4 ms·
> This is very true, and I can't believe some religions that people think are the same. They happen to use the same words, like "God", "heaven", etc, but the co
by jarrett 13y ago
> This is very true, and I can't believe some religions that people think are the same. They happen to use the same words, like "God", "heaven", etc, but the concepts are completely different and incredibly incompatible.
What's more, the definitions of the religions themselves are so slippery, we can barely begin to compare religions. For example, suppose we take the author's advice and try to dereference the term "afterlife" in a comparison of Christianity and Islam.
Our first step would thus be to ask: What happens to an individual's consciousness after death, according to each of the two religions? But here our inquiry goes right to pieces, because we won't be able to agree on how to define the set of beliefs constituting each religion.
Is Christianity defined as the set of beliefs expressed in the Bible? And likewise for Islam and the Koran? But if so, then what about adherents of those religions who are not fundamentalists? Are we to ignore people who call themselves Christians and Muslims, yet believe that only some, or perhaps none, of the scripture is literally true?
But if we define Christianity and Islam so as not to exclude those people--which seems like the intellectually honest choice--how can we possibly agree on a set of beliefs that constitutes each religion?
Perhaps we could administer a scientific poll of self-identified Christians and Muslims, asking them to agree or disagree with various theological propositions. Those propositions which are supported by a majority of self-identified adherents become part of our definitions, and the rest do not.
That may allow us to continue with our project of comparing afterlife beliefs, but it still seems incorrect somehow. Now we've greatly oversimplified the actual beliefs of Christians and Muslims worldwide. By establishing an arbitrary threshold (>50% belief), we've painted over a lot of distinctions that matter to real-world adherents. Equally badly, the arbitrariness of the threshold makes our definitions suspect. Had we chosen a different threshold, we'd probably have arrived at radically different definitions, suggesting that our definition has little authority.
Thus the problem of comparing religions seems intractable.
- emhs 13y agoWell, one could call "Christianity" a superset of individual religions that fit within a certain range, and do the comparison off of individual denominations. That has the further advantage of demonstrating how individual denominations within Christianity often themselves have incompatible beliefs.
- jamesgeck0 13y agoOne would also need to weight the beliefs. Various denominations disagree about topics like predestination, but don't ultimately place a lot of value on those topics. There are often many people in the same denomination who don't necessarily agree with every official bit of low weighted doctrine. Theology about the nature of Christ has significantly higher weight. Heresy, etc. This is where you see little diversion between denominations and more diversion between, say, Protestants and the LDS Church.
- cgore 13y agoIt isn't intractable but it can be quite complicated. This is true of theology in specific and philosophy in general. It isn't ever going to be an easy top-down hierarchy. As for "defining Christianity", this is a problem that is actually addressed in most churches, and their answer can range from as restricted to "just their church" to as open as "anything vaguely resembling trinitarianism". As a specific example, I go to an ELCA Lutheran Church, and they are a lot more on the open side of things. http://elca.org/en/Faith/Ecumenical-and-Inter-Religious-Relations/Full-Communion http://elca.org/en/Faith/Ecumenical-and-Inter-Religious-Rela...
- erichocean 13y ago"anything vaguely resembling trinitarianism" Heresy! This conflict isn't over yet… True Christians would never believe in your phony, incestuous three-God-in-one theory. :) /Sarc, sort of, as this was actually a people-were-killed-over-it "big" problem back before Constantine, and probably a bit afterwards, too. It just goes to show that these definitions are harder than they look.
- derleth 13y ago> "anything vaguely resembling trinitarianism". So they exclude Jehovah's Witnesses, then. Not really all-inclusive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses
- cgore 13y agoJehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Oneness Pentacostals, various others. Being all-inclusive isn't the point, nor should it be. If you want my personal definition of "Christian", it's this: 1. There is a god. 2. I'm not it, and neither are you. 3. Jesus is. 4. Therefore, Jesus is the boss. After that, all the rest just sort of flows out of it. It is amazing how many doctrinal issues either instantly disappear or don't even matter anymore. You don't end up with all sorts or absurd "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?" questions to argue about endlessly, with one camp saying 144,000 and another saying 144,000,000. Instead you get real questions, like "what does God want of me?" It would be like having a major disagreement within a company over if the shoe size of the CEO is 12 or 13. The CEO doesn't care if you know his shoe size, he cares if you do your job or not.