The trouble is that ideology has a meaning distinct from religion in my mind.
An ideology isn’t wedded to particular rituals or a community. It’s just a big idea people believe in and organize their lives around. There’s overlap, and I think we can reasonably say that every religion contains an ideology, but not every ideology is enmeshed with a religion.
My belief is that the rituals and community aspects are really important. In fact, they’re far more important to wellbeing than the actual ideology of the religion. If the ideology is at least neutral then the religion is probably on net good (assuming the rituals aren’t something like human sacrifice).
This is a good question.
The trouble is that ideology has a meaning distinct from religion in my mind.
An ideology isn’t wedded to particular rituals or a community. It’s just a big idea people believe in and organize their lives around. There’s overlap, and I think we can reasonably say that every religion contains an ideology, but not every ideology is enmeshed with a religion.
My belief is that the rituals and community aspects are really important. In fact, they’re far more important to wellbeing than the actual ideology of the religion. If the ideology is at least neutral then the religion is probably on net good (assuming the rituals aren’t something like human sacrifice).