Religion IS NOT God

Religiosity is not Faith in God

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Definition of religion in Merriam-Webster: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices… scrupulous conformity

Frans de Waal suggests this definition: religion is “the shared reverence for the supernatural, sacred, or spiritual as well as the symbols, rituals, and worship that are associated with it”. De Waal’s definition echoes one given by sociologist Émile Durkheim, who also emphasised the importance of shared experiences that “unite into one single moral community”. [How and why did religion evolve?]

Religion began as an organizing ideal for a cohesive community, a shared sense of behaviors beneficial to the communtiy, or what we loosely term morality. Morality is a shared expectation of behaviors and traditions which are beneficial to the cohesiveness of community structures. Religion isn’t the only such organizing principle; and, any such principle may be manipulated and misrepresented for malign reasons, leading to extremism, for example, the MAGA movement manipulated and misrepresents our…