[...]Definition: “religion” « Friendly Humanist[...]…

Priest points out that you can’t just look at the likelihood of the universe without God. You have to compare that likelihood with the likelihood of the universe with God.

He then runs off into Bayesian probabilities, but that needn’t concern us here. We just have to appreciate that for every universe that could have been without God there is a universe that God could have created. On atheism we lucked out on getting this universe. On theism we lucked out on getting a God that wanted to create this universe.

My own touch is to consider that (only) around 10^500 universes are possible given string theory. So the probability of this universe happening by chance is 1/10^500. But with God ALL things are possible (Matthew 19:26) so that denominator is way bigger and the probability way lower!

(BTW I came here from a search of the Modal Ontalogical Argument to self-promote my post on the subject: http://bit.ly/xU0uXy Whether it does treat “existence” as a property I don’t know, but in the post I argue that limitations in modal logic force an equivocation in the first premise. I fix the limitations and any persuasive power of the argument disappears)

Did you see your comments on the blog after you sent them? If so, then I am perplexed. The only comments I have deleted are a couple like this:

“hg2E5b iaelycqbxxgs”

from a similarly meaningless email address. They were on other posts on this blog.

If you did not see your comments on this website after you posted them, then I would guess WordPress had a hiccup and never actually recorded your comments.

Whatever the reason, if you are willing, please try to repost your comments. I will not remove them.

It’s gone. Mine’s also gone. I find this odd, seeing that I disagreed quite intensely with what you said.

I think you’re probably right about adding rituals and core beliefs to the definition. I would say it’s a little like having “flight” as part of the definition of “birds”: it is certainly a common and useful characteristic for identifying birds, but penguins and ostriches and others are birds even though they can’t fly.

Similarly, I would think of deism as a religious belief even though it rarely comes with rituals.

I agree with you about sports fandom, and I think almost all references to it as religion are rhetorical rather than literal. On the other hand, I suspect that most claims that belief in science (particularly evolution) is “religious” are quite serious.

Under my definition, both of these fail due to lack of a supernatural element.

But I digress…
Defining terms is essential when entering a debate or attempting to have a reasonable argument. What I have come to notice is that when people reach a point in an argument where they say (usually despondently) “Well how do you define X?” it is often because they have lost their footing and use semantics as a red herring.

I think “religion” can be easily defined. Nothing tricky or messy about it at all. I like your definition but to it should be added the aspect of rites, rituals and/or core beliefs or tenets. This broader definition would then encompass the Eastern religions like Buddhism mentioned above while continuing to exclude the other things you listed which, quite frankly it surprises me that anyone would consider sport fandom a religion! That’s just grasping at straws if you ask me.

Great blog btw. You just got a new follower.