What's your opinion on Liberal Religion?

[Belacqua]

has 'belief in a god' as the core principle of religion, and anything else as secondary.

I think that Christianity has emphasized belief. And you're right to say that this generally entails belief as assent-to-proposition, even when in practice it behaves as commitment-to-principle. 

I'm not sure how general this has been in history, in non-Christian or pre-Christian cultures. And I don't mean that people are faking things and doing things they feel are dishonest. Just that assent-to-proposition may well be minor compared to the ritual, performative, inclusive aspects of the religion in other times and places.

This comes in part from my experience in Japan. Normally we are listed as one of the two most atheistic countries in the world (along with China). And certainly STEM studies get great honor here, and I have never heard of an evolution-denier. But there is a kind of non-Western disconnect between how a person might answer a questionnaire and how a person behaves. Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines are still common and well-maintained, and certain rituals are important to people who would no doubt call themselves atheists. 

For example, there's a late-August Buddhist holiday called Obon which is the day when dead souls revisit their graveyards. It is extremely common to go to clean the tomb and decorate it with a paper lantern at that time. My area is almost all True Pure Land sect, so the lanterns are very colorful. I knew an American guy one time who asked people coming back from the graveyard whether they really believed the souls were visiting. Some said they'd never really thought about it. The most common response was that very useful Japanese shrug-and-smile combination which allows one to avoid impertinent questions. 

Or if you have a major life-event coming up, like an entrance examination or major surgery, a large percentage of people would go to a shrine, write their wish in a wooden plaque, and hang it on the hook provided. If asked "Do you think there is a kami in the shrine who will assist you in your entrance into medical school?" I suspect most would say no, but they still took an afternoon off studying to climb up to the shrine. 

So I think we have to think of religion in all its roles. The role in which it serves as failed science is probably the least important. A sense of integration into the community, and a sense of how one fits into the universe, has traditionally been bigger, I suspect. To some extent this entails belief, but again, it isn't the full-on recitation of a credo which Christianity may demand. 

In Plato's Symposium, for example, nobody seems to question the fact that there's a goddess called Aphrodite. But everybody feels perfectly free to describe her however he wants. One person says there are two of her. One person says that Eros isn't really her son. It's very freewheeling, and nobody worries about heresy. 

I also suspect that this forum's moralistic approach to science is an inheritance from Christianity. People who reject science's authority are seen as bad people. We are free to insult them. Some people will recite their credo in praise of science on any thread where it's at all relevant. Science is the way and the truth and the life, and those who doubt it are not only incorrect but bad for the world. In fact science has no moral values built in, but some people find them nonetheless. 

Terry Eagleton wrote a book recently called Culture, which is in part about recent attempts to find something in society to fill the role of religion, now that religion is fading. If religion no longer gives us our values, how do we find values that aren't merely a reflection of what our capitalist masters want? Like it or not, we are propagandized from birth, and if it's not the pastor it's going to be the TV. I have never seen a more moralistic hour of propagandizing than the time I was forced to watch CNN while waiting to change planes at O'Hare -- and that all pretended to be objective news coverage. Eagleton concludes that none of the suggested substitutes has worked, and that none can. (This doesn't mean that religion is true; just that it has filled a unique role.) Science and capitalism came up in this world together, and the values generally associated with them very often support each other in ways that may not actually be good for us. 

And yes, religion can push bad things. Zen Buddhists in Japan were intimately involved in the pre-War militarism. Zen mindfulness is a useful tool for people about to die in a suicide airplane. But to say that that is intrinsic to religion and the good parts aren't is just lopsided.