EDL Leader Tommy Robinson condemns mosque burning

[JDHURF]

[Showboat]

[JDHURF]

[exploited]

To be fair, isn't extending religion to mean "anything illogical and based upon acceptance of a supernatural force" kind of stretching it?

What about palm readers? Or people who actually believe in psychics? Is that "religious" belief?

In my mind, religion is associated with belief in a deity (ex. Christianity) or, absent that, belief in an overarching belief system that explains and accounts for moral decision-making (ex. Buddhism). Does making offerings to your ancestors really count?

[JDHURF]

I did not extend the meaning of religion to include "anything illogical." I stated quite explicitly that it must consist in believing in supernatural agents and events. There are plenty of irrational beliefs that have nothing at all to do with the supernatural.

I'm sure it seems to someone with a pedestrian and Western-skewed understanding of religion that it must include belief in a deity, but scholars researching the subject realize how incredibly superficial, arbitrarily narrow and decontextualized such an understanding, really a misunderstanding, is.

The most rigorous, scientific understanding of religion is presented by Atran and is the following: "religion is a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitment to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agents who master people's existential anxieties, such as death and deception."

I don't know how in the world anyone could conceivably argue that making offerings to one's ancesteral spirits is anything other than religious.

[exploited]

[JDHURF]

I don't know about the tarot cards. If people believe that the tarot cards embody some supernatural force, perhaps. I don't know enough about it.

Palm reading can certainly take a religious form. It is featured prominently in many gypsy religious beliefs. Ouija board's are simply board games, but people believing that they can call spirits to them and so on are clearly engaging with the ouija board in a religious manner through their religious beliefs.

I don't believe tarot cards, palm reading or ouja boards are inherently religious. Whether or not they take a religious form depends upon the belief of those engaging them.

I would insist upon the difference between placing flowers on a grave and making "offerings" to ancestral spirits.

[Grandma Death]

[The Dharma Bum]

Tarot cards, palm reading etc are part of the Romani religious tradition. The person who performs the task is an oracle.

Most ancient religions had some type of divination involved in their practice..

[Grandma Death]