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Welcome to Micamo's tutorial on Conreligion. After 9 years in development, I hope it was worth the wait!

Too long have we conworlders suffered over cheap, plastic conreligions. You see them everywhere: Novels, movies, games, conreligions are rarely anything more interesting than a watered down, often quite westernized version of a real-world religion.

I wrote this guide to provoke thought on this issue. If it accomplishes nothing else, then I hope it at least gives some of you something interesting to ponder on. It is not my hope to convince anyone of anything. If you disagree with what I say here, then feel free to express your discontent but do not expect me to respond. I will answer questions for clarification but not attacks. It is not my intention to have a flame war.

As a fair warning, this guide contains much original research from my own thoughts and experiences in the subject. I do this, rather than copy-paste and paraphrase from texts on religious anthropology, because I personally am dissatisfied with the field's approach as a whole: Professional anthropology on the subject tends to treat religion as a specialized human faculty invented and evolved to deal with political, economic, and environmental forces. While I believe this is true to a certain extent, I have never really bought the idea to the extent that cultural materialists do.

I hold religious beliefs not a specialized faculty of the human mind and can be analyzed entirely as a result of other cognitive structures. I also strongly hold against the materialist idea in general that human societal structures are purely a reflection of external forces and our ideas and feelings hold no causal weight.

The Myth of "Science"

The first issue to tackle is quite a thorny one: How do we define religion itself? Here I use a very specialized definition of religion you'll be unlikely to find elsewhere. It is as follows: A "religion" is, simply, a set of beliefs about how the world works. Yes, this means Maxwell's Equations are a "religious belief." This is likely to make many fellow atheists reading this begin screaming and punching through their monitors, but hear me out here.

Firstly, an idea being "religious" under this definition says absolutely nothing about its correctness or justifiability. I am by no means arguing that astronomy and astrology are equally valid beliefs. For studying the causes of why ideas exist it is irrelevant whether the end belief under consideration is true or not. We are interested in the thought processes that lead to religious ideas, not evaluating the ideas themselves. For this reason a definition which is completely neutral with regards to merit is advantageous.

Secondly, the popular dichotomy between "religious" and "scientific" ideas is sufficient for conversation but is insufficient as a way of categorizing beliefs.

Allow me to use a demonstration. Let's say there's a village somewhere in the world of people who do a dancing festival where they stomp the ground very wildly immediately after the planting of crops. When asked about this strange ritual, they reply "We do it to appease Olonwo, the Goddess of Fertility, who will make our crops grow in great abundance."

This is undeniably a religious belief. But what if they gave a different justification instead? Let's say they instead said: "We do it because the small tremors excite the cells in the newly planted seeds, making them grow larger."

Under the popular usage of "scientific" (though not the philosophical one) this is a mistaken scientific belief, not a religious one. Yet from our perspective, trying to categorize and understand human behaviors, it makes little sense to treat these two explanations entirely differently due to just the language used in them. Both beliefs say that "Stomping the ground -> Larger crop yields." All that the different justifications imply is that these two functionally equivalent beliefs came about in different ways. But why should we examine one path but not the other?

There are also the very common associations in the modern world that religion and science are somehow opposed, and that religion deals with "spiritual" matters while science deals with "mundane" ones.

To the extent this is true, it is a situation unique to the modern world. What's happening is the scientific method is bringing us new ideas and beliefs at a rate much faster than society is capable of accepting them. In addition, specific beliefs of the Abrahamic religions (ones that not all religions share) that science is replacing with regard to new ideas are making the transition far slower than it need be. It is for this reason my first piece of conworlding advice in this tutorial is: Don't give your conworld/story a Magic vs. Science dynamic. Not only is it hackneyed and overdone, but it doesn't even make any sense unless the very specific parameters that are creating the situation in our world are also present in the conworld, and if they are then you probably have much more serious problems.

To Review: Your culture's conreligion is their belief system on how the world works. What causes rain? What makes crops grow? Why do we have memories? Where did we come from? These (and more) are all questions your conreligion should provide a satisfactory (if not correct) answer to.

Next up: Rituals, Traditions, and Creamed Gravy.

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I am sceptical to a strict distinction between science and religion. As for a definition of religion, I prefer Richard Swinburne's proposal that it's a family resemblance concept (offered in Faith and Reason)

I'm wondering if this forum is the right one for posts with lots of personal thoughts or original research. At least one should be clear about when one is reporting commonly accepted or well-established ideas, and when one is offering personal criticism of such ideas.

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constructedlanguages.net

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Well, in that case;
I always defined theism as philosophy made distinct by its belief in a god-like 'being' and religion as the organised form thereof (and yes, this means some forms of Buddhism are excluded under this definition).
I always defined science as a systematic use of the naturalism and logic philosophies.

To me your use of 'religion' sounds closer to what I define as a 'philosophy'.
It would hardly be the first time people split up into intellectual, moral, philosophical and/or religious groups; monophyletic grouping versus parahyletic within taxonomy for example, or Protestants and Catholic within Christianity and of course Creationism versus the several scientific origin theories, which compete with each other.
Avoiding a theme just because it's commonly used seems a problem in itself and often leads to the "my conworld is so unique" syndrome. (Avoiding it because one doesn't like it or because it doesn't make sense within the story's context is another matter.)

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

Can we really assume that religion=belief system? Many religions rather seem to be systems of behaviours or systems of ethic (or some kind of combination thereof); in a sense, some things that are common in western culture are of this nature! (e.g., a lot of people seem to think that men should not wear any headgear indoors - that it even is offensive somehow. Many who hold this do not seem to ascribe any cultic or ritual or rational or ethic or any kind of justification for it, just that it's a thing you should not do. It doesn't lead to bad luck, nothing of the sort. Just don't do it.) In a way, such a custom/habit is religious. In that case, the origin of the custom is Roman religion - wearing headgear indoors shows that you don't trust the house spirits, and such an insult may cause trouble.

Some religions seem to be nothing but very huge sets of such behaviours with no canonic explanation of them, no mandatorily held belief as to why you should do in a certain way, although in rich enough such systems speculation and possible explanations for the behaviours may emerge - however, it's not necessary that there are any widespread beliefs as to why you should act a certain way or another. Maybe beliefs regarding the behaviour are many and prevalent, but few of them are held by any large number of the adherents.

Concerning the definition of religion:
One can define "religion" - as well as other concepts - in different ways.
(1) Exact definitions. One formulates some criterion, and any belief system that fits this criterion is labelled "a religion", and those belief systems that don't fit the formulated criterion are not regarded as religions.
(2) Family resemblance. One states a number of characteristics, that we usually associate with those belief systems we call "religions". Examples of such characteristics might be:
-Belief in one or more deities.
-Belief that this or these deities in some ways may intervene in the workings or the world and in our lives.
-Worship and prayer directed to these deities, usually in the form of communal or organised rituals.
-Belief in some form of after-life.
-Giving a sense of purpose; the religion is typically the highest form of meaning in life for the believer.
-Some moral code, that we need to obey on order to please the deities, and/or achieve salvation.
-Some creation story, or some cosmology, or some metaphysical principles.
-Belief in revelation, prophecy, or some form of extra-mundande knowledge.
-Some form of priesthood or "religious professionals"
-Etc.
A belief system would be a religion if it had quite many of these characteristics. The point is, that for many of these characteristics, you can find belief systems lacking them, but which are nevertheless commonly regarded as "religions". Not all "religions" have explicit beliefs in deities. Not all religions have explicit beliefs in an afterlife, etc.

You could regard the concept of "science" in a similar way. In early 20th century analytical philosophy, many tried to find a more or less sharp "demarcation line", a criterion that would separate science form various non-scientific activities. Today I would guess that many philosophers have more of a family-resemblance view of what science is; it is possible to state various features that usually characterise "science", but it's more difficult to draw an exact demarcation line separating science from non-science.

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While I admit that religion tends to be less clear-cut (though my definition tends to hold for the vast majority of circumstances), science has a number of rules (repetition, peer review etc.) to follow or you aren't deemed to have behaved scientifically.
I should probably also state that I define religion further, based on whether it's organised or not, pan- or monotheistic, whether the god-like figure is a deity, spirit or just an anthropomorphised concept etc. Consider 'religion' my broad category.
Similarly with science; divided into experimental and theoretical and so on.
I also feel I should mention that I'm not saying there's no cross-over between categories; one can apply theoretical methods to one problem and switch to experimental for another.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

And of course paleontology ane archaeology lack repeatability.

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My Kankonian-English dictionary: 36,000 entries and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!

Not so; what about radiometric dating, measurement, reconstruction, soil samples, reinterpretation of facts based on related evidence, predictions verified by new discoveries, sites being re-excavated or any other tests one (or one's peers) might wish to carry out?

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

I think most of the proposals (those of the logical positivists, of Popper, etc.) for an exact demarcation line have failed. Though it's possible that there is some new proposal I have missed.

If "repetition" would be an absolute criterion for science, it would rule out much of philosophy, history , the social sciences and the humanities. If "peer review" would be a demarcation line, it merely begs the question (on what grounds ought a peer-reviewer judge an article?).

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The problem afaict, is that lots of people will have a notion of what a religion is by generalizing from observations of Christianity. Even then, many who do that generalize from observations of rather conservative forms of (generally western) Christianity, and ignore the evidence from other varieties of Christianity. Such kind of notions are easy to reject even with original research - basically all you need to do is expose yourself to the ideas and lifestyles of some less Christian-like religion. Finding studies that support this is trivial, really - just read any good enough description of life and thought in Jewish, Zoroastrian, Druze, Bahai, Mandaean, etc communities.

Since I feel science is to philosophy as painting is to art, I would fully expect most of them to not be science. :P
In any case, I am fairly certain that repetition of some form is or can be applied in those fields.
Peer review is the idea that anyone can look at your work, test it and thus verify or falsify it; those who do, tend to be educated in your field and able to find your errors. The terms 'hypothesis' and 'theory' have also been defined and are required to, for example, have criteria for being falsified and explain everything the theory it's trying to supplant already does.

In any case, I've derailed the thread enough; I'm just suggesting that defining science as a religion is a bit vague. 'Belief System' or something similar would be fine.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

And a bit of astronomy.

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(native)
(learning)

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Języki sztuczne i lingwistyka, po polsku.

I've been trying to develop my conreligion Soba, and this looks like it's going to be quite a help.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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Nobody has ever claimed that philosophy nor history nor the humanities are science.

Philosophy isn't a kind of science; rather, science is a kind of philosophy, namely the kind for which repeated observations can establish things.

History has an entirely different and actually quite unrelated standard-of-sufficient-evidence than science; also an entirely different and unrelated standard-of-falsification.

Humanities, other than philosophy or history, aren't even about truth for the most part; they're about goodness and beauty instead. "Humanities" comes from "letters humane" contrasting with "letters divine"; it's all the writings that aren't art or science or theology-or-divinity-related that many people would want to collect and study and teach. But it includes belles lettres, which might be art. ("Liberal arts" are the "arts, sciences, and letters", that every free man should study, in order to participate in his nation as a free citizen.)

The social sciences are "soft sciences" rather than "hard sciences". "Hard sciences" are mathematicizable and experimentable. Psychology is on the boundary; it's either the hardest soft science or the softest hard science. Economics is also somewhat softish and somewhat hardish at the same time.

Sociology, OTOH, has often been accused, with evidence (not necessarily amounting to proof), of not being a science at all.

The same is true of cultural anthropology.

Astronomy is definitely not a laboratory science. Repeated and widespread observation have to take the place of experiment. But it is mathematicizable. Most people would consider it harder than, or at least as hard as, psychology; but softer than chemistry or physics.

Mathematics is not a science. The standard of proof in mathematics doesn't involve experiment at all.

Linguistics, like cultural anthropology, and like sociology, is quite soft. Like astronomy, all three of these disciplines are hard to conduct laboratory experiments in. But unlike astronomy, and like psychology, they're not very mathematicizable.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Note: these are partially THC's own positions; many academics do hold mathematics to be a science. Many of the humanities sciences can be formalized in very mathematic ways - have a look at some of the things going on in parts of musicology, for instance, and how these things actually are tested by experiments. Sociology is very mathematicizable, and various parts of linguistics, cultural anthropology, etc have found ways of mathematical formalization. I find it quite likely more aspects of pretty much all scholarly endeavours will become increasingly formalized with the advent of powerful computers and computer models for them.

Of course, what fits into the definition of the English word "science" isn't universally normative as a distinguishing line between different types of knowledge either - we can come up with any number of new distinctions where some scholarly pursuits are X and some other aren't. Some other Germanic languages, German and Swedish among them, includes way more in Wissenschaft/Vetenskap than English does in science, and the territorial pissings between the different fields as to what can be classed a science seem less inflamed and prevalent there.
But even then, there is a recognition that results in sociology differ from results in maths or results in physics - "fans" of science aren't as stuck-up about it as they tend to be in English-speaking contexts.



I maintain that a strict demarcation line between different academic pursuits is counterproductive.

Yeah, but, I'm a mathematician, so my "opinion" is actually fact! in this case.



True.



Oh hell no.
Though parts of it may be.
But some people, for instance our very own Cerne unless he's changed his mind, just don't like the parts of sociology or cultural anthropology, or even ecology or biology, that have been mathematicized; some of them (not necessarily Cerne) would prefer just to ignore those parts.



Parts, yes.



I wish I had the guts to say that. Whenever I do people look at me pityingly and say "well, you have to excuse him, he has Asperger's syndrome".

Systemzwang wrote:

Of course, what fits into the definition of the English word "science" isn't universally normative as a distinguishing line between different types of knowledge either - we can come up with any number of new distinctions where some scholarly pursuits are X and some other aren't. Some other Germanic languages, German and Swedish among them, includes way more in Wissenschaft/Vetenskap than English does in science, and the territorial pissings between the different fields as to what can be classed a science seem less inflamed and prevalent there.

This is the first I've heard of that, but FAIK you might be right.



Probably why the (demonstrably fuzzy) differentiation between "hard science" and "soft science" was created.



Not quite sure what that means?
And, if I've guessed right (a pretty big "if"), not quite sure it's true?



Well, for some purposes and in some ways.
In more ways and for more purposes it's at best unhelpful.
But for some purposes in some ways it does help.
The trick is not to let it get in the way.

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Xingoxa's post, to which I was responding in my last previous post, was saying that philosophy, history, social science, and the humanities, weren't sciences if the applicability of the scientific method to a field of study were a requirement for it to be a science.
My main point was "so what? those fields all have their own valid and widely agreed-on standards of verification or validation".
My secondary point was "'social sciences' are science, just 'soft science' instead of 'hard science'".

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Did I miss the point?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Only if one tries to be pedantically strict about it.
A line (blurry though it may be) must be drawn somewhere for a definition to have any meaning but nobody has (as far as I've seen) suggested that crossover need be disallowed.
Physics and chemistry are widely considered different subject, but both fields clearly have a number of disciplines which don't fit comfortably within either group.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

A huge lot of sociology is basically statistics.


Too sad for him.



I think that kind of patronizing view that people would have regarding you in that case is a sad indicator of their intellectual state.
A mathematical model needn't presuppose complete predictability - we do have stochastic models too. A mathematical model of a thing doesn't mean that that thing is entirely predictable, or follows simple models. My suspicion regarding how people with Asperger's misunderstand the world is basically that they assume that the models human communication follow are too simplistic - e.g., oftentimes, the simplest formal logic is taken as the model, and hence the assumption that negation is the same kind of operator in human language as it is in first-order logic. Which explains the very common opinion among people with Asperger's (or even any engineering education) that double negation is illogical.



AFAICT, on English fora about this, science-fans and even academics tend to be more dismissive of humanities than on Swedish fora. A possible influence from the fact that Swedish includes humanities in "vetenskap", but English doesn't include it in "science" might be possible.



Well, for some purposes and in some ways.
In more ways and for more purposes it's at best unhelpful.
But for some purposes in some ways it does help.
The trick is not to let it get in the way.[/quote]
the key word in my phrasing, of course, is "strict" - some kinds of demarcations are certainly relevant. But thinking that the science-humanities demarcation line is the most relevant, or only relevant, or even remarkably relevant betrays a kind of platonic thinking - that the existence of two arbitrary categories somehow is an universal given fact, and that these two concepts somehow are markedly different. Certainly the distinction does help at times, but so can any other distinction. And maintaining the distinction to the extent I've seen some people do (generally people without any actual academic education) kind of tends towards making getting in the way the main role of this distinction.

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Xingoxa's post, to which I was responding in my last previous post, was saying that philosophy, history, social science, and the humanities, weren't sciences if the applicability of the scientific method to a field of study were a requirement for it to be a science.
My main point was "so what? those fields all have their own valid and widely agreed-on standards of verification or validation".
My secondary point was "'social sciences' are science, just 'soft science' instead of 'hard science'".

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Did I miss the point?[/quote]

This confusion seems to at least partially stem from the word "unscientific" being used to mean "made up on the spot with zero basis in reality" in many contexts. Combined with the definition of "science" as tightly controlled experiments... It leads to the unfortunate idea that anyone working outside of a physics department is no more reliable than a surrealism generator.

This is another reason for my broad definition of religion I should have elaborated more on in my OP: I wanted to avoid any conflation of "science" with "truth" and "non-science" with "falsity." All beliefs, "religious" or otherwise, come about as the result of an honest (if poorly performed) attempt at discovering truth. It's reasoning realistically about this truth-seeking process that will give you a living, natural conreligion, and not anything in particular about the individual beliefs and ideas themselves.


...Speaking of which, I really should finish the section on ritual. How about monday?

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