I am still in fact curious what you meant since you didn’t and haven’t explained.
Gee, I wonder why? Could something have somehow prevented me from replying to your request for elaboration, in the linked comment thread? Can’t think what that might be, though…
Anyhow, the answer given in the grandparent is my actual answer. You were right the first time! Defining “religion” as “belief systems that involve supernatural claims”, or something along those lines, is commonplace but basically useless, because it results in a bunch of false positives (belief in ghosts, for instance) and, more importantly, a bunch of false negatives; we end up getting distracted by surface features, while missing the really important properties of religion, and failing to recognize other things which have those properties.
You’re not the first, but no less correct thereby, to make the observation that the core characteristics of religion, which make it have the practical properties that it has, mostly aren’t the supernatural beliefs, but rather stuff like “a belief system that makes sense of the world and one’s place in it, provides meaning, organizes one’s life via rituals, creates an ingroup, tells you how to live, tells you that you’ll be a good person if you do this-and-such”. (The part you were wrong about is the claim that these are good things.)
So Christianity is a religion, but so is Communism. Buddhism is a religion, but so is Progressivism. Judaism is a religion, but so is Effective Altruism (but I repeat myself).
And you’re also right that calling EA a religion, in this sense, is not exactly flattering. But it’s definitely not a content-free slur. It’s pointing out that a good chunk of what makes EA so attractive (especially to the sorts of people who are most attracted to it) is that they have a “religion-shaped hole” in their lives, but for various reasons, traditional religions do not suit them, while EA does—and ends up telling them how to live, providing their lives with meaning, giving them an ingroup, telling them that they’re good people if they do certain things, etc., etc. This indeed does not constitute “engagement with” EA on its own terms (as a set of positive and normative claims), yet that doesn’t actually make it false as an anthropological observation about EA as a memeplex / social movement / etc.
Thanks for writing this out. The details of your position far more charitable than the tone of your comments suggested it is (and than even the tone of this comment suggests it is!), and I basically agree that EA has a lot of religious-like features, which is why I (incorrectly!) thought of it as being like a religion in the past.
The reasons for thinking it’s not a religion now I discussed over in the linked thread, but to reiterate, it’s because EA lacks a rich relationship with sacredness (especially shared sacredness, even if some pockets of EA manage to hold some small number of things sacred) and is not high commitment in the ways that religions are (though it is high commitment in other ways). As I’ve spent more time understanding why it is I think religion as good, I’ve been able to get more clarity on just what features make it good, and also what features set religious-like groups apart from the ones we identify as central examples of religions.
Gee, I wonder why? Could something have somehow prevented me from replying to your request for elaboration, in the linked comment thread? Can’t think what that might be, though…
Anyhow, the answer given in the grandparent is my actual answer. You were right the first time! Defining “religion” as “belief systems that involve supernatural claims”, or something along those lines, is commonplace but basically useless, because it results in a bunch of false positives (belief in ghosts, for instance) and, more importantly, a bunch of false negatives; we end up getting distracted by surface features, while missing the really important properties of religion, and failing to recognize other things which have those properties.
You’re not the first, but no less correct thereby, to make the observation that the core characteristics of religion, which make it have the practical properties that it has, mostly aren’t the supernatural beliefs, but rather stuff like “a belief system that makes sense of the world and one’s place in it, provides meaning, organizes one’s life via rituals, creates an ingroup, tells you how to live, tells you that you’ll be a good person if you do this-and-such”. (The part you were wrong about is the claim that these are good things.)
So Christianity is a religion, but so is Communism. Buddhism is a religion, but so is Progressivism. Judaism is a religion, but so is Effective Altruism (but I repeat myself).
And you’re also right that calling EA a religion, in this sense, is not exactly flattering. But it’s definitely not a content-free slur. It’s pointing out that a good chunk of what makes EA so attractive (especially to the sorts of people who are most attracted to it) is that they have a “religion-shaped hole” in their lives, but for various reasons, traditional religions do not suit them, while EA does—and ends up telling them how to live, providing their lives with meaning, giving them an ingroup, telling them that they’re good people if they do certain things, etc., etc. This indeed does not constitute “engagement with” EA on its own terms (as a set of positive and normative claims), yet that doesn’t actually make it false as an anthropological observation about EA as a memeplex / social movement / etc.
Thanks for writing this out. The details of your position far more charitable than the tone of your comments suggested it is (and than even the tone of this comment suggests it is!), and I basically agree that EA has a lot of religious-like features, which is why I (incorrectly!) thought of it as being like a religion in the past.
The reasons for thinking it’s not a religion now I discussed over in the linked thread, but to reiterate, it’s because EA lacks a rich relationship with sacredness (especially shared sacredness, even if some pockets of EA manage to hold some small number of things sacred) and is not high commitment in the ways that religions are (though it is high commitment in other ways). As I’ve spent more time understanding why it is I think religion as good, I’ve been able to get more clarity on just what features make it good, and also what features set religious-like groups apart from the ones we identify as central examples of religions.