What's your opinion on Liberal Religion?

[emjay]

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.

Try Durkheim, Em.

A unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Gods - a figurative expression of society.

Obviously, that’s been Christian belief for the west for the last few centuries, and is commonly some sort of theism for many people in the world- but a definition of religion which excludes the entirety of religious beliefs beyond Christianity or theism is insufficient for anything beyond common use in the west- as exemplified in this thread.

Insomuch as religion in the uk is middle of the road- I’d call that the effect of liberalization in the context of beliefs about the divine which are fundamentally illiberal- such as a capitol g god.

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Again to both of you, I think from this discussion it's pretty clear I have indeed been using the word 'religion' wrong all my life (or at least not using the best definitions or interpretations of those definitions) - conflating belief and behaviour (where I'm using behaviour here as basically a catch-all term that includes all outward manifestations of those beliefs; individual, social, ceremonial, ritual etc), or at least overemphasing the belief aspect of religion/assuming its presence where it's not strictly necessary.

But looking at my upbringing I think it's understandable that I interpreted it that way, in the sense that my family's (Protestant) beliefs have always emphasised belief over custom/ritual/ceremony etc (as we've talked about elsewhere)... indeed the latter being generally frowned upon... where a church was defined more as a gathering of people itself, and nothing more, rather than anything material or ritual... to the extent that none of the churches I went to growing up ever even had their own buildings, always meeting in rented rooms or schools etc, and rarely had so much as a cross on the wall. That's not to say that under your definition GN there aren't still unifying beliefs and practices and sacred things, even in that sort of church, just that they are less visible/tangible than more materialistic/ritual churches. Basically, in contrast, if my upbringing had been Catholic or even CofE, where the focus is much more material/ritual, then I probably would have understood the word 'religion' differently, maybe swinging in the opposite direction, emphasising behaviour over belief.

Anyway, going forward, I think this means I have to be very careful in distinguishing between whether I'm talking about religion or belief. To be clear, the reason I joined this site was primarily to discuss belief, not religion, under these terms. But that comes from a perspective of not only an upbringing that focused more on belief, but also from living in a country, with as you say, liberal religion... where religion has very little effect (political or otherwise) on day-to-day living for the most part. In contrast, it's understandable why other people would come to this same site and be more interested in discussing religion than belief, under these terms (sorry, it still feels weird to separate the two, but I'll get used to it) those who come from countries, like the US, where religion is much more intertwined with everyday living, and often oppressive. I'm sorry if failure to make that distinction has ever caused any problems in the past.