I don't agree about your distinction between religions and witchcraft: holy books are not necessary for religions.
That's a matter of definition. I'm using the definitions from "Religion Explained" because it's the best model I've come across explaining why people believe these things, and it provides some hints about which weird things are believable. For example, experiments apparently show that the optimal number of bizarre properties of an object to make it stick in people's minds is one. So you have statues that bleed, and gods that talk to you when they aren't there, but a statue that both bleeds and talks to you when it isn't there is less likely.
But let's take your definitions. Can you point to a religion, however you want to define it, that has no holy book?
It can't be any sect of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Scientology, Taoism, Satanism, or Cthulhu-worshipping, since they all have books.
I don't know enough about Jainism, Sikhism, or Zorostrianism to know if they have books.
There are cargo cults, but perhaps if the choice is to call that a religion or witchcraft it's easy to call it witchcraft.
What's your counterexample?
]]>believe Jews to be the chosen people of their God, yet they themselves are in no hurry to convert to Judaism...
FYI, Rob Bell is an Evangelical Christian with a sensible view on this specific issue. He believes he is a Jew, and Jesus is his rabbi. I would guess he believes Jesus is the rabbi all other Christians too, but I might be missing details of the is-a-rabbi-of relationship so I'm not sure. IIRC this is described in his "Velvet Elvis" book.
He seems to be leading a feel-good sect there. More ecstatic than legalistic. If you're shopping for a flavor of Christianity to convert to (which you aren't), I would recommend him.
]]>And I'm wondering if I can get John Barnes' the Wager declared a religion. Sort of a modern Confucianism for assholes...
The important question here is if they have some tangible representation that can be put on the lawn of the Oklahoma capitol, next to the 10 commandments and perhaps the upcoming Satanist display. If they want to compete, they'll probably need an interactive display for children. It might get crowded there.
There are two loose ends here for me, can anyone help?
I'd pay money ($20 comes to mind) to see the design of the interactive display to educate children about Satanism.
I'd also like to find out more about John Barnes' the Wager. This looks promising because rational religious belief seems to necessarily include a gambling component; Pascal's wager is an example of this done wrong. However Google queries like '"John Barnes" Wager' and 'barnes wager -noble" don't have relevant hits.
]]>Then there's the distinction between religion (which has holy books) and witchcraft (which does not). See Boyer's "Religion Explained".
The statutory law/case law distinction seems vaguely analogous to the religion/witchcraft distinction, but it's undermined by the fact that most of text I've seen in holy books consists of narratives, not statements like "Thou shalt do this and that".
I'm confused now.
]]>IIRC an economist whose name I've blanked on noted that if you start looking at un-developed world peasant systems and developing/developed world intra-family transactions it turns out that something like 75% of all economic exchanges of value occur in non-fiscal systems. And not often via barter, either.
I think by "non-fiscal" you mean no money is involved. If it's an exchange, and it doesn't use money, and it isn't barter, what is it?
My best guess is quid-pro-quo. I give you eggs when I have extra, and you give me pork when you slaughter a pig, because we're friends. If I give you eggs for long enough and you don't give me pork during that time, we won't be friends any more. But that's a guess.
]]>If poppies were only good for making opium, that would be a truly bizarre promotional image.
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