.

It still boggles my mind how someone can contort a set of beliefs to make somethings compatible (like Buddhism and Catholicism) If you drew a ven diagram of both religions beliefs I don't think they would even touch so working make them compatible just seems (as I said) weird.

To be fair though Larry did say "consider yourself belonging to all those groups at the same time." So the burden is on the individual. I guess a person can say (and even sincerely believe) almost anything. At least that is what my dog is telling me.

If use of religious label necessitated actually believing in the things under the label and adhering your life to them then yes, many if not most combinations would be impossible.

Alas as we all well know that is not the case and many are hesitant to give up old labels even after their beliefs change (typically for social reasons I imagine).

It's true that the Catholic church in particular has specifically spoken against Buddhism and the 'mixing in' of Buddhist practices - because it was happening. That makes it an odd choice where Christian sects are concerned (others of which meld with Buddhist beliefs much better), yet in many eastern countries things are a lot more malleable even with Catholics. As far as western countries are concerned, dirty syncretic Unitarian Universalists like me tend to rain on everybody's parade.

"Practical application" of religious belief in a living, breathing society almost never looks quite like the tenets of said religion as written down in their texts.

Context is everything. Analyzing religious practices in a vacuum can be a fun philosophical exercise, but doesn't apply well to analyzing real-life observance. This is why syncretism is confounding in theory and overwhelmingly common in practice.

If I like a belief from Column A, then find something in Column B resonates with me, I have the choice to "convert" totally to the second belief or rationalize their coexistence (or co-validity). I've done it myself. I had an adult Korean student who said of course Confucianism is compatible with Marxism.

clover wrote:

This is why syncretism is confounding in theory and overwhelmingly common in practice.

And yet we have this thread about people asking if god will get mad at them for building a snowman...

Religious beliefs tend to be squishy only to a point. Then they turn into hard rock. What that point actually is about and where it lies varies from person to person, but they're all supremely confident that they're right about both (and god is on their side).

I was referring to the cognitive dissonance of combining various belief structures, not the process within an individual system.

LouZiffer wrote:

It's true that the Catholic church in particular has specifically spoken against Buddhism and the 'mixing in' of Buddhist practices - because it was happening. That makes it an odd choice where Christian sects are concerned (others of which meld with Buddhist beliefs much better), yet in many eastern countries things are a lot more malleable even with Catholics. As far as western countries are concerned, dirty syncretic Unitarian Universalists like me tend to rain on everybody's parade.

"The Catholic Church" is rather nebulous thing. It's true that the Vatican speaks a lot about a lot of things. It's equally true that many Catholics choose and pick what they want to hear, anyway. Contraceptive use among Catholics is pretty darn high, even in Catholic-majority Philippines. How can this be?

It's theologically complicated, but it's related to that thing where the Catholic Church defines morality with both faith and work, not just faith. It's also related to that thing where the Church holds that everyone is a sinner (even the Pope) and that we all sin more or less constantly. So while the Vatican holds that the Catholic faith doesn't gel with Buddhist beliefs very well, since there's an equal emphasis on faith and work, people just shrug if it has no practical difference anyway. You help others in compassionate ways. Does it matter that much precisely why? Does it matter that you curse like a sailor while you do it?

Even if it does, the entire sin thing provides believers with another way out - they can act well, choose to believe something strictly not acceptable, but that's okay so long as you're "working on it."

Catholicism may look pretty darn hardcore for Americans (maybe because American Catholicism has been?) but the fact that it's absorbed a lot of foreign rituals and belief systems over the centuries (Christmas), and continues to do so today means that it's really got a whole lot of holes in it. That's what the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith is supposed to guard against; though they've fallen from grace since they were known as the Holy Inquisition. Pope Benedict XVI led that organization prior to being Pope.

It looks monolithic because the one thing Catholics absolutely cannot do is to openly and publicly defy the Vatican theologically. So long as you keep it to yourself, the Church can be surprisingly cool with privately held syncretic systems.

To bring it back to rituals, the mistaken notion is that rituals are created and maintained so that you can differentiate yourself from every other religion out there. That makes sense for a theological Wild West where everyone and their brother can and do establish Churches left and right. However, in an environment where a dominant Church coopts favorable rituals and beliefs to itself, rituals are obviously observed because people like them. The Church doesn't maintain Christmas because no other religion does - heck even Buddhist Japan observes Christmas in its own way. The Church does it because people want it.

Religions originally seem to have been a way to explain the way the world works. What causes storms? How does fire work? How come that deer came right to our camp just as we were starving?

Rituals to propitiate a god or spirits would be a reasonable way to manipulate the world, in the absence of better knowledge. Of course, they'd be based on the beliefs of the group about *how* the world works.

Fast forward tens of thousands of years. Particular themes have been stronger than others, while more has been learned about the world. Religion has become somewhat less of a way to describe how the world works, and more of a "spiritual" practice (although there's a huge variety of beliefs on that spectrum). Rituals have moved from absolute necessities dominating everyday life to comforting, periodic observances designed to ensure a better future (sometimes an afterlife).

The question for believers is, I think, how religion can usefully describe the way the world works when there are so many of them, and they are so different from each other. When we look at the world through the rules of science, accounts *converge* on reality. When we look at it through religious systems, accounts *diverge*.

Which one is more likely to tell us how the world really works? I think religious syncretism is a direct result of Enlightenment thinking, what some people would call "reductionism". Find common elements in disparate observations and treat them as related parts of a whole.

For me, the role of many religions has evolved over time as the needs of people changed. As always, I think that the problem with that is that attempting to understand ancient texts and legends as if they were *literally* true not only misses the widespread ignorance of the mechanisms of the real world at the time they were composed, but also the fact that religions necessarily change to reflect the social and political environments they find themselves in (modulo their power - they change really fast under pressure, but really slowly when in power.)

Religions *always* evolve, I guess would be my message, and the serious problems arise when older understandings of religious values and beliefs conflict with later developments. Beyond the ethical and moral basics common to every society, following 3500 year old rules is a recipe for disaster. We see those lessons every day.

Robear wrote:

Religions originally seem to have been a way to explain the way the world works. What causes storms? How does fire work? How come that deer came right to our camp just as we were starving?

Rituals to propitiate a god or spirits would be a reasonable way to manipulate the world, in the absence of better knowledge. Of course, they'd be based on the beliefs of the group about *how* the world works.

Fast forward tens of thousands of years. Particular themes have been stronger than others, while more has been learned about the world. Religion has become somewhat less of a way to describe how the world works, and more of a "spiritual" practice (although there's a huge variety of beliefs on that spectrum). Rituals have moved from absolute necessities dominating everyday life to comforting, periodic observances designed to ensure a better future (sometimes an afterlife).

The question for believers is, I think, how religion can usefully describe the way the world works when there are so many of them, and they are so different from each other. When we look at the world through the rules of science, accounts *converge* on reality. When we look at it through religious systems, accounts *diverge*.

Which one is more likely to tell us how the world really works? I think religious syncretism is a direct result of Enlightenment thinking, what some people would call "reductionism". Find common elements in disparate observations and treat them as related parts of a whole.

For me, the role of many religions has evolved over time as the needs of people changed. As always, I think that the problem with that is that attempting to understand ancient texts and legends as if they were *literally* true not only misses the widespread ignorance of the mechanisms of the real world at the time they were composed, but also the fact that religions necessarily change to reflect the social and political environments they find themselves in (modulo their power - they change really fast under pressure, but really slowly when in power.)

Religions *always* evolve, I guess would be my message, and the serious problems arise when older understandings of religious values and beliefs conflict with later developments. Beyond the ethical and moral basics common to every society, following 3500 year old rules is a recipe for disaster. We see those lessons every day.

I think the way that many modern people have squared the circle is by trying to determine the common element or essential nature of a functioning religions. Most I know have found little there excepting only the Golden Rule. This has led to either irreligion (because the teaching of empathy does not require or even really benefit from a religious construct) or some kind of watered down spirituality (to satisfy one's vestigial yearning for a sky friend or to act as a teddy bear against the scary possibility that the only justice out there is the one we collectively make).

The conflict comes from where folks are either unable or unwilling to grasp that modernity. This is what makes things like fatwas on snowmen so important. They are lines in the snow that prevent the inevitable conclusion.

Paleocon:

I think you're overprojecting there. Not everyone is you and not everyone could stand to be improved by being you (being "modern"). People (in a society) change according to the cultural zeitgeist. I do not see it as inevitable that religion will become unimportant, since people established religion where there was none to begin with. Religion fulfills functions in lives. Something else has to take those over, which would generally be another religion.

Something else has to take those over, which would generally be another religion.

And that, coming full circle, is one of the major purposes of rituals, to keep the faithful inside the pen.

You can definitely look at the religion as being separate from the people that believe it; religions run on humans rather similarly to how programs run on computers. Religions that don't keep their followers stop running -- they stop existing. First and foremost, a religion must continue to exist; that's really the Zeroth Commandment. (It's no mistake that the first four of the Ten Commandments are focused on spreading and preserving the religion, and the fifth is about ritual: the actual morality part doesn't show up, really, until the sixth. About half of the Commandments are about spreading the faith, not telling people how to be good.)

Heh, and in an observation that will not make Biblical literalists at all happy, one can most certainly argue that religion evolves over time, becoming more fit for purpose, better able to propagate among its hosts. Looking at religions as information viruses makes a lot of sense. Some are severe and bad for the host, but good at spreading during their infection. The truly successful ones, though, cause few symptoms, and are endemic in the population. It's like the difference between Ebola and a cold; Ebola gets the headlines and the attention, but the cold viruses are far more successful, as they don't damage up their hosts that badly, and thus have more time to spread.

But, if a religion becomes too weak, too mild, then other religions become comfortable, and they may replace the current one, which is the worst thing that can happen from the original religion's standpoint. Ritual helps stop that from occurring. It makes other religions awkward for the membership, and helps to maintain a separate identity from the mainstream, reinforcing individual and group commitment to spreading the faith.

LarryC wrote:

Religion fulfills functions in lives. Something else has to take those over, which would generally be another religion.

"What the promise of technology has always been is that entertainment will replace religion."

Malor:

But, if a religion becomes too weak, too mild, then other religions become comfortable, and they may replace the current one, which is the worst thing that can happen from the original religion's standpoint. Ritual helps stop that from occurring. It makes other religions awkward for the membership, and helps to maintain a separate identity from the mainstream, reinforcing individual and group commitment to spreading the faith.

Mega disagree. Rituals are features of religion that people want. In fact, people have rituals that occur outside of religion, presumably because religion isn't quite enough to fulfill their ritual needs. If your religion's rituals don't update and end up alienating most of the new generation, your religion is dead. In short, rituals from religion serve the people's needs and desires, not the other way around.

LarryC wrote:

Mega disagree. Rituals are features of religion that people want. In fact, people have rituals that occur outside of religion, presumably because religion isn't quite enough to fulfill their ritual needs. If your religion's rituals don't update and end up alienating most of the new generation, your religion is dead. In short, rituals from religion serve the people's needs and desires, not the other way around.

Couldn't disagree more. Keeping in mind that I'm coming at this from the perspective of a lapsed catholic, I really can't see how almost any of the rituals associated with RC "serve the people's needs and desires". I had no real desire to practice self-deprivation (lent), or tell a virtual stranger my sins (confession), or even to eat magic bread once a week (communion). These all serve as extraordinary things (meant in the value-neutral sense of the word) which bind strangers together; I don't think they're part of RC because people asked for those things specifically.

Chumpy_McChump:

That is exactly what I mean! Those rituals did nothing for you and you did not like them - ergo, lapsed Catholic. See how that works?

Cycling secondarily binds me to my cycling team, yes, as a shared activity; but I wouldn't be or stay a cyclist in the first place if I didn't like it.

We are not all the same. Just because a ritual doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone else.

The absurdity of people who take their limited understanding of the world and extrapolate it into believing they have it all figured out. That isn't limited to the religious. It's all of us at least some of the time, and it's funny. ☺

When you think you have human behavior figured out, try digging deeper to discover where you're wrong. Because you are.

LarryC wrote:

Chumpy_McChump:

That is exactly what I mean! Those rituals did nothing for you and you did not like them - ergo, lapsed Catholic. See how that works?

Wow. Should have seen that.

You win this one, Larry, but