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Salvation/sense of purpose. Definitions of Religion? They are indeed themselves definitions of life, and not of religion. What religion has done is try to encapsulate the very essence of what life is from Man's perspective, why we are here, how come we are here, and put it into a meaningful context that all can understand and grasp with ease, even if it borders on fantasy/insanity. Hence the very flaw in religion itself!

Science is not without it's flaws either. Trying to address the same damn questions that ultimately are to do with life by disregarding totally why we are here and trying to see everything objectively, as though in isolation! Very much like throwing the baby out with the bathtub! Thus that reasoning is flawed, for nature often repeats herself in everything, so if the desire for wanting to know where you come from, then I am certain that the solar system desires itself to know where it came from, and so does the atom, by returning back to the primordial emptiness whence it originated!

And what is in that primordiality? When you attain certain levels of consciousness, you will see that you are also that primordiality, within, even if you think you are a separate human being, totally independent of your own environment. This is the flaw that both religion and science has - they have not acknowledged that nothing is everything and that everything is nothing, and that there is in fact a purpose for us for being here - to enjoy, to experience and treasure life for what it is in every manifestation!

In other words, Zendō/Dhyana/Samādhi/Kaivalya/Nirvana/Liberation/Salvation/Oneness are the real reasons behind the motivations of Science and Religion, for everyone.
Once people have experienced it, then there is no desire to expand further or attempt to further understand it, for that would lead to further disillusionment and distraction away from that state of primordiality/potentiality that is found within the state of Liberation.

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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.

Going by this thread, The Paz's Zjmc religion isn't actually a religion but a philosophy...

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Dracusam Yg tol svrola zen gym mau
bitch-PL 1SG GEN swag DEST know NEG

So, some surprising facts about religions that actually exist, facts that some people that debate religion in the public sphere repeatedly fail to realize, so in a way this is a list of attested traits in real-world religions:
This is badly organized, and a fair share of it is kind of aimed at highlighting differences between Christianity and one of its closest relatives. I have very little about Dharmic religions in this - and the only one is really the love-child between Abrahamism and Dharmism anyway, so ...

there are religions that conceal some of the religion's beliefs from a large segment of their members. (e.g. the Druze religion)

there are religions which one cannot join at all. (druze, mandaism, some varieties of zoroastrism - also, one "subethnic group" in Judaism doesn't perform conversions, but recognize converts through other subethnicities of Judaism as valid Jews.)

there are religions who restrict which outsiders can join: Samaritanism only permits Jews to convert, Christian Identity only permits whites to join (and some varieties teach that non-whites lack a soul, that Jews may be the physical offspring of Satan, etc), Nation of Islam does not accept whites.

there are religions in which the concept of joining isn't even really relevant, as member lists or ideas along the lines of a member aren't even a thing. (some shamanic religions.)

there are religions that will try to dissuade potential converts from joining. (e.g. Judaism).

there are religions that do not think non-members will go to hell. In fact, the majority of religions probably don't even have the classical Christian idea of a hell.

there are religions in which belief isn't really an important thing, but rather actions or even community (some consider ritual action important, some rather consider some social things more important, although often in religions that value ritual, the ritual is a social thing; exceptions do exist, of course. But an example of social ritual: In Judaism, it's considered important to pray in a group, because it helps build a Jewish community. Likewise, various strictures and leniences wrt the kosher rules, some potential leniencies on shabbat rules, etc, serve to cement a community, and possibly even makes maintaining a community a by-product for whosoever tries to adhere to those rules.) Of course, there's also non-social rituals: in a way, the wearing of tefillin in Judaism can be seen as a non-social thing as it does not contribute to the community in any obvious manner (otoh, tefillin cost a lot and can only be written by educated scribes - so in a way it helps maintain a scribal subculture that keeps writing other things that help maintain the jewish culture ...)

in some religions, believing doesn't make you a member: you don't become a Jew, a Zoroastrian, a Yazidi, a Mandaean, a Druze or a Samaritan just by believing in those religions. In a way, it's a bit like religious orders in Christianity: you don't become a Jesuit just by believing in Catholicism. In Judaism at least, non-Jewish believers have a designation, and were widely counted as non-Jewish adherents in late antiquity (until Christianity became state religion in Rome) - a less stringent religious law applied to non-Jews, and a non-Jewish believer that wanted (or wants) to take on the full yoke of the Torah can do so - much like a Catholic can decide to take on the yoke of some religious order (such as becoming a monk or a cleric - which unlike layman Catholicism require abstention from marriage, and various other strictures).

In some religions, the clergy have a sort of special position vis-a-vis God, e.g. the Catholic and Orthodox cleric (and also in high church protestantism) can perform sacraments a non-cleric cannot - so in a way, in these faiths, it's held that the cleric is granted some powers (but also of course, responsibilities) by God. In other faiths, the clerics can have quite different roles.
Many Christian countries have legislations that assume the cleric is needed when performing a wedding - the marriage is not valid unless the clergyman has declared it so. This is not the case in Judaism, for instance, where the wedding is a contract between the two, and is considered valid by Jewish law as long as the contract is signed by both and the signing is witnessed by valid witnesses.
So Christianity-influenced secular law has kind of forced the rabbis in some countries to be present and say words to an effect that Jewish law does not call for.

What is a rabbi then if he isn't a priest-like conduit of sacraments? He is supposed to be a scholar of Jewish law and customs - a go to guy for questions regarding Jewish things. Any Jewish male over the age of 13 (in orthodoxy - in conservative judaism and reform judaism women are also included) can lead the congregation in any ritual (in orthodox judaism there are some rituals that should be led by women though, such as lighting the shabbat candle and such), as long as he knows the ritual. Rabbis are of course expected to know the rituals, so they end up performing them if no one else knows the drill. In a way a rabbi is a lawyer of Jewish law as well, and there are different degrees - whether one can lead a court that can judge cases of certain degrees of seriousness.

Sunni islamic clergymen seem to occupy a rather similar position visavis their congregations, whereas some varieties of shi'ism seem to be more similar to Christianity as far as this goes. (But I can not guarantee this to be the case.)
Of course, in some religions this position comes with added responsibility. (E.g. the rabbi is expected to adhere more closely to halakha than his congregants.)

Then again, in Judaism too there's been a development towards the congregation leader as a middle-man between God and creation - in Chassidism, the rebbe/tzaddiq is in practice seen as an intermediate.

the protestant focus on scripture is unusual in religions, even among Abrahamic religions! E.g. in Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, Orthodoxy, Zoroastrism, etc, a lot of the idea of what the religion even is comes from extra-scriptural traditions. Of course, even the Bible as such is defined by an extra-scriptural tradition, how to read and understand it properly often is a sort of by-tradition, and any cursory look at any protestant group will find dozens of things they consider important for a proper Christian life that nowhere can be found in scripture. (so, this is also an important thing about religions: the members' view of how the religion works and where it derives from and why one does so or so and what one should do and why may very well diverge quite far from the history of these behaviours.) More concrete example: there are people here that have been shunned by their religious friends for moving together before getting married. In earlier times in this area, only nobility got married the way one currently does - MOVING TOGETHER was recognized as a valid marriage. Priests even *refused to perform weddings for the yeomanry and peasantry*, but after some time, started to accept performing weddings somewhere else but DEFS NOT in the church, and after a century or so even peasantry was accepted to marry in the church. Nowadays if you don't go through that hoop, you're not considered married. Of course, this is nowhere mandated in the Bible, yet these sola scriptura people think it is. Funny that!

(NOTE for moderators: this isn't a religious argument, it's an *attestation of a religious behaviour* and an actual justification of why this behaviour shows that they are inconsistent - I do not judge their behaviour, I only note that it is inconsistent. Everyone, of course, is inconsistent to some extent and they could probably point out inconsistencies in my behaviour if they scrutinized me carefully enough.)

Scripture has quite a different role in, say, Sikhism, where it's read as a kind of devotion - and not as a study to figure out doctrines. In Judaism, exegesis of a kind similar - but rather trickier at times - to that in Christian circles does exist, and probably is the source for the Christian way of reading scripture. Only, in Judaism the exegete goes about it quite differently, and has somewhat different sources for the exegesis. (E.g. talmud, the targums (translations to aramaic that paraphrase and elucidate the text) and midrashes (inspired by the targums, a kind of targum without translation - elucidation and insertion of tangents to the text, etc), mystical writings, gaonic writings, unwritten tradition, ..., but c.f. Christian use of patristic writings, medieval and newer theologians (Aquinas, Duns Scotus, /Luther, /Calvin, /Zwingli, /Hus, ...), early translations (vulgate, peshitta, church slavic, LXX...), mystics (Luther was inspired by Meister Eckhart, for instance), and unwritten traditions.) Often, when the Jewish exegete reads sources, he looks for a halakha - a ruling on a practical matter. OTOH, less legalist exegesis also exists, but that often consists of trying to understand how many layers of metaphor some mystic or talmudic sage or gaon has hidden a nugget of wisdom behind in order to make people have to seek it out. In a way, the effort of coaxing things out of the text is a kind of highly abstract ritual, and a way of keeping a discussion with earlier Jewish theologians going. It's a participation in a millennia-spanning debate.

In Judaism, studying such things is considered one form of prayer!

Ultimately, this is only in a very few religions where doctrine has become the core marker of salvation. In most religions, this is not the case.

In fact, in most religions, the main reason why someone'd be punished by death is if they do things that are roughly equivalent to denying the legal authority of a secular power and flaunting this by violations of the code of conduct. Beliefs per se have seldom entered into it.

Lots of what's been called philosophies shares a lot of features with religions, and vice versa. But a lot of philosophy - philosophy of science, philosophy of language, etc, doesn't really have any natural religious correspondences, but do have natural applications in religious contexts.

Alas, there's a little problem with the word "religion". See, the word has long been a word used in Europe, to describe European ideas. Christianity has had quite an undeniable impact there. Not only is Christianity a religion, Christianity fed back into the word "religion" in a way that affected what we expect to find when we look at a religion - the word religion has been semantically tainted into meaning something along the lines of "what you get when you replace a church with a _________, a cross with a ________, the Bible with _______, God with someone named ________, the devil with __________, the angels with _________, the pope with ________, bishops with __________, prayer with {meditation, prayer, singing}, ...

When Europe conquered the world, they realized there were other religions (the only two religions it had really interacted with on any terms other than forcing conversion or assimilation were Islam and Judaism - Islam being p. much a carbon copy and Judaism being something they didn't quite understand but thought of as Christianity sans Jesus and therefore inferior), and tried see how these religions answered the same questions, an filled the same functions as Christianity. Alas, this is a dumb approach - oftentimes, it's not just the answers that are different but the questions, and the functions are nowhere similar, or only when viewed through very different lenses.

This has also affected how legislation regarding religion in European colonies has worked, how states have interacted with their religious groups etc, which has affected how the religions have been forced to see themselves, which has made p. much all religions in the world approach the Christian concept of what a religion is in the first place.

This is a realization that only really dawned on the scholarly community in the last 50 years or so.

This is a real stupid idiotic objection!

Someone made a claim. I show that this claim contradicts reality. And I get shit for criticizing people? Isn't it the guy that made the unwarranted claim that has counterexamples running around in the real world that should get a scalding for inviting the correction in the first place? Should we be allowed to make wrong claims that can't be corrected just because showing them wrong is offensive? That's fucking idiotic.

You know, I abandoned this topic for a reason...

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you should've stuck to having abandoned it.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

It's interesting too read, and it's nice to have debates that involve religion and science without things getting (too) heated, for a change (even if my only point of contention was one of semantics).

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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've been keeping an eye on this thread, hoping that for once, we'd actually make some real headway on conreligions, and that people would care more about that than their own beliefs. Whatever they are, if you read anything about religion or religious beliefs written from the standpoint of someone who doesn't share your exact same beliefs, you will probly be offended or inspired to "correct" them on some issue at some point; please ignore this instinct. How about we all agree to just add any information we have that will be helpful for making conreligions, and keep EVERYTHING else to ourselves, ae? Cos there are some people who really don't know anything about religion(s) and would really like some help making up their own.

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PROTO-ONURE: Jutésa coconóco ga zuntús, na en rógcag ma pohús.

I'm sorry I wrote that.

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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.

It is true, though indicative of human interaction as a whole rather than merely religious disputes.

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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.

What really annoys me about this thread? It got highjacked by people who don't have any actual understanding of religion and the complexities thereof, and who have agendas to promote (e.g. militant atheism, which IMHO is just as bad as any other kind of militant / fundamentalist anything).

The definition Micamo proposed in the first post is pretty much identical to the definition that experts in Religious Studies (aka the Sociology of Religion) have used and generally agree on.

It's also annoying when all the highjackers keep referring to "religion" and the things religion does by giving examples from Christianity, when religion as a whole comprises an immense number of other beliefs and practices. Just because one fundamentalist Christian does x does not mean that "religious people" do it, or that it's fair to use that a characteristic of all religion. That would be equivalent to saying that since Sodium explodes in water, all the elements do - it's just a feature of the Periodic table.

Edit: typos

These experts in religious studies have to convince others of their argument in exactly the same way as everyone else; if we disagree with the definition, the fault is not necessarily our own. You may note that the members of this board haven't exactly reached a consensus either; hence the discussion.
No one on this thread has promoted militant atheism.

I disagreed with science being classed as a religion because this was, to me, (borrowing your own metaphore) equivalent to defining calcium as a type of magnesium when both are in fact alkaline earth metals. I don't see how defining religion and science as being systematic implementations of their respective philosophies as promoting an agenda. (Though my opinion has now changed; I now rank philosophy and religion as being two branches of 'belief systems', with science being a further branching of philosophy. Note that I still don't consider science a religion.)

Christianity is a religion, so things Christians do as part of their faith are therefor examples of what religious people do; nobody has implied that Christianity is the architype or that all religions are the same. The reason Christianity is brought up so often is because it is the religion most familiar to the majority of this board's membership.
If you read Systemzwang's more recent posts, you'll notice he does a good job of explaining this.

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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 chose my definition of a "religion" because I believed it to be the most conductive toward discussing how to make an interesting conreligion. A belief I now see to be horribly, horribly wrong. The whole point of this thread was to give people ideas on how cultures come to believe in things like spirits and gods and ritualistic sacrifice and karma and enlightenment, and much more importantly, how to use these processes to invent interesting, original religions. The central idea was that all of these things come about as a result of attempts at finding explanations for how the world works, so thinking in terms of what ideas people come up with to explain things they see is useful in making conreligions. Whether Leviticus and Darwin belong in the same "bin" is completely irrelevant to this and I sincerely apologize for even making the comparison in the first place.

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With all that said and done, can we all let her continue the guide without hijacking it? I don't care what definitions are used, just want to see more of your info, tips and opinions on this area of conworlding, in which my conworlds are severely lacking, and for which decent guides are hard to come by -.-

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PROTO-ONURE: Jutésa coconóco ga zuntús, na en rógcag ma pohús.

Well, I appologise.

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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.

When the heck are these lessons going to continue? I am serious interested in this topic now.

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