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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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'
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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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I think your OP inspires ire b/c it doesn't make plain 1) religion is definitely part of & productive of culture; 2) culture alone _can_ make a family cut people off (but often that culture can look superstitious/religious [eg communism]); 3) it assaults the audience
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this feels like one of those 'hard to have sufficient nuance in a single tweet and so everybody assumes you're saying the dumbest possible version of the thought'
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religion feels like a disease to me; its like one where a lot of ppl can get a sort of mild version of it and live for a long time, but the full blown version of it is really horrible. i don't think ive ever denied that ppl can have a mild version of the disease.
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it feels like im around a bunch of ppl who've only ever had a mild version and are like 'oh this isn't so bad' and i feel like im trying to warn people that if the infection does hit vital organs that this will in fact get really bad. but sure, its not bad for a lot of ppl