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    How To Define the Word "Religion"
    How To Define the Word "Religion"
    How To Define the Word "Religion"
    Ebook267 pages3 hours

    How To Define the Word "Religion"

    By Razie Mah

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    The walk opens with some thoughts on how to define words in this postmodern age. These thoughts follow the structure of the category-based nested form. Normal context brings actuality out of possibility.
    Definition is the relational normal context. The word itself is the actuality. Meaning, presence and message makes a word possible.
    This framework for thinking about the word "definition" is then used to build models for understanding the meaning, presence and message underlying the word "religion". These models encompass evolutionary history, sociology and psychology. They are simple. They are surprising.
    How to Define the Word "Religion" also contains two interludes, applying the models in a reading of Eric Voegelin's The New Science of Politics (1952) and in a Marxist analysis of crime shows on American television (1960-2010). It also contains two appendices that will make any reader think twice about the social sciences. The implications are well worth considering.
    This work, along with the associated primers on the category-based nested form, makes a complete semester course for high school and college students.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRazie Mah
    Release dateJan 4, 2015
    ISBN9780988347687
    How To Define the Word "Religion"
    Author

    Razie Mah

    See website for bio.

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      Book preview

      How To Define the Word "Religion" - Razie Mah

      How to Define the Word Religion

      by Razie Mah

      Published for Smashwords

      7814 U0’

      update 7821 U0'

      Notes on Text

      This master-work pertains to our current Lebenswelt. With the adoption of speech-alone talk, our living world dramatically changes. Perhaps, I should say, theo-dramatically.

      The following text concern a word which has fallen into disrepute at the end the Age of Ideas. Currently, few moderns claim to be religious. Yet, there is a certain deception in the statement, I am not religious., uttered by those who recruit sovereign power in order to implement their organizational objectives.

      What is the meaning of the term, religion?

      What is the presence of the term, religion?

      What is the message of the term, religion?

      ‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

      Primers that complement text: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, plus other primers in the Category-Based Nested Form Series

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Method

      Meaning

      Presence

      Interlude 1

      Interlude 2

      Message

      Conclusion

      Appendix A

      Appendix B

      Introduction

      0001 This book addresses the question: How should we define the word religion?

      A sequence of books over the years argues against the word. These include The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (first published in 1962), Religious Experience, by Wayne Proudfoot (1985) and Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, by Brent Nongbri (2013).

      Despite this, the word, religion, figures prominently in the American Constitution, especially in the First Amendment, which declares that the federal government shall establish no religion.

      Yet, precisely that has occurred, especially during and since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. This claim is rich in irony, because members of the established religion universally declare themselves to be not religious.

      The central practical concern addressed in this work follows: How should we define the word religion when those who self-identify as not religious seek sovereign power in the same fashion as Christian factions during the so called wars of religion (circa 1550-1650 AD)?

      0002 Clearly, current definitions are inadequate for the task. In fact, the current concept of definition may be inadequate for the task. After all, what is a word? A word has a meaning. It also has a presence. It also conveys a message. All three qualities are integral to the concept of definition.

      The central theoretical concern addressed in this work follows: What is the meaning, presence and message underlying the word religion?

      0003 These practical and theoretical concerns open, heretofore closed, vistas to the imagination. For example, does the French Revolution, plus the subsequent upheavals and wars between 1790 and 2014 (today), recapitulate the wars of religion that followed the so-called Reformation? An affirmative answer may tell the story of the modern West better than any other construct. This would especially be the case if Marxism could be appreciated as an archetype for many post-religionist (so-called enlightenment) religions.

      0004 Where am I coming from?

      John Deely, in his masterwork, Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twentieth Century (2001) would locate me in the Fourth Age of Understanding. Expect to be surprised by simplicity. The models presented in this work derive from the categories of Charles Sanders Peirce.

      Eclectic readers, who have perused the pages of The Sacred Canopy: Elements of Sociology of Religion (1967), by Peter Berger, or How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion (2003), by Ilkka Pyysiainen, will experience synchronic moments. The only pages explicitly reviewed come from The New Science of Politics (1952), by Eric Voegelin.

      Where am I coming from?

      Have I said enough? Or should I say, Chicago.

      0005 Fall has come to the Windy City. It is early morning. I walk along a concrete path in Lakeshore Park. The grass is dingy green. Sunlight flicks off the waves. A flock of pigeons flies nearby. The motion is mesmerizing.

      Some say that the fluid movements of a flock arise as each bird tries to avoid the others. Their adjustments are always timely.

      But, does that explain why they flock in the first place? There must be something attracting them, some object, or objective, that only they know. In attraction, they form a system. In avoidance, they maintain their differences.

      A little ways on, a woman in a light blue coat chastises her son. She has a camera. She must be a tourist. The child points to a dog. The dog strains on its leash in pursuit of a scent. They linger on a little hill. They stand precisely where the lady who feeds the pigeons most every morning perches. I bet that the pigeons are asking themselves, Is this the provider with the breadcrumbs? The flock turns and swerves as if in conversation.

      Indeed, the flock serves as a metaphor for talk. Birds are like words.

      The realness of conversation and the realness of parole and langue match the realness of flocking and the realness of birds.

      0006 Language consists in two related systems of differences, parole and langue.

      How can a bird be like parole and langue?

      Parole, the vocal act of speech-alone talk, is purely physical, or maybe, physiological, like the body of a bird. The pigeon in flight is like an utterance spoken or heard in conversation. The winged body, the word-sound, engages a mind. Langue, what goes on in our heads when we decode particular formant frequencies into thought, is like a bird’s mind. Each word has a mind of its own, just like a bird.

      Bird minds reflect a system of differences, simply because each bird body differs from the other. No two birds have the same mind. No two parole have the same langue. The continuity of the world has already been segmented and made discrete. Bird minds and word thoughts reflect the discrete differences expressed by bird bodies and word sounds. Each bird and each word is discrete.

      One could say that, theoretically, the relation between bird body and bird mind is completely arbitrary. One could say that the relation is completely determined. Perhaps, a better way to say it is: The bird mind, like langue, both emerges from and situates the bird body, like parole. Look how they fly! A bird is like a word.

      0007 A flock is like a conversation.

      I now pose this question: If flocking is like conversation, then what are the birds saying?

      The answer reflects the simplicity of a hand gesture, since such gestures are the first words realized by our kind, the Homo genus.

      First, the word-gesture has something to do with meaning. I suspect what that meaning is. I cannot say for sure. Does every bird know that there should be food? Do some pigeons simply follow other pigeons? Do some find joy in flocking? This is the season.

      Second, the word-gesture has to do with presence. Presence acts like a guarantee. Each bird body guarantees a bird mind. Some know that those three figures are not the food provider. Some know the location where the food provider always stands. Some know the usual time of her appearance.

      Third, the word-gesture has to do with a message. Some pigeons are hungry. Some are well fed. Each wants something. Each feels a call. Is this what God designed them to do? Fly together and not collide?

      Surely, the flock is waiting at the location where the harbinger of the dawn appears with her loaf of bread. Yet, the location is unwittingly occupied by these three tourists. Is the flock conversing about the lady that should be at the expected spot?

      Does the missing lady define this conference of the birds?

      The birds’ expectations of the lady with the Staff of Life brings the flock of pigeons into relation with the possibility of meaning, presence and message for each bird. The promise of the one who is missing, the one who gives without us (the pigeons) knowing why, draws out, for each bird, a particular meaning, presence and message.

      Unique features within the realm of possibility well up within each pigeon, but the upwelling never loses contact with the monad, the sea of what can be. It is as if each bird, body and mind, is called into conversation at the pleasure of the lady who feeds them on that little ridge, at dawn. She draws out a particular meaning, guarantee and message for each bird. A word is like a bird.

      The flock turns and suddenly draws close to the threesome. The dog jumps. He so wants a mouth full of pigeon. They fly so close. The boy is not so restrained. His mother’s lashing does not leash him. In response, the bird-conversation whirls high into the cool October air.

      0008 Okay, I arrive at a definition of the word definition. A definition brings a word into relation with the possibilities of meaning, presence and message. A word is called into existence at the pleasure of a definition elevating a possibility. That possibility contains a meaning, a guarantee and a message.

      Yes, you read the type correctly. Meaning, presence and message belong to the realm of possibility.

      0009 How different is my definition from what others have defined?

      When most people are concerned about a definition of a word, they fly to a dictionary. Have you ever encountered a printed dictionary? What a thing. For page after page, each word is defined through the meanings, the presences and the messages of other words. The heft and feel of the dictionary makes its definitions seem tangible, heavy, dry and solid. The meanings, presence and messages feel as actual as the pages themselves. These definitions are printed in indelible ink. They are permanent. They are fixed.

      The printed dictionary conveys a message that contradicts my intuition that meaning, presence and message belong to the realm of possibility. What then, does a printed dictionary define? What is the meaning, presence and message underlying these massive tomes?

      The Printed Dictionary emerges from and situates the Western Enlightenment, what John Deely calls, The Age of Ideas. This age begins with the delusion that ideas belong to the realm of actuality, rather than the realm of possibility. Like the disappointed pigeons, this conversation continues to flock, partly in the joy of flocking and partly in expectation that some insane expert will pull the starch of knowledge from her shopworn pockets. Forget it. Humans cannot live on bread alone.

      0010 As I watch the flock, undulating, changing and swirling, without any perceptible leadership, my imagination is drawn to another context that defines the bird. The air! Breathe deep. The air is bracing and full of mystery. Humans are like the air. Words fly through us, the species of signification. Someday, the solidity of the Modern Age will take wing and the printed dictionary will come alive, words will explode out of its fabric bonds and sail to the feet of the one who gives without us knowing why.

      In the morning chill, I wonder. I watch. I hear their wings flapping. I feel as though I am dropping in on a conversation that has been going on for a very long time.

      Method

      0011 Religion is just a word. It is one of those pigeons. It flies in a big flock (the English language) as well as in little flocks (specialized discourses, for example, various theological traditions, as well as social sciences). Words flock because an attractor draws them together.

      The flock does not self-destruct because each word is different from any other word. Words rarely collide in flight. Yet, their ways change slowly over time. Like birds, words incubate, hatch, grow up, fight one another, mate, lay eggs, grow old and die. They may be hatched again. They may change feathers. Every time a bird changes, the flock also changes. The entire system of differences alters. The word, religion, has transformed its plumage over time, as both the big flock and little flocks have changed the ways that they congregate. They discovered new conversations.

      0012 How do we define religion in a postmodern world?

      As John Deely, in his many writings, points out, we are in the twilight of modernism, the Age of Ideas. Honest postmodernism, not the dishonest post-modernism promoted by modern big government (il)liberal academics, ushers us into the Fourth Age of Understanding, The Age of Triadic Relations.

      This chapter is on method. It introduces and develops a simple heuristic based on Charles Sander Peirce’s (1839-1914 AD) categories. In the subsequent chapters, I use this foundation to build models for appreciating the meaning, presence and message underlying the word religion.

      0013 Peirce’s categories constitute a doctrine. Doctrine? Does not that sound religious? What is the definition of doctrine? A doctrine is like an assumption.

      For example, science has a doctrine. In 2014, the doctrine sounds something like this: If there is a God that puts our knowledge into context, you won’t find Him here. Either that, or: If there is a God, He is so twisted that our scientific knowledge has been obtained by pretending that He is not here. How is that for an assumption? I know what you are thinking; tell me that I am jesting.

      The doctrine of Peirce’s categories goes something like this: All existence falls into the three categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness. Each higher category prescinds from the adjacent lower category.

      There are two claims, D and E.

      0014 What is firstness (D)?

      The first category is monadic. There is only one element. Better to say that the many features within the monad can be distinguished, but not separated.

      Consider a menu at a restaurant. The items on the list represent the possibilities inherent in the restaurant’s kitchen. The menu (an actuality standing for possibilities) conveys three impressions. The first is the impression of meaning (especially if there are no prices). The second is the impression of guarantee (no prices, I suppose, guarantees exquisite presentation coupled with dear cost). The third is the impression of a message (well, it must be worth the money). Each of these impressions may contradict the others. Contradictions are allowed. Firstness is the realm of possibility.

      0015 What is secondness (D)?

      The second category is dyadic. There are two elements. The two elements are separable and may influence one other through visible forces or invisible (force) fields. The two elements are real. The two elements are contiguous. I can write this as one real element [is contiguous with] other real element.

      For example, consider a flashlight. A battery establishes an invisible electric field capable of drawing current through wires and a light-emitting diode. The entire process, from the chemical reactions in the battery, to electrons cascading out of conduction bands in the diode, may be described by cause and effect.

      This [causes] that. What goes before [causes] what comes after. The flashlight (standing for secondness) conveys impressions of thingness, events, operations, organizations, factors, dynamics, situations, physics, work, force, the Real and so forth. Secondness is the realm of actuality. The laws of non-contradiction apply.

      Often, I will write a single item for secondness. Remember that there are always two contiguous real elements. Actuality is dyadic.

      0016 What is thirdness (D)?

      The third category is triadic. One element brings two other elements into relation. Better to say: One category brings the two other categories into relation.

      The laws of exclusion apply. For example, consider my examples. What if I use the flashlight in example two to read the menu in example one? Using the flashlight (thirdness) brings both illumination and the menu (secondness) into relation with the possibilities inherent in the restaurant’s kitchen (firstness). The fact that

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