Dragaera

Domino's Lute

Joshua Kronengold mneme at io.com
Tue Nov 26 15:21:18 PST 2002

Steven Brust writes:
>It is certainly possible to define religion that way.  It even makes a 
>certain amount of sense.  But then we're left with needing a word that 
>means, belief in and reverence for a superhuman power.

I think that's "'holy other'-style religon".  There are lots of
existing, self-proclaimed religons that don't have belief or reverence
for a superhuman power -- Zen (the universal counterexample, and
usually mixed up with a lot of superstitions that -do- have
supernatural powers attached, but nevertheless); confucianism, and
discordianism don't, certainly.

(also, a lot of things are hard to seperate -- a lot of religons that
 feature belief in and/or reverance for superhuman powers also have
 other distinctive aspects; reverence for stories, traditions, or
 codes of behavior, which are part of religion and tend to get
 unfairly deemphasized if you overemphasize the "holy other" bit).



-- 
     Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\      _,,,--,,_  ,)
--^--him...to live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the   /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'  
  /\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning.   |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\     
/-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'