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To me, religion is a system of dogma. That is, a religion is a group of statements that cannot be challenged through evidence or logic (dogmas) that build on ea

by derleth 14y ago

To me, religion is a system of dogma. That is, a religion is a group of statements that cannot be challenged through evidence or logic (dogmas) that build on each other to form a worldview. A god is a specific kind of dogma, namely a supernatural being that's worshiped, and it's true that not all religions have gods. All gods are attached to religions, though, by my definitions of the terms. > So it is always risky to conclude that a belief in God conveys a particular religious alignment This I agree with. It's kind of derailing my main point, though, which is: Science does not have dogma. Everything in science is open to be challenged. (Ideally. Sometimes, however, individual scientists don't live up to the ideal, and dealing with them is also part of science.)

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Ok, that helps me understand where we differ. If I understand your statement correctly, you are classifying God as a kind of dogma, which makes the notion of God a sub-concept of religion. Fair enough, I have the opposite relationship which is that God as an independent concept of religion. My claim was that since several religions share the same God, God is an independent variable. One of the nice features of my taxonomy is that you can throw out the entire system of dogma for a given religion and still believe in God. This seems to be the underlying mechanism in a theological conversion as well. I recognize that if you're understanding of God is entirely dictated though the teachings of a particular religion, that it can be difficult to reason about God independently of those teachings. Not unlike trying to reason about how a computer's CPU works if your only exposure is through a single programming language. It is hard to know which constraints or features of the CPU are part of the architecture of the CPU and which are artifacts of the expressive power of the language.

by derleth 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Ok, that helps me understand where we differ. If I understand your statement correctly, you are classifying God as a kind of dogma, which makes the notion of God a sub-concept of religion. Fair enough, I have the opposite relationship which is that God as an independent concept of religion. My claim was that since several religions share the same God, God is an independent variable. One of the nice features of my taxonomy is that you can throw out the entire system of dogma for a given religion and still believe in God. This seems to be the underlying mechanism in a theological conversion as well. I recognize that if you're understanding of God is entirely dictated though the teachings of a particular religion, that it can be difficult to reason about God independently of those teachings. Not unlike trying to reason about how a computer's CPU works if your only exposure is through a single programming language. It is hard to know which constraints or features of the CPU are part of the architecture of the CPU and which are artifacts of the expressive power of the language.