What makes a religion?

[Angrboda]

The Seven Dimensions of Religion (Ninian Smart)

Ritual: Forms and orders of ceremonies (private and/or public) (often regarded as revealed)

Narrative and Mythic: stories (often regarded as revealed) that work on several levels. Sometimes narratives fit together into a fairly complete and systematic interpretation of the universe and human's place in it.

Experiential and emotional: dread, guilt, awe, mystery, devotion, liberation, ecstasy, inner peace, bliss (private)

Social and Institutional: belief system is shared and attitudes practiced by a group. Often rules for identifying community membership and participation (public)

Ethical and legal: Rules about human behavior (often regarded as revealed from supernatural realm)

Doctrinal and philosophical: systematic formulation of religious teachings in an intellectually coherent form

Material: ordinary objects or places that symbolize or manifest the sacred or supernatural

[madog]

In my opinion

Deism is the belief in a supernatural being or beings that created but does not intervene in the universe ...

Theism is that the supernatural being or beings do intervene in the universe ...

Religion is differences in opinion as to how a supernatural being or beings intervene in the universe and how man should react to that interference.

[ignoramus]

Before it corrupts itself, in why order does it originally start?
Do/did any instigators actually believe any of the woo from the beginning, and it grew from there, or was it a carefully crafted scheme from the very beginning?

The way religion is portrayed in GOT is the way I feel it's always been.
Basically an organisation to control from the sidelines.

[robvalue]

I think it starts out of ignorance, discomfort with not having answers, stories being retold and getting out of hand, and a desire to control people. How much exactly this is weighted for a particular religion is hard to say. I personally think Islam was designed to control people more than Christianity was.

Clearly it propagates almost exclusively by indoctrination. Take away two generations of this and I'd wager any religion would be stone dead.

In my opinion

Deism is the belief in a supernatural being or beings that created but does not intervene in the universe ...

Theism is that the supernatural being or beings do intervene in the universe ...

Religion is differences in opinion as to how a supernatural being or beings intervene in the universe and how man should react to that interference.

The problem here is that there are some atheistic religions. Like some Buddhists just believe in reincarnation and karma and stuff, but no creator.

[Dystopia]

I think something can be classified as a religion if there's at least one core belief in common between a group of people that relate Humans to some important philosophical/existential question and there's a divine explanation.

[madog]

 
[quote pid='1302948' dateline='1466025693']
In my opinion

Deism is the belief in a supernatural being or beings that created but does not intervene in the universe ...

Theism is that the supernatural being or beings do intervene in the universe ...

Religion is differences in opinion as to how a supernatural being or beings intervene in the universe and how man should react to that interference.

The problem here is that there are some atheistic religions. Like some Buddhists just believe in reincarnation and karma and stuff, but no creator.
[/quote]

As I said its my opinion, and not a hard and fast one ....

But putting aside that many consider Buddhists to be a philosophy .... 

I can't argue about any atheistic "religions" as I don't understand them, but if no supernatural intervention is involved I struggle to see how it is a religion ....

[robvalue]

Sure, I mean I don't think there is a hard and fast definition. That's kind of my point here, to try and see if there is a minimum standard we could all agree on

Atheists can still believe in supernatural bullcrap, just not the god variety. I don't understand any religions, so atheistic ones are no more stupid to me. They could for example posit that the universe is eternal, so wasn't created, but some supernatural something-or-other runs everything behind the scenes to keep it going.

Of course what is and isn't a "God" isn't well defined either. So it gets murkier still.

[madog]

  That's kind of my point here, to try and see if there is a minimum standard we could all agree on
 

Maybe it could be that religion is something people believe regardless of the evidence or reason whereas non religion is merely peoples theory's that they accept can be challenged with reason or new empirical evidence?

[robvalue]

Yeah, that's kind of my initial proposal: it contains beliefs based on speculation. That seems to be the essential ingredient.

But maybe that more accurately describes superstition, and religion is just a superstition that has got out of hand.

PS: You're right, believing regardless of evidence is a "stronger" condition. It's worse than speculation. It can involve denial of the evident.

[Edwardo Piet]

Supernatural claims make a religion I reckon. Buddhism for example has no gods but involves karma which is supernatural.

Magic shit.