Lobbying for question #2

I received the following plea from Mike Grosso arguing in favor of choosing a topic in advance, and in particular, choosing the topic "What is Religion?". I know of at least one other participant who favors that choice of topic as well. If you have strong feelings one way or the other, I encourage you to email me your thoughts. In fairness to all the participants, I will postpone the final decision until we are all gathered on Wednesday. However, please feel free to make your case for your favorite topic ahead of time, as Mike has done. If you make a persuasive enough case, you may succeed in precipitating a consensus in advance of the meeting, in which case, confirming our choice at the beginning of the meeting can be handled very expeditiously.

On 9/3/2007 at 1:14 AM Michael Grosso wrote:
Thanks for this, Steve -- and here are a few thoughts about a possible topic for discussion. Again, put me down for the idea of knowing the topic in advance; that gives us time to think about the subject -- and isn't the idea to increase thought? Become more mindful? More reflective? That presupposes duration, dwelling with an idea over time.

I think the question, What is religion? would be great to discuss. Some people may have seen Christiane Amanpour's three part special on God's Warriors on CNN. The thing we have to face about religion today is that it is the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction around. This of course results when we mix politics and religion. And it's not just Islamic fundamentalism we have to worry about. Christian messianism and exceptionalism is and has served as a covert weapon of mass destruction in American history. And in general the Jews seem to mixed God and history up in ways that the Greek philosopher theologians (especially Epicurus and Xenophanes) would deplore.

But what does all this have to do with religion in general? It's probably unwise to get too fixated on an exact definition of religion. But I would suggest making a few preliminary distinctions. We could do worse than a tentative definition of religion as a system of salvation, but should hasten to add that different systems may be broken down into three things: experiences (induced and spontaneous); rituals and ceremonies; and doctrines, beliefs, and interpretations. The real mischief of religion arises from the latter -- the beliefs and interpretations, the dogmas and apocalyptic mania. The experiences are something else, and need to be sharply distinguished from the other two aspects of religion.

In general, I think the more people reflect and think critically about religion, the better. It's not belief (even absurd ones) that's the problem, but the manner in which organized groups of religionists entertain their beliefs. The only antidote to this poison is the lucid balm of philosophy.

Michael Grosso