Essays

A Working Definition of Religion - Summary and a Problem When I finished the essay, A Working Definition of Religion, I ended up making a summary of its main points, though I did not include the summary in the text as I posted it: 1) Religions are formulations of pursuits of the essence of reality. 2) But actually much of life, not just that part called religion, involves a pursuit of the essence of reality. 3) Formulations of this pursuit can never exhaust its real nature or describe the deep nature of reality because - 4) those formulations and the actual essence are in two different, unconnected worlds; 5) finding the connection between these worlds is the real task. Once the basic ideas were worked out in this way, I saw a clear problem: points four and five are contradictory. Four states that our everyday world, and the deeper reality that we seek actually represent different and unconnected worlds. However, five says that finding this impossible connection is "the real task." Well, that won't work. It seems almost like a koan - there can be no logical solution, not as the issues are framed here. I don't feel that I want to change what I wrote - at least not yet. Rather I want to look into this contradiction. So that is what I'm working on now, and I hope to be able to post the result here very soon.

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