ConsequentAtheist
Registered Senior Member
As noted elsewhere, I was recently introduced to Yi-Fu Tuan who wrote:
Religion
Religion is present to varying degree in all cultures. It appears to be a universal human trait. In religion human beings are clearly distinguished from other animals. How can a humanistic perspective contribute to the geography of religion? The field is in disarray for lack of a coherent definition of the phenomenon it seeks to understand. Research on barns and house types is cultural geography, but research on churches and temples seems to belong to the geography of religion. Why is feng-shui, a technique for locating graves and houses, not treated as a branch of applied geography or even of surveying? Is it deemed religious because some practices in geomancy may appear supernatural or magical to the Western scholar? A field so lacking in focus and so arbitrary in its selection of themes cannot hope to achieve intellectual maturity.
A humanist geographer concerned with religion begins by asking, what is the meaning of religion? To the extent that religion is a special kind of awareness, how does it differ from other kinds of awareness? The word religion is derived from the Latin religare, which means to bind again, that is, to bind oneself strongly to a set of beliefs, faith, or ethic. More broadly speaking, the religious person is one who seeks coherence and meaning in his world, and a religious culture is one that has a clearly structured world view. The religious impulse is to tie things together. To what? The "what" is the ultimate concern theologians speak of, and it differs from people to people. Ultimate concern is the emotion-charged expression for the kingpin of a system of beliefs or the central principle that binds the components of a world view. The central principle may be God, the belief that "God does not play dice," a social or ecological ethic, or a concept of justice or of historical development. In this view, Buddhism is as much of a religion as Christianity, and atheistic Communism is a religion no less than agnostic Confucianism. At the individual level, Albert Einstein was as religious as Thomas Aquinas; their kingpins differed but not their passion for a meaningful cosmos.
All human beings are religious if religion is broadly defined as the impluse for coherence and meaning.
The strength of the impluse varies enormously from culture to culture, and from person to person. A nonreligious person or culture is defined as secular. What does secular mean? It means the religious impulse is reduced to a minimum. A secular person is a pragmatic person who does not act from a set of unwavering principles; his acts are ad hoc, based on the needs and conditions of the moment. He feels no urge to integrate his experience and knowledge with a larger system. He has many short term projects, but no ultimate concern. Modern technological society is secular because its orientations are largely pragmatic; its members do not subscribe to any authoritative world view. It is a mistake, however, to equate modern industrial society with the secular outlook. Some nonliterate peoples are very pragmatic. They may practice magic, but magic is mainly a technique for achieving limited ends and is not integrated with any system of religious thought. A humanistic approach to religion would require that we be aware of the differences in the human desire for coherence, and note how these differences are manifest in the organization of space and time, and in attitudes to nature. [emphasis added - CA]
- "Humanistic Geography". Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 66, No. 2: 266-276, pg. 271-272
Religion as the impluse for coherence and meaning: does this constitute a cogent definition, and one which frees 'religion' from the chains of supernaturalism and teleology?Religion is present to varying degree in all cultures. It appears to be a universal human trait. In religion human beings are clearly distinguished from other animals. How can a humanistic perspective contribute to the geography of religion? The field is in disarray for lack of a coherent definition of the phenomenon it seeks to understand. Research on barns and house types is cultural geography, but research on churches and temples seems to belong to the geography of religion. Why is feng-shui, a technique for locating graves and houses, not treated as a branch of applied geography or even of surveying? Is it deemed religious because some practices in geomancy may appear supernatural or magical to the Western scholar? A field so lacking in focus and so arbitrary in its selection of themes cannot hope to achieve intellectual maturity.
A humanist geographer concerned with religion begins by asking, what is the meaning of religion? To the extent that religion is a special kind of awareness, how does it differ from other kinds of awareness? The word religion is derived from the Latin religare, which means to bind again, that is, to bind oneself strongly to a set of beliefs, faith, or ethic. More broadly speaking, the religious person is one who seeks coherence and meaning in his world, and a religious culture is one that has a clearly structured world view. The religious impulse is to tie things together. To what? The "what" is the ultimate concern theologians speak of, and it differs from people to people. Ultimate concern is the emotion-charged expression for the kingpin of a system of beliefs or the central principle that binds the components of a world view. The central principle may be God, the belief that "God does not play dice," a social or ecological ethic, or a concept of justice or of historical development. In this view, Buddhism is as much of a religion as Christianity, and atheistic Communism is a religion no less than agnostic Confucianism. At the individual level, Albert Einstein was as religious as Thomas Aquinas; their kingpins differed but not their passion for a meaningful cosmos.
All human beings are religious if religion is broadly defined as the impluse for coherence and meaning.
The strength of the impluse varies enormously from culture to culture, and from person to person. A nonreligious person or culture is defined as secular. What does secular mean? It means the religious impulse is reduced to a minimum. A secular person is a pragmatic person who does not act from a set of unwavering principles; his acts are ad hoc, based on the needs and conditions of the moment. He feels no urge to integrate his experience and knowledge with a larger system. He has many short term projects, but no ultimate concern. Modern technological society is secular because its orientations are largely pragmatic; its members do not subscribe to any authoritative world view. It is a mistake, however, to equate modern industrial society with the secular outlook. Some nonliterate peoples are very pragmatic. They may practice magic, but magic is mainly a technique for achieving limited ends and is not integrated with any system of religious thought. A humanistic approach to religion would require that we be aware of the differences in the human desire for coherence, and note how these differences are manifest in the organization of space and time, and in attitudes to nature. [emphasis added - CA]
- "Humanistic Geography". Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 66, No. 2: 266-276, pg. 271-272
