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Comment Threads

• heteromeles commented on The cult of justice
  But let's take your definitions. Can you point to a religion, however you want to define it, that has no holy book? Sure. Shinto. I'd argue that much of modern paganism lacks a holy book too. Note that your argument that, if it's written down, it's therefore a holy book, is amusingly quaint. By that definition, there is no bookless religion, because we're writing about them on the internet, and Our Words Have Power. There's a non-subtle difference between having a book or two that are widely read but not regarded as scripture (as in paganism), and something like the...
• Trottelreiner commented on The cult of justice
  BTW, for the Kalasha religion, there is this: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/KalashaReligion.pdf...
• Trottelreiner commented on The cult of justice
  Err, sorry to ask, but could you quote the definition from Boyer's "Religion Explained", preferentially with some context? Having somewhat skimmed through it with Google Books, I have a feeling that you might have misunderstood him somewhat; IMHO Boyer denotes as witchcraft a belief that some individuals are very powerful at influencing our situation and sees this as one example of our "agency detection module" running wild. Which might contain a hefty dose of what psycho jargon calls "magical thinking", though I somewhat think conspiracy theories are likely a secular variant. Though as we all know, some conspiracies are real....
• Trottelreiner commented on The cult of justice
  btw, on the text by farmer et al. i linked too, imho their main idea is the heightened long term communication, use of written texts or mnemonics and establishment of local specialists called priest etc. lead to a qualitative change in the nature of the belief systems involved. which likely was not a abrupt change, but an accelerating, self-reinforcing process. i guess you can guess what i'm pondering, it's the dreaded s-word. so, if today's religions and law systems, let's not forget literature, are the result of singularity 1.0 transforming tribal belief systems and half explicit, half implicit ethical systems,...
• lopezsh commented on The cult of justice
  Hi Charles, late to the party here, but -- I'm a sociologist and your post is basically Emile Durkheim's 1912 theory of religion in a nutshell. Cheers!...