For example, you suggest religion involves a set of beliefs matching certain criteria. But some religions really don’t care what you believe! All they ask is that you carry out their rituals. Others ask for faith but not belief, but this is really weird if all you have is a Christian framing where faith is exclusively considered with respect to beliefs.
Could you give some examples of such religions (that are recognized by many people as religions, not matching definition of religion from the post)?
Most western polytheistic religion (Roman, Greek...). Judaism*. Islam*. Buddhism. In fact Christianism with its overemphasized focus on dogmas is somewhat an exception.
I’m not saying those religions don’t include beliefs but that they are not defined by those beliefs.
The first pillar of Islam is an assertion of faith. Every Islamic teacher and academic I’ve listened to talks as if belief is just as important to Islam as it is to Christianity. Technically subordination is more important, but it’s pretty hard to have subordination without belief. Where did you get the idea that Islam doesn’t care what you believe? Are you referring to stuff like formally identifying as a Muslim in an Islamic theocracy to get a reduced tax burden?
But otherwise, yeah, you’re correct. Roman and Greek religion definitely count. So does Norse mythology. Basically any pre-civilized polytheistic animism counts. Hinduism and Shinto fit into this bucket too.
My favorite Buddhist teachers say Buddhism doesn’t require belief, but Buddhism so diverse (and “belief” is so difficult to define) that I’d be surprised if there weren’t lineages requiring belief.
I think it would be more correct to say that a focus on believing particular assertions is a fairly recent trend in religion, encompassing the past millennium or two, but really picking up in the last few centuries.
It happened in or between Christianity and Islam (as isusr points out), and they probably both influenced each other. For example, Protestant Christianity focuses a lot more on a holy book than Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, but in a way that resembles Islam’s veneration of the Quran: citing verses to prove points. Since then, Catholics and Orthodox have also stepped up their focus on the Bible. There’s a lot of cross-pollination.
In the last century or so, religious statements have been presented as a kind of alternate-science (e.g. Young Earth science), presumably to respond to an apparent threat, but this is a very new way of taking about religion. There were biblical literalists (and non-literalists) throughout Christian history, but ancient theologians would probably accuse these people of missing the point.
Meanwhile, religions with only recent sustained contract with Christianity and Islam (past half-millennium) and religions that preceded them focus a lot more on practice, i.e. ritual and social behaviors. Some belief is implicit (e.g. why leave offerings for gods or ancestors if you don’t think they exist in a form that would benefit from the offerings?), but they are much less the focus.
Could you give some examples of such religions (that are recognized by many people as religions, not matching definition of religion from the post)?
Most western polytheistic religion (Roman, Greek...). Judaism*. Islam*. Buddhism. In fact Christianism with its overemphasized focus on dogmas is somewhat an exception.
I’m not saying those religions don’t include beliefs but that they are not defined by those beliefs.
The first pillar of Islam is an assertion of faith. Every Islamic teacher and academic I’ve listened to talks as if belief is just as important to Islam as it is to Christianity. Technically subordination is more important, but it’s pretty hard to have subordination without belief. Where did you get the idea that Islam doesn’t care what you believe? Are you referring to stuff like formally identifying as a Muslim in an Islamic theocracy to get a reduced tax burden?
But otherwise, yeah, you’re correct. Roman and Greek religion definitely count. So does Norse mythology. Basically any pre-civilized polytheistic animism counts. Hinduism and Shinto fit into this bucket too.
My favorite Buddhist teachers say Buddhism doesn’t require belief, but Buddhism so diverse (and “belief” is so difficult to define) that I’d be surprised if there weren’t lineages requiring belief.
Belief isn’t central to Daoism either.
I think it would be more correct to say that a focus on believing particular assertions is a fairly recent trend in religion, encompassing the past millennium or two, but really picking up in the last few centuries.
It happened in or between Christianity and Islam (as isusr points out), and they probably both influenced each other. For example, Protestant Christianity focuses a lot more on a holy book than Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, but in a way that resembles Islam’s veneration of the Quran: citing verses to prove points. Since then, Catholics and Orthodox have also stepped up their focus on the Bible. There’s a lot of cross-pollination.
In the last century or so, religious statements have been presented as a kind of alternate-science (e.g. Young Earth science), presumably to respond to an apparent threat, but this is a very new way of taking about religion. There were biblical literalists (and non-literalists) throughout Christian history, but ancient theologians would probably accuse these people of missing the point.
Meanwhile, religions with only recent sustained contract with Christianity and Islam (past half-millennium) and religions that preceded them focus a lot more on practice, i.e. ritual and social behaviors. Some belief is implicit (e.g. why leave offerings for gods or ancestors if you don’t think they exist in a form that would benefit from the offerings?), but they are much less the focus.