Hmmm...I'm still not clear on what this thread was supposed to be all about.  It started by listing numbers of different "religions," but without any clear purpose. 

Was it supposed to encourage us to be cynical about "religions" in some way?  It didn't say so, and nothing it included made that reasonable.  The existence of many wrong beliefs doesn't suggest the absence of a right belief -- just as the fact that there is (quite literally) an infinite number of wrong answers to any given question, or an infinite number of wrong solutions to a mathematical equation, does not imply that somehow a true or correct answer is possible.  In fact, it doesn't even suggest that a correct answer is improbable.     There's nothing about (somebody writing that  2+2= 12, or 64, or 3,456) that implies that (2+2=4) is wrong or impossible.

So again, let me throw the question out there to the entire field of people who have a philosophical interest on Cellar: what's the point?
 

Anon wrote:

You’ll have to wait until xob logs in again for a definitive answer. That can sometimes be weeks or months; but, maybe today!

Fair enough.  And thank you for your reply, too.

I think you may be right: perhaps each of these things is really just a "probe" (or a "troll," even), something casually dropped in to elicit some response and get some discussion going. In which case, mission accomplished, obviously: we're discussing it.

But even a "probe" has to have some point, does it not? That is, it needs to aggitate some point of view, or advocate some other, in a way sufficiently clear that the recipient audience feel the effects of the "probe."  I find with this thread, there isn't enough clarity to make the "probe" effective.  I can, if I try hard, imagine for the poster, Bruce, what it is he was aiming at -- but not without also assuming something unspecified, something possibly less than fair and charitable about both his intention and his dexterity with reasoning, and thus attributing to him something he might not be happy to own.  So I'm making every effort not to do that, and to invite him or others to clarify the intended point as they see it, so I'm rightly understanding the argument they perceive to be worth making about "religion" here.

So thanks for your contribution.  I remain unclear on how various posts are supposed to be interpreted, though.  Nothing obvious suggests itself.

Anon wrote:

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; but, it depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Well, there's at least one obvious meaning for "cigar" and "is."

tw wrote:

But and again is a fundamental characteristic of every religion.  It is ONLY a relationship between one person and his god.  It is never imposed on anyone else. 

So you say, I see. You've said it at least three times, now. 

But others, obviously, say otherwise. 

And since they do, either you have to say that things like Taoism, Confucianism, Communism and Islam are not "religions," (which I think you're unlikely to want to say, or to be able to defend if you did), or you have to say that they are wrong for thinking what they do, then you are, yourself, imposing your opinion of what you consider right religiousness upon them.  Yet you say that's a thing one should never do...

And nobody cares what your religion is.

Actually, lots of people do.  But what some people "care about" or "don't care about" is no indicator of what really matters, obviously. 

Many smokers don't care about lung cancer.  But they learn to care, when they realize the thing they didn't care about has fallen upon them.  So maybe you don't care if your neighbour is a saint or a Satanist.  But you might find that there are very good reasons to care.

Anything that perverts or corrupts that relationship / that purpose is, in religion, called evil.

Well, the use of the words "perverts" and "corrupts" implies you know what the "right" or "unperverted" or "uncorrupted" form of practice is.  And I have to ask: how do you know what the "uncorrupted" or "unperverted" form of Islam or Confucianism is?

A religion must not violate civil laws.

Says who?  In conservative Islam, religious law and civil laws are the same.  They make no distinction.  But many of their laws violate things like child abuse or women's rights as understood in the West.  So which one is right: Islam or the West, and how do you know?

Imposition must never be part of a fundamental and true religion based in high ideals.

Then you must not believe that something like Islam is a "religion," since they certainly impose their Sharia on their citizens, and are at pains to extend it as well to the West, for that matter, whether we want it or not.

Yet I've never met anybody who doesn't think Islam is a religion.  Do you think that?