[FoRK] Terms - Practicing Science: Secular vs. Religious Ideology

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi Tom,

On Jan 10, 2008, at 10:11 PM, Tom Higgins wrote:
> On Jan 10, 2008 2:01 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
> <drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
>> From all the data I observe, materialistic (Marxist, Maoist,
>> Confucionist, etc.) groups have *exactly* the same failure modes as
>> religious groups, with consequences at least as devastating.
>>
>
> Ya know I am getting a bit bored with the same half truths and
> mislabels being used over and over again.

> First off ANY cult of ism that ask the person participating to subvert
> to a "great good" be it a social system, an invisible sky monster
> whose only son is killed so that the followers can drink his blood
> every sunday, a state , a mellow good feeling pamphlets of cutesy
> sayings,  a media corporation who seeks to have the user lock into a
> life style and rights management scheme ... these and more are all the
> pewp that helps make the world stink.

Actually, I *agree* with you.   I am trying to push Jeff to be more  
precise in his phrasing, but perhaps I should ignore him and work with  
you.

Does the term "religion" equate to (I)  "belief in mysticism/the  
supernatural", or simply to (II) "organized shared beliefs"? I prefer  
"ideology" for the latter, as that is more neutral and precise, but if  
you want to lump those as "religion" I can work with that.

My position is that (II) is really the most important problem, whereas  
Jeff seems to be claiming it is (I). That is why I keep bringing up  
secular counter-examples.

And despise Jeff's mistaken belief that I am a strict fideist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism 
], I do believe these are questions that could be logically analyzed  
based on empirical data.  I'm just trying to get some clarification of  
exactly _what_ we're disagreeing about, so I can figure out what data  
would be useful.

-- Ernie P.