points by Cpoll 3 days ago | 0 comments
> does that imply that there is no shared american culture?
I think you might've convinced me of this just with your comment.
Also, flip "religion" and "culture" and the post still (mostly) works, though I don't think that proves anything.
The moral/preference idea is closer, but you get a lot of gray areas like sports teams and Sunday roasts (complete with threat of excommunication for non-adherence).
[–] s1artibartfast 3 days ago
[–] ghusto 3 days ago
Is Buddhism a religion? There's no supernatural higher power there?
Buddhism is actually a great example, because it shows how one can choose their religion just as they can their cultural preferences.
[–] TFNA 3 days ago
Buddhism as actually practiced for the last 2500 years ascribes all kinds of deity-like features and the supernatural to the Buddha – travel Asia and you’ll see people praying to Amitabha Buddha in order to be reborn in his Pure Land, and even Theravada Buddhism that doesn't go whole hog with pantheons still holds that the Buddha was divinely immune to fire, poison, and drowning. A non-supernatural Buddha is largely a feature of the twentieth-century West, which thought it could get something in tune with a more rational era by reviving, so it thought, “original Buddhism” with questionable results. Even non-revival, supernaturally charged strands of Buddhism have their converts in the West.
[–] ghusto 2 days ago
Sure, and there are followers of Christ who also do all the things he said not to (Catholics). I don't take a religion's followers as good examples of the founders intents.
[–] TFNA 2 days ago
The intent of Buddhism's founder is ultimately unknowable. The earliest source we have, the Pali canon, already contains the supernatural and the mythological. It cannot be emphasized enough just how modern attempts to reconstruct the "original" Buddhism are, and they are simply unfalsifiable.
[–] s1artibartfast 2 days ago
Yes? I dont think anyone disputing that religion can be chosen? How is this relevant?
[–] rendx 3 days ago
> One invokes a supernatural higher power
Like the flying spaghetti monster?
[–] s1artibartfast 2 days ago
If someone actually believed it, sure.
In the US, we often make an exception for the former but not the latter. Sometimes we do both.
For example there is a conscientious objector exemption from the military draft.