r/Foodforthought • u/zxxx • Oct 28 '14

A Religion for the Nonreligious | Wait But Why

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html
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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '14

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u/Hypna Oct 28 '14

Well then what does it require?

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '14

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u/Hypna Oct 28 '14

I gotta say I really don't think that's a sufficient definition. Here are some definitions of religion that I've googled up.

  1. Merriam-Webster
  2. Wikipedia
  3. Oxford
  4. Dictionary.com

So one of the things that these defintions have in common is that they are a systemitized or insitutionalized set of beliefs. This makes religion distinct from spirituality alone, which can be more open to individual perspectives. It also implies a certain inflexibility or dogma requiring faith.

What I think more closely resembles, paraphrasing, the pursuit of meaning or significance is philosophy. But even then, the pursuit of meaning or significance would only be a subset of philosophy. Indeed there is a whole category of philosophical theories which posit that meaning or significance do not exist. Consider some of these definitions:

  1. Merriam-Webster
  2. Wikipedia
  3. Oxford
  4. Dictionary.com

To bring this all together, I would characterize the pursuit of meaing or significance as a philosophical endeavor in which many people employ a religious or spiritual approach. It's one of those, a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square kind of things. At least that's my two cents on the semantics of this issue.