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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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This is an absurdly broad definition of "religion." Under this definition why isn't utilitarianism, for example, a religion? Libertarianism? Heck, philosophical liberalism? Kantianism? Virtue ethics? If your definition of "religion" is so broad that it contains not just those things thought of traditionally as religion but functionally any normative system I have to question the utility of your definition.

Welcome to the world of legal disputes when it comes to question of religion. For instance in 1961 during Torcaso v. Watkins the Supreme Court indeed defined religion very broadly in the famous footnote number eleven.

Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others” (Torcaso, supra, 495, note 11).

I like how James Lindsay thinks about religion as defined by its theology. The role of religious theology is to organize related epistemology, sociology, axiology and cosmology in one united view, it gives it a direction and coherence. In that sense theology incorporates ontological definitions of what is reality and what is human, it explores people's moral duties and ways to organize in society including in accordance to its system of knowledge. So for instance in Christianity the world and people were created by god, they have moral duty in accordance to god's laws as revealed in holy scripture, they should organize themselves in churches overseen by clergy that provide specific guidance for local policies and they should study scripture and god's creation for further expansion of knowledge of god and the world.

If I would take upon myself constructing similar "woke" theology, it could look as something like this: Our [social] reality is a social construct imposed by society that was is in turn created by man in his attempt to bring his ideas into practice - The Theory and Praxis dichotomy. Our current [social] reality is very imperfect as it was created by privileged people who posses privilege of certain class, race, sex, sexual orientation in their various intersections and who oppress the population in order to reproduce this imperfect society. Our moral duty is to criticize the current society, center the marginalized people who posses both slave and master side of the knowledge in order to promote Social Justice. In that sense the knowledge as well as other things needs to be looked upon through lenses of power relations of oppressor/oppressed. Our society should organize so that we create special departments to promote Social Justice and promote Social Justice in holistic approach ranging from schools to corporations in order to engage the population in the process of conscietization where everybody will able to engage in dialectical Theory/Praxis process where they act and then reflect upon results of their action through The Theory to perfect the society.