On Tue, 26 Nov 2002 15:03:17 -0800, Steven Brust <skzb at dreamcafe.com> wrote: >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. Right now we have a >perfectly good word for that: religion. If you want religion to mean >something else, please supply me with a word that means what we now mean by >religion, so we can talk about it. The problem is that religion covers many sins. We'd like to reserve it for the continuation that we think is the most essential. Obviously there are a variety of opinions on that subject. Other posters have cited belief systems that are normally called "religions" that in fact do not involve a superhuman power, although they do involve belief in and reverence for historical teachers and a particular approach to living. I submit that the presence of one or more superhuman powers (and for monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity seem to come up with an awful lot of superhuman powers :) ) is not the essential characteristic of a religion. So, to answer your question, <some qualifier> religion, such as theistic. It's not my field, there may be a more widely used term. I prefer to generalize the term even more, to cover the approaches people take to make decisions when they don't know what's going on. That is because personally I am very concerned about the numbers of people in the US in particular that reject scientifically established facts in favor of neo-traditional systems (such as creationism). I think it all too easy to dismiss such people as unenlightened - it doesn't solve the problem. I think part of the problem lies in the fact that for most people it is very hard to distinguish a scientist from a priest (other than by reading the label). Except the priest has more practical suggestions for keeping a strong society and/or marriage going, doesn't make terrifying weapons, doesn't invent clever gadgets that change society and the economy and doesn't invent ingenious chemicals that turn out twenty years later to cause terrifying problems.[1] These considerations are much more important to many people than is the search for "truth". The problem that religion presents to people is part of its virtue - a system of beliefs that people have successfully used to order and bring meaning to their lives and are consequently antagonistic to attempts to erode. One doesn't require a superhuman power to make that work. Richard [1] I don't present that as a fair assessment of science - I do present it as a widely held one.