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im trying to make a point that 'religion' encompasses a phenomenon that isn't done justice by our concept of culture. i agree the lines are blurry and often coexist, but like... idk, did you watch the recent FLDS documentary on netflix? 'culture' feels inadequate to explain that

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

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@default_friend

sure but i feel like i'm trying to point at a real distinction here. If you take a group where people genuinely, earnestly believe that contradicting the prophet will make them burn in hell, and they make choices strictly out of that fear, it feels weird to call that 'culture'

11:36 PM · Aug 21, 2022

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and

like, sure you can pull out the culture label to wrap around it, but the way we use culture feels more like 'basic norms' or 'social judgment' or 'moral disgust' is the thing that guides your behavior, not 'trying to avoid being tortured by a supernatural figure'

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and

im trying to say that the category of behavior that's influenced by literally believing in a specific supernatural system is something we should conceive of differently than behavior influenced by strung together moral justifications or trying not to be weird

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and

it produces culture & is an element of culture i think axiomatic beliefs are products of culture, but they're also a bit more fundamental & culture develops around them so we can call the faith axioms products of culture while simultaneously considering them something distinct

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yeah the thing im trying to point out is that i think many people do not consider them meaningfully distinct

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Replace a Utopian afterlife with actively constructing Utopia on Earth (perpetual progress) and the judgement of The Prophet with “the right side of history” and things feel a lot more similar

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It's probably worth considering that many (most?) religions aren't like that. Two very famous and popular ones are. But I would expect that most religions would not be described even slightly by "people ... believe that contradicting ... will make them burn in hell."