Religion

From The SpiritWiki

Religion is a faith-based Existential Paradigm woven into a complex institutional framework, a framework created and controlled by elite members of the Accumulating Class in order to service their accumulation agenda. Religion is institution designed to help propagate a specific Existential Paradigm.

Subclasses

Religion > Authentic Religion, Elite Religion

Syncretic Terms

Religion >

Related LP Terms

Religion > Narrative, Sacrilization

Non-LP Related Terms

Religion > Narrative, Sacrilization

Notes

Propagating an Existential Paradigm helps individuals meet their cognitive need to know and understand the world, and their more spiritual need for Alignment and Connection. Religion can, and often is, constructed to meet other of our Seven Essential Needs, like our emotional needs for belonging. Thus..

Religion is also an institution setup to help meet one or more of humanity's Seven Essential Needs.

Religion may be broken down into two sub-classes, Elite Religion and Working Class Religion. Elite religion prioritizes the needs of the Accumulating Class while Working Class Religion prioritizes Healing, Connection, and the Seven Essential Needs of humanity.

Religion may be further distinguishes as either Authentic Religion (religion that teaches authentic healing and Connection Practice and Inauthentic Religion, which teaches anything and everything but.

Religion is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down and, frankly, scholars have said some really stupid shit about it over the years, Sigmund Freud being a classic example. Freud believed that religion arises as a consequence of

  1. an expression of the son-father relationship (see totem and taboo, related to religions where "totem animals" become sacred)[1]
  2. the need to defend oneself against the "crushingly superior force of nature."[2]
  3. The "urge to rectify the shortcoming of civilization..."[3]

For a more fulsome discussion of definitions and issues, see What is Religion

Other Definitions

"Religion tends to be conceptualized as an external, community-based phenomena in which a particular organized set of beliefs, behaviors, and rituals are institutionalized by individuals sharing similar spiritualities."[4]

Footnotes

  1. Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Anchor Books, 1961. p. 21
  2. Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Anchor Books, 1961. p. 21
  3. Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Anchor Books, 1961. p. 21
  4. Hodge, David R. “The Intrinsic Spirituality Scale: A New Six-Item Instrument for Assessing the Salience of Spirituality as a Motivational Construct.” Journal of Social Service Research 30, no. 1 (January 1, 2003): 41–61. https://doi.org/10.1300/J079v30n01_03. 42