Quote:
Originally Posted by bombadillo
What does "religious" mean?
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It is always important to define what words mean. Today we are more often than not subjugated to the so-called rule of the words, the tyranny of words, which some already named
glossocracy or
logocracy. You have a set of words, usually mutually opposed, among which you have to choose. One word has a "positive" and another a "negative" meaning (those who set the rules decide on which word will be considered positive and which negative). "Religious" is especially sensitive word in that context. It can be subject to many manipulations, for example, it can refer to some "fake religiosity" a la Leo Strauss.
Religion is a set of rituals and dogmas, usually with a professional (although not always) priesthood performing rites and thus keeping, so the belief states, the societal and the cosmic order going. In addition, there may be also religious law and regulations pertaining to all aspects of life (especially marked in Judaism and Islam). A good example of that was the Roman religion (the etymology of the word
religio is unclear, some refer it to
religare, "to reconnect"). Its rites were strictly connected with upholding the community and the cosmic order, whereof the community was constituent part. It had no pretentions to universality (the concept of humanity being not yet developped in the modern sense). Participation in sacred rituals was part of being a Roman
civis, no faith or belief or recitation of anything like Lord's Prayer was a prerequisite to being
religious in that sense. Even words like
religio, pietas or
devotio had more a societal meaning (devotion to the family, the
gens and the
respublica).
Faith is something else. It is an inner conviction about suprantural things, a conviction that arises out of a combination of indirect proofs (inductive and deductive) and a set of analogies. These (religion and faith) are two different things but are often confused in the modern vocabulary. Someone can have much faith, but not be very religious (observing rituals, going frequently to the worship etc.), and vice versa: some people observe rituals because of the societal convention, but have no faith.
As for Christianity, it was originally irreligious in nature, focused on faith. First Christians were called by non-Christian Romans
asebeis or
impii (impious),
atheoi (godless), because being "godly" was considered to worship at the altars of different idols-gods. Later on, when it became the official creed of the Roman Empire (after Constantine), it adopted many elements of religion: it replaced the official Roman religion as the new ideological basis of the Empire.
In the modernity there arose many ideologies which truned into a kind of religions once they came into power, for example Marxism. But even atheistic materialism has very often religious character, along with the "civic religions" of the nation-states and their liberal-democratic systems.