gemini://thrig.me/blog/2023/08/23/notes-on-a-concept-of-religion.gmi

First up we might have noun form versus verb form (my terminology): some hold that religion has characteristics, that is, it is Something, and has one or more defining Properties. That would be what I'm calling the noun form. Some definitions ignore rituals and group membership, which gets into the individualistic versus collectivist debate, which also varies across cultures (or node versus edge in graph theory). Others use a verb form, or functional definition, where a religion would be a social function that creates solidarity. This can be pretty broad (Marxism, fans of a pop star, whatever). It's the role that's important, not whether the religion has a certain number of gods or other such properties.

The noun/verb debate also shows up in programming languages and works for me so I dragged it into these notes.

Some folks mix noun and verb forms in their definition of religion, so might include "belief in spiritual beings" (a property) along with "inculcates dispositions for behavior" (a functional aspect). Using these various definitions one can then make a yes/no list of whether, say, Theravada Buddhism is or is not a religion. Whoops, no belief in supernatural beings, not a religion. Other definitions do include Theravada Buddhism having instead of supernatural beings a requirement for the law of karma, Dao, or Logos.

What is called the monothetic approach has a checklist of one or more properties and to be a religion the whatever must tick all the boxes. A more recent polythetic approach is more like fuzzy logic, and might have a concept map or family of resemblances, and if something can satisfy any of, say, three requirements of say, five concepts, it would be called a religion. This gives you a graded list; some religions will satisfy all of the requirements ("prototypical"), while others only will have four or three.

For a non-religious example, one might consider the cat a prototypical mammal, and would put the platypus down as a distant relative. A monothetic approach could by contrast look at the egg-laying thing and nope the platypus from the list, as the early European naturalists did—"it must be fake!".

Another polythetic approach is not bounded, and will instead be open and evolve over time, possibly to some new set of characteristics that are quite different now from what, say, the Romans would put down for religious practice. Yet another polythetic approach is to anchor one (or a set of) of the characteristics as must haves, and let other properties vary. This can keep the choices grounded and avoids the definition wandering off to who knows where and including who knows what.

So anyways monothetic is digital, and polythetic analog. A monothetical approach is useful for, say, legal questions that demand a binary answer. A polythetic approach with a large number of properties might help group religions into related clusters.

Here we have the notion that one has been instructed to look down at the street though a particular tall, narrow window, and that one has only been looking down at the street through that tall, narrow window. Consider, then, what only looking through that window reveals, or does not reveal, and whether it may be advantageous to obtain some other view.

There are increasingly more radical points about that tall, narrow window, whether it even exists, etc. At least being aware of the limited view one might have been taught in the Western (or some other) tradition might be good to be mindful of.

Notes on a Concept of Religion

Monothetic, Polythetic

Reflexivity, Reference, and Skepticism