"an atheist... also has a religion: that being his/her belief in atheism... It is mainly to provide an initial even footing to all religions"

Speaking for atheists, I would say that the initial footing is not even, and worst still, atheism becomes a religion. But no doubt, according to your definition it is, as it encompasses all beliefs. A main contention of atheists regarding religion is that it is ultimately faith-based, which concurs better with our daily and international usage. So I think it would be good in the definition to mention faith.

Sam Harris has articulated it so well that I would just pick his sentences from "An Atheist Manifesto". "A rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has more than its fair share... Faith is nothing more than the licence religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail."

And on the initial footing: "Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world... atheism is a term that should not even exist" in the sense that we do not have words for non-astrologer or non-alchemist. It is because of religion that we have the term atheism, else we don't need it. I think this is the starting point that should be made clear.

"A rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has more than its fair share... Faith is nothing more than the licence religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail."

Excellent. From this, we can deduce that unless (or until) there is an incontrovertible proof that God (of any stripe whatsoever) does not exist, then the dogma of atheism (a.k.a. the faith of unfaith) is nothing more than the licence so-called unreligious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail.

And since there is no incontrovertible proof that God (of any stripe whatsoever) does not exist, ergo...

Yizheng,

You are right that I am proposing a NEW definition for "religion" and that this new definition might seem to deviate slightly from our common usage of it. However, as I noted, people have different conceptions of what the word "religion" mean, so no matter what definition I come up, I am bound to have people who disagree with my usage of such a definition.

I have also noted in endnote [3] that this definition might seem unfair to atheists and agnostics.

Perhaps let me supply another explanation why atheistism might also be considered to be a "religion". One of the core fundamental beliefs of athetism is the doctrine P, where

P: God does not exist

However, P itself is a "religious" statement, since the subject matter of P is "God". Moreover, as explained by Kay Poh, the belief P is held, to a certain extent, by "faith", since there is no mathematical "knock down" proof that P is indeed true (or do you wish to claim otherwise?). Yes atheists assert they have good reason to believe P, but similarly, theists themselves assert that they have good reason to believe "God does exist". In this light, athetism is not much different from other "faith-based" religions. This is why I personally felt it was justifiable to classify athetism itself as a religion.

Quoting what PM Lee and DPM Wong said from the TODAY article link from this article, http://www.todayonline.com/articles/163754.asp,

PM Lee said,
"The only way to root out such dangerous stereotypes and prejudices was for people of different faiths to talk to each other.
..
Such dialogue is not aimed at achieving agreement but at building relationship,"

People of different religious faiths have already agreed to disagree by their choice of religion. Therefore anymore discussion or debate of religion is only more "preaching", but this "preaching" is through discussion/debate of how a particular faith is in some ways "better" than another faith. Therefore unnecessary denigrations of religious faiths are bound to be involved in such a discussion/debate to prove discussion/debating points. Therefore any such public discussion/debate of such could easily amplify any undesired consequences. The government has already clearly stated its point that denigration of religious faiths in any circumstance is strongly discouraged.

DPM Wong said,
"Now and then, we get complaints of insensitive proselytisation, of quarrels among neighbours over religious practices, and of denigration and insult of other religions, including over the Internet. These minor sensitivities and problems can be amplified when there is a lack of communication, understanding and tolerance among the different faiths."

If people can communicate with people of other faiths and build friendship, understanding and respect, this would contribute to better understanding and respect of one another's religious beliefs. People would therefore continue to possess the good agreement to disagree yet show good tolerance and understanding for individuals' choice of faiths.

A good example would be a person seeing an angel in a vision but people do not believe him. The person base his faith on the clear vision.

Therefore religion is strongly based on subjective personal belief and faith. Therefore for a country that base peace and stability on such personal faiths, it is of utmost importance that people respect and understand each other's beliefs and personal choices. If people wish to "preach" and spread their faiths to other people through public discussion/debate, the mass media such as books and movies have already been doing their own publicity. Therefore the extreme preaching of religious ideals to other non-believers is not seen as being respectful nor tolerant of different beliefs, faiths and choices.

We understand the concerns of the rulers on religious faction in society. Factions will always exist but they are usually non-violent and most know not to impose themselves on others (we have been sufficiently "economized" to remain docile). However, differences in worldviews may be offensive to some and i do not see how this can be resolved among the various faith/non-faith. For example, if these major religions will to be true to their faith, many will find themselves in conflict with the worldview/philosophy of the ruling party. So to defuse the tension, the party, possessing legal,economic and military/police ascendancy, pressure for comformity. Since their,the religious bodies, livelihood and practices are at stake, it provides little or no option but to politely comply.

Some call it totalitarian but others may say the incumbent is merely "marking" their territory with their winning percentage.

But whatever it is, the harmony is uniquely achieved by compulsion. If so, can such a union be real? Can you sustain it, grow it and transport it? Is there life and buoyancy to fakeness? Are you dead or alive?

This has been a good attempt at tackling such a heavy topic. But in defining religion broadly enough to include atheism, I think it ironical as yizheng did. You tried to justify it by saying atheism has a proposition on the existence of a supernatural being. However, a weaker "strain" like agnostism may not carry this proposition, but rather posits that given the absence of strong supporting evidence, nothing can be known about the existence of this being. Often the reasoning follows that the absence of evidence means that one need not assume God exists for all practical reasons. Of course I have no better way to put everyone on a common footing, but I do think that the atheists, agnostics and possibly the deists should be left out, since I do not think they tend towards organizing themselves as a distinct lobby group.

However, I agree with you that religion is a personal matter to do with an individual's beliefs and worldviews shaped by his unique history. But religious people may fail to appreciate it when they rally around common causes. Sometimes I suspect when people congregate in organized groups that gives them bigger influence, the group psychology clouds their judgements making them blind to the possiblity of others being "equally right". They may even be prone to the us versus them mentality making reasonable discourse on religions impossible. So there is the fly in the ointment.

I would like to end by saying that getting public participation in religious discourse is important, but getting everyone on the same page is really difficult. I hope that enough people have read your thought-provoking piece of writing to start on the right foot and be able "to affirm “I believe I am correct and you are wrong” and yet show respect for the views of others who disagree."

Thank you all for your comments.

WBG,

You are right that dialogues which go "Religion X is better (or "more true") than Religion Y because..." and the other party replies "No, Religion Y is better than Religion X because..." is not the kind of discourse I am talking about. Such dialogues will inevitably be polemic, and not at all in the spirit of civil and rational discourse.

What I am talking about, however, is when someone criticizes a certain aspect or belief of one religion, someone representing that religion should speak up and answer that criticism, instead of letting that accusation remain unanswered. For example, consider the following criticisms below:

1) Atheists do not believe in a transcendent good. Hence they are amoral. Does any athetist want to make a reply to this?

2) Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin, hence they believe that gays should not be given rights. Do any Christians want to make a reply to this?

3) Muslims are over-sensitive and they think it is okay to riot/petition when they feel that someone has offended their religion. Do any Muslims want to make a reply to this?

Sam Harris has indeed made a reply to 1) in an article recently which was also published in the Straits Times.

It appears to me that most people do not know alot about religions which are not their own. Such ignorance could easily lead to misunderstandings, and hence could create conflict which could have been otherwise avoided if there was better communication between different religions. Huichieh has mentioned to me that perhaps the word "dialogue" is not as appropriate to describe the kind of discourse I want to advocate. Perhaps something like "Q&A" is better.

Nevertheless, in order for such "Q&A" not to degrade into the "Religion X is better than religoin Y" polemic, maturity and a strict commitment to civil and rational discourse is required by all participants of the discourse. I actually believe that the current blogosphere is unable to meet such requirements, and hence I suggested a more structured platform of discourse (mailing list, group blog) as alternative possibilites.

Cynik,

I am actually not very interested in the political motivations and implications of religious discourse. The motivation behind my advocating such religious discourse is not to serve the purpose of "religious harmony", but rather I believe there is intrinsic value in such discourse itself, as well as the ability of such discourse (if successful) to prevent conflicts that was due to ignorance of other religions. Whatever the government REALLY thinks or feels about religion, that is outside the scope of my article.

YCK,

Thank you for your kind words. You are right to note that agnosticism is harder to reconcile with my definition of religion than atheism. I do have an attempted explanation as to how agnosticism is indeed a religion, but that is a long sophisticated argument which perhaps I will blog later on my own blog.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that usually it is only the atheists (and not agnostics) who demand that their worldview is on a higher and more elevated platform than "faith-based" religions. Some atheists tend to beleive that their worldviews are more aligned with reason, and theists are just delusional or irrational. Agnostics usually don't quite as mind putting themselves on an equal footing with theists, maybe it is because they themselves realize the limitations in giving a definite answer when it comes to "ultimate questions" such as "Is there a God?".

For the sake of better semantics, let's say I replace the word "religion" with "fundamental worldview beliefs" or just "worldviews". Would it make a difference to the point I am making, or the discourse I advocate?

Fearfully Opinionated,

I don't think your definition of religion is appropriate. Religion as we normally think of it involves some form of belief in supernatural beings or entities. Your definition of religion makes it sound like philosophy rather than religion, and I don't think anyone will deny that philosophy is fundamentally different from religion, in that it does not contain that supernatural element. Your leaving out of the supernatural aspect of religion thus allows you to classify atheism as a religion. By your definition, many political doctrines will also be religion, as are philosophical stances like materialism. You simply have to include belief in supernatural things as part of the definition of religion in order to avoid having your definition include any vaguely philosophical "worldview".

I might also point out that anthropological studies have turned up many religions that do not concern ultimate questions. There are many petty tribal gods, for example, that merely concern themselves with punishing wrongdoers, demanding sacrifices and so on. Not all gods serve the purpose of answering ultimate questions of existence. That we associate religion with ultimate questions is an artifact of the dominance of Judeo-Christian religion in the world and not at all representative of the universal phenomenon of religion.

As an example of a more appropriate definition of religion, this is what the anthropologist Scott Atran suggests:

1. a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitment 2. to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agents 3. who master people's existential anxiety

And this is what Alcorta and Sosis suggest:

Belief in supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts; Communal participation in costly ritual; Separation of the sacred and the profane

Atran does include salving as existential anxiety as part of his definition, which I do not agree with, but as you can see, supernatural entities are central to most definitions of religion. If you want to insist that things like materialism and, hell, even the anthropic principle (which certainly concern ultimate questions) are religions, then you're essentially including almost all forms of philosophical discourse.

Unless one ranks a 7 on the Theist/Atheist scale (see the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins), no one is going to say there is no god (and note again the distinction between the Einsteinian God of the Universe and the Personal, Interventionist God that's all the core of the more visible religions with the exception of Buddhism).

Instead, for me personally being 6 on the scale, there is insufficient evidence for me to accept there is a personal interventionist god, much less a need for one. I'm open to the possibility of a burning bush or a voice from space or the sky but I'm still waiting.

The "faith of the unfaith" is nothing more than than the fallacy of equivocation not unlike the argument that Science is a Religion or a faith. Or to put it another way, it's like calling bald a hair colour, or not gambling a form of gambling.

Thus in that regard, I'm not opposed to the notion of religion as simply another worldview for the simple reason that I believe religion gets a free ride on issues of morality and conversely the entire canard that Atheist are immoral without religion.

On that last point, there are various bases upon one can establish morality whether it be the social contract, golden rule, police power of the state etc. none of which actually requires the notion of divine retribution to "restrain" us. It might also be worth noting that in the US, atheist are massively underrepresented in the prison population.

Fearfully Opinionated said,
"Huichieh has mentioned to me that perhaps the word "dialogue" is not as appropriate to describe the kind of discourse I want to advocate. Perhaps something like "Q&A" is better.

Nevertheless, in order for such "Q&A" not to degrade into the "Religion X is better than religoin Y" polemic, maturity and a strict commitment to civil and rational discourse is required by all participants of the discourse. I actually believe that the current blogosphere is unable to meet such requirements, and hence I suggested a more structured platform of discourse (mailing list, group blog) as alternative possibilites."

However we ask, what can a discussion achieve by the comparison of different subjective truths? What is the purpose? Does it suit a worthwhile and constructive purpose? If the main purpose is simply to bring people together in the hope of creating better understanding and respect, then there are many other better ways of socialising.

Perhaps the logical and rational thing to do is to realise that the subjective truths that people hold, should not be individually compared to the truths that one holds, because they are subjectively different.

If a person states a disagreement of a certain aspect of a religion, that is a view that people can either choose to provide information that could correct the disagreement or to simply leave the person alone with his own subjective view.

However if there are people who question certain aspects of their own or others' religion in the hope of learning and to resolve uncertainty, others who are familiar with the religion may only be able to provide specific information of the religion that could resolve the uncertainty, the rest is up to the person to decide what he/she wants to believe in that particular religion, and to what extend.

Perhaps an educational Q&A method is the best way, that is providing more information on the internet for the education of various religious teachings, and leaving people to make their own subjective choices.

Huichieh had warned me that my attempt to define religion could be misleading, and he has been proven correct. Let me attempt to clarify the issue. There is more than one way to define something. A definition may be a DESCRIPTIVE definition (or "lexical definition"), which means, like a dictionary, it is an attempt to describe what the word means in common usgae. There is another kind of definition, the PRESCRIPTIVE definition (or "stipulative definition"), in which I stipulate a NEW definition for a term already in use (for purposes of further argumentation). This is the kind of definition which I am proposing for "religion". My stipulated definition might deviate from some intuitive conceptions of the word "religion", and hence it will fail to be truly descriptive. I am aware of this, but I do not stipulate such a definition without what I feel to be good reasons.

What are my reasons? Firstly all attempts at giving a fully descriptive definition of "religion" so far have failed. See the link at endote [1] for more information. "Religion" is a term which has proven too complex to be fully described in a single definition. How is it complex? Different individuals might understand the world "religion" in a different way. I believe if you interview an athetist and ask him "Define religion.", and if you interview a muslim and ask him the same question, you might get quite different answers. The term "religion" also seem to have different meanings across different academic disciplines. I suspect if you ask the question "Define religion" to a philosopher, an anthropologist, an economist, a lawyer and a historian, you might get 5 different answers.

Secondly, my main project is not to seek the definition of "religion", but to introduce the idea of what I call "religious discourse". Against this backdrop, I tried to construct a philosophical basis for the "equal footing" among all the different worldviews, be it "faith-based" or secular. Part of this construction is such a stipulative definition of the term "religion". Of course, I will still need to explain why I think my stipulated definition is a justifiable one, and have attempted to do so. I am not a stickler about names. If I replace every word "religion" with the word "worldview" (i.e. "worldview discourse", "worldview disagreements") and there are no criticisms henceforth, then fine by me. I am not really interested in semantics, but an actual substantial proposal for a certain kind of "discourse".

Let me also say that the construction of the philosophical basis of "equal footing", is not an easy task, and would probably require a full length essay. For the purposes of this article, I wanted to focus more about the idea of "religious discourse" more than developing a rigorous philosophical defense for my definition of religion, or my basis of "equal footing". Hence I may have under-elaborated on how exactly I was constructing this basis, and left several individuals rather unsatisfied.

Fearfully,

My point is exactly that your failure to include belief in the supernatural as part of your definition defines the discourse such that most theoretical philosophy (which deals with ultimate questions of reality and existence, for sure) and some practical philosophy qualifies as religious discourse. I certainly find it objectionable to have all such "worldviews" classified as religion. Is nihilism a religion? Is the anthropic principle a religion? Clearly, our govt does not care if people disagree on nihilism or the anthropic principle, and nobody really cares if one puts limits on discourse in these areas. Therefore your definition should clearly rule out philosophies dealing with "ultimate questions" that are clearly not religious, not likely to inflame social sentiments the same way religion does, and hence politically irrelevant.

Correction -- I meant that no one really cares enough about nihilism or the anthropic principle to attempt to limit discourse in these areas. Of course, philosophers would get really uptight if politicians tried to limit their discourse.

I might also point out that insofar as many political philosophies rely on certain ultimate principles in deciding ethical issues, political discourse would also count as a discourse about "worldviews" by your definition. To take one example, a debate about Nozick's defence of libertarianism could well count as "religious discourse" under your definition. Prescriptive definitions can be useful, but only if they are defined so as to allow for a reasonable basis for debate. And your definition quite simply does not provide this. As I've pointed out, most philosophical discourse is not socially relevant in the direct way that religious discourse is (so we would not debate its "allowability", as such, the same way we would debate the allowability of religious discourse), and political discourse, is, as our govt loves to remind us from time to time, a completely different animal, with a quite different set of conditions regarding its utility/disutility.

Thanks for the reply. I suppose it would make little difference if you use alternatives to "religion" instead. However, you brought up something I have overlooked about the atheist position. Atheists may believe that they are "superior" than theists. In the end it is this sense of self-righteousness that sabotage any attempt to put people on equal standing so that they might have a healthy discouse fully respectful of all participants. But they are not the only ones that are guilty of the charge. Adherents to exclusivist interpretations of their religions are also guilty. But as the latter is the vast majority who may hinder the discourse, your attempt at a broad definition may not really solve the problem, though it was definitly a good first try.

You can't seriously have a proper discussion with someone who believes that you're going to hell because you have a different belief.

The biggest difference between science and religion, is that science can be backed up with proof, proof that can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world following the same steps. For religion, christianity especially, it all ends with "Because god sad so". This is the escapist route to everything religion can't back up with their gospels. It's funny that science backs everything up with... actual proof. It's not out to attack religion, but religion is always there to purport how evil science is because it doesn't back up the religious agendas out there. Age of earth according to men of the day claiming to get their info from god or their religious predecessors, not through studying layers of rock, carbon dating, etc. The whole Noah's ark story is comically impossible, but that doesn't stop christian's from believing it. They have an answer to every impossible step, but it doesn't hold water (like the ark, which literally couldn't have held water). It really amazes me how blind intelligent people allow themselves to be.

I would like to comment on something ah heng said.

There are many people like me who believe that many of the accounts in the Bible did not happen word-for-word, some are clear-cut facts and some are simply metaphors and analogies for more complex descriptions. Bible studies does teach and explain many of such metaphors and parables in the Bible, with the more mysterious ones still undiscovered. It is therefore up to the different levels of the readers' intellect to uncover and be enlightened through the different levels of Bible complexity. It is therefore up to the individual effort of each reader to seek out greater understanding of the Bible and of Life. Of course the more simpler traditional christians would disagree with my view.

Hello all,

I do know the brotherhood did successfully tackle the subject of religion, but I think it was more of a critique on how religion and politics should be separated.

I think they did a very good job in teasing out the various issues.

I shall try and pester them to roll it out again. I remember reading it abt it sometime mid last year.

Generally, I think the reason why the discussion hasnt really taken off FO is because the definition is too wide and this simply means no one can even agree on the basis as to how to move on.

Getting away from all these attempts to define religion, let me try to get to the article's real focus on "religious discourse". Funnily enough, that's where I think the writer could have chosen a better phrase, for "religious discourse" tends to mean, to religiously-minded people (narrow definition of 'religion') discussion about the foundations and verity of their beliefs.

As others have pointed out, this can hardly lead anywhere, since each side tends to believe in the exclusive superiority of its beliefs.

The government, in my view, is approaching the matter from the angle of politics with the aim of ensuring peace among potentially warring factions. Therefore it might be better to term the idea something like "inter-religion peace talks". See it as a play on "inter-national peace talks". Like the latter, it should focus less on what each religion is about and how you can udnerstand me and so on, but on how to avoid provocative moves that can lead to mutually assured destruction. A kind of disarmament conference.

In international peace talks, no attempt is made to change the nature of the opposing party's ideology. It is assumed that ultimately each side will want to dominate the other. The question addressed is what means each side can adopt to pursue that objective, and what means they can mutually agree not to adopt.

Therefore it is still useful to have "inter-religion peace talks" to discuss things like
+ the limits of proselytization;
+ the limits of false characterisation of other
religions (especially with intent to provoke);
+ the tendency of adherents to retreat within
their own ghettoes, physical or psychological
and how to overcome it (the equivalent in
international politics of promoting cultural
and sporting exchange);
+ prior warning of "war games" (the religious
equivalent being rallies, perhaps), so as not
to cause misunderstanding, etc.

In such a frame, the writer's inclusion of atheists as a party to the peace talks can be quite valid, because atheists are also political players, even if by some definitions, they are not religious.

A late reply, Fearfully Opinionated and Kay Poh.. have been rather busy these weeks.

Atheists is not defined as those holding the doctrine P: "God does not exist". Those who hold it as a dogma is close-minded. We certainly will change mind the moment the evidence of "God exists" exists. Faith is not involved. Atheism is not "faith of the unfaith". It's a word that should not exist. A sense of inquiry must prevail.

The reason why there is no "mathematical knock-down proof" that God does not exist is because the claim that "God exists" is unfalsifiable. Religious claims are unfalsifiable. The burden of proof of course lies on those making the claim, the religious people, not requiring the sceptics to disprove unfalsifiable religious claim.

.....................................................

Bertrand Russell illustrated the unfalsifiability well by his celestial teapot analogy, quoted from Wikipedia:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

Yizheng:

If P is unfalsifiable, then presumably not-P will also be unfalsifiable. Ergo, if "God exists" is unfalsifiable, "God does not exist" is also equally unfalsifiable.

If faith is really not involved, then presumably the safe thing to say is exactly "I don't know if God exist or not"--in other words, agnosticism, not atheism. I believe that was the considered position of Berty as well.

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