Faith, doctrines and religion

Tuesday, August 2, 2022 (09:47)

A friend pointed me to a blog post by Philip Goff: Why religion without belief can still make perfect sense

Yes, “there is more to a religion than a cold set of doctrines” because “religions involve spiritual practices and rituals”. Where traditions “bind a community together across space and time”, and rituals “mark the seasons and the big moments of life: birth, coming of age, marriage, death”.

Yes, each religion has her “specific metaphysical views” [and doctrines] and it makes sense to ask “how plausible those views are”. And there are people who “become convinced on intellectual grounds” by the “specific doctrines of a particular faith”. (Unlike Goff I am not so sure whether I’d call this “well and good”.)

Yes, “it is myopic to obsess about the ‘belief-y’ aspects of religion at the expense of all the other aspects of the lived religious life.”