Posted: Jun 07, 2012 3:43 pm
jerome wrote:Zwaarddijk wrote:Microfarad wrote:What is the exact difference between religions and paranormal beliefs?
A religion need not have any belief involved - e.g. one can be a perfectly "religious" orthodox Jew without believing in any of the Jewish doctrines, just by acting out the customs of religious Judaism. Another difference is that religion usually has some kind of systematic thinking about their beliefs, as well as some kind of communal aspect - which usually is lacking wrt people who think ghosts exist and the like.
That's an absolutely brilliant definition! Did you come up with it? IT resolves a problem I have faced in writing about this stuff for ages!
j x
In part it's something I've got from reading some studies in comparative religion. However, some things seem to be considered religions these days even if they lack the communal aspect, though, and the religions I've been interested in learning about for a variety of reasons have tended to be on the community-based end of the spectrum (e.g. some varieties of Judaism, various minor middle east religions such as the druze, the yazidi, etc.)
The systematic thinking about beliefs need not per se be about beliefs either - in Judaism, the systematic thinking seems mostly to regard practices rather than contents of belief.
Anyways, happy to be of help. I can probably look up some references for you if you want to read some more scholarly sources on it.