I'd say a religious taboo is a kind of cultural taboo. It may be that religious taboos are on average less susceptible to change than others, but that is by no means an essential property.
@Jez that's just trash talk. anyhow, how do you prove that it's not religious? plenty of religious people subscribe to it. plenty of religious people are against pedophilia because of their religion.
As I have mentioned before, I think it is essential that "religion" be defined first. It is one of the most difficult things to define. It seems Jez is taking it as a holy text, or perhaps a set of beliefs.
@JSBangs I liked the argument our philosophy teacher presented to us in fifth grade. Imagine an australopitecus going to a hunt. He returns empty-handed. The next day, he goes hunting again. On his way, he notices a white stone he had never noticed before. And his hunt happens to be successful that day. And thus, a religion of The White Stone is born.
All of us have superstitious beliefs and perception biases. All of us. Whether you label them religion or not is irrelevant to the fact that you have them.
> The moderns would hold that “religion” is a trans-cultural, trans-historical reality, a universal genus of which “Christianity,” “Hinduism,” and “Islam” are particular species. The problem is, any attempt to define this genus in such a way as to include what the moderns want to include and to exclude what they wish to exclude turns out to be contradictory.
> Nationalism is no less a cult than Catholicism. Including a belief in God would exclude many major “religions.” One might attempt to limit religion to the “transcendent,” but ideas such as “the nation” or “liberty” are transcendent ideas, as are all values.
> Hence, there is no coherent way to distinguish “religious” from “secular” violence. What counts as “religious” or “secular” in any given society always depends on the configuration of power within that society. Indeed, the demarcation of the “religious” sphere is itself an expression of secular power, a political act.
Religion is nothing. It is a word. What does it mean? We think we have an intuitive grasp of what it is, but, when we think deeper, it turns out that we are left with air in our hands.
Okay, well, let us suppose a certain guy next door called Mohammed. He goes to the Mosque a few times every year. He says certain prayers. But he doesn't care that much, and he doesn't even think about such metaphysical questions as whether God exists. He just does some rituals because everybody else does them and he runs his shop. Is he religious according to your definition? No. And yet he will vehemently assert that he should be called a Muslim.
so you're saying that most people aren't religious? again it depends completely on country
but most people in many countries, such as the USA, middle eastern ones, african ones, india, pakistan, bangladesh, etc. are true believers, in all probability
I'm saying that your definition of religion is a bit limited. I don't think it is very useful, because you have to know what people really believe, whereas the cultural aspects of religion should be quite important.
@Jez How important are certain beliefs about the supernatural that may or may not be truly and deeply be contemplated by the majority, v. the various dynamics of a community and shared values, traditions?
@Fx Hehe... yeah, he did beam you up all the way from there.
haven't you solved this thing yet? either you have a good reason and abolish all religions right now, or you found yours and gain followers, or you don't know enough to talk about it :)
@Cerberus for 500+ participant conferences, yes, it is deemed socially acceptable in the community I work with; it's a recent change, though (2-3 years)
@Jez How come many Muslims in Turkey are very secular and ignoring most of the commands of the Q'uran (as in fact most Muslims do, since it is self-contradictory in many respects, as is the Bible)?
@Fx Very useful change. I often wonder how productive lectures and conferences with many participants are.
1. for a week, everyone in the field is in the same place; you can make appointments with everyone, and have direct conversations/work with people who usually live on the other face of the planet
2. 500 posters is a lot to go through, but you can select the ones you want to see and then spend time with ~10 persons of particular interest to you, and get a chance to discover what they do (you might eventually read an article of theirs at some point, but it's easier the other way)
@Cerberus poster sessions: two hours, 200 posters aligned in one or two huge rooms, the presenting author of each poster is standing before it and people go see whom they want
@Cerberus those norms are just silly definitions. they're not relevant to the conversation, which wants a useful definition for religious: true believer.
But if you have a summary in your hand, can't you go to those people just as well? Does it help that you can see the summary from a distance? Or is the poster of a special genre?
no, i think it only makes sense, when debating religious v cultural taboos, to interpret 'religious' as those which are there because of real belief in religion
@Jez But that makes it very difficult to say whether a certain taboo is because of some belief or just because people were taught to do it by their parents when they were young.
There are many other senselessly arbitrary prohibitions. Such as against eating half-eaten hamburgers that someone else left at the tabel in McDonals at 4 am.
And yet you couldn't convince and persuade most people to eat it.
i mean come on, elevators that you don't have to press a button to operate on the Sabbath "so as not to start a fire on the Sabbath by closing an electrical circuit potentially causing a spark"
this is following rules to an utterly ludicrous extreme