In this case, they are ignorant, text book writers in the west have woefully been ignorant of the east, and in their defense, outside of Japan and the Philippines, you see a woefully ignorance of the west, although less so because the west had a major influence in these regions.

Semantic idiocy alert. If you define "religion" in one way, Buddhism is a religion. If you define it in another, very special way, Buddhism isn't. Personally I think variants of Buddhism which include or are associated with supernatural or ritualistic aspects are religions, while variants which are stripped down of that are philosophies.

The only thing the west knows about religion is through the eyes of Christianity sadly.

There was just a long article in Newsweek by a professor of Religious studies at Princeton who, after 10 years of giving the same test to people, found that people know very little about religion/s. Thier own, or others.

Because white guilt makes people want to say every culture is essentially the same, they tag the word religion to any system of thought that isn't western philosophy.

There doesn't seem to be a single definition of 'religion' anyway, which is part of the problem. You'd think those philosophers would have come up with one by now, they've had plenty of time.

Your religion, as far as I understand it, -should be- your set of rules that defines either your views of a deity, or the set of rules you think a deity works with, and all the ramifications there of.

It has come to mean, anything that isn't based on science.

I see religion as, under all the books and rituals, any belief system that attempts to explain what I call 'the big why'. Why are we here, why is everything here ? What's the purpose of it all ?

I agree that this is completely separate from science, since science doesn't care about why. Science looks for how things work, not why. Using the famous 'watchmaker' analogy, Science catalogues all the gears and springs in the watch and describes how they work together to produce an effect, Religion goes looking for the watchmaker.

That's a very Jewish view of what a religion is.

Any system of thought that is non-scientific by nature is either religious if it involves ritual, deity worship, and/or the belief that personal outside forces intervene in the real world, generally coupled with the notion that it is possible to lobby such outside forces to do so in one's favour; and magical if it involves ritual coupled with the belief that it affects the material world through supernatural means. Most of what we call religious belief systems are both religious and magical. Having a deity does not equate to having a religion (Deism is not a religion, but a cosmological stance); having no proper deities, or having a multitude of deities, does not equate to not being a religion (Shinto and certain currents of Buddhism are religions).

What about ethics, aesthetics and morality ? Those aren't based on science (though they can definitely be studied scientifically) but not necessarily based on religion either.

Ironic... How is that a very Jewish view? I was specifically wording it, so that Judaism would not be defined as a religion. Although Chasidism, Kabbalah, and Lurianism and the such would be. Zen and Tao would be religions, while Confusionsim would not. Christianity would clearly be a religion, as would Deism. Hindusm and paganism would also be religions as would Greek Mythos, but Shamanism would not.

Ethics and Morality I think come from religion. Attempts to remove it from religion get very wishywashy and not very well defined at thier core. You can read Kant, he explains it better than I do.

However, Aesthetics, is very much an issue of science these days. There are clear cut formulas for what makes something look good in various cultures. You can even have computers produce works for a specific culture as if it had its own aesthetic eye.

Most religions come lumped with a baggage of ethics, aesthetics, and/or morality, but all those things can be wholly secular. Christianity, Islam and perhaps Judaism don't provide a real sense of morality; instead, they say "Do what the sky-daddy says, or the sky-daddy will beat nine types of snot out of you for all eternity", which is not a real sense of morality regardless of how they try to spin it. But Western thought learned to lump morality together with religion, which is quite silly. Most people obtain their morality simply from the common human instincts that make us, on average, decent people - Religion barely comes into it. Those things can exist perfectly well without any supernaturalism to them, so they're not religious. Although, I believe it is possible to derive aesthetics, ethics and morality out of science.

Kant is also responsible for the categorical imperative, which is a wholly secular system of morality (Since it doesn't rely on the existence of gods to work). The truth is simply that most people are never handed a formal system of morality; instead they're left with their instinctive morality (Try to walk onto the street and throw a punch at someone at random; you can't. Most people can't - We're just not wired that way. People who are are considered mentally ill) and "Be good or God will cast you into the lake of fire", which isn't a system of morality but rather a belief that gives the believer an incentive to act in a certain way.

Wow, how blatantly ignorant of you.

From the limited amount I know of Christainty, you have the whole Emulate Jesus thing. Not because you are going to get punished, but because Jesus was perfect and obviously he did the right things, so if you want to know whats the proper way to act, just ask yourself WWJD.

Deadly Sins, and concepts of reward and punishment are completely different than the areas of morality that the religions teach.

Islam also, has the whole invite guests into your home and treat them like kings, because its the moral thing to do. There is no punishment or reward for doing so, and is complete seperate from the laws and rules of reward and punishment that htey have.

As for Judaism, there is so much its not even worth explaining. You might have heard of a book called "Ethics of our Fathers" or the phrase "No Torah, no Morality. No Morality, no Torah."

Yes, I know. I find to wholly ironic, and that is why I mentioned him.

Kant took the bible and tried to make arguments to show that it is the most logical form, and using the bible as a starting point was able to come up with rules to define a secular system of morality without invoking the bible.

His entire essay on perpetual peace, is just a rewrite of the basic view of the apocalypse.

It is a very common practice these days to take religious teachings and find scientific proofs for them in other areas. The News particularly loves to report on these things.

Wow, what a nice veiled personal attack that'll never get modded out. Way to go.
And they go ahead and fit that into the framework of reward and punishment; and again, having an example to follow is not a system of morality. A system of morality consists of a definition of what is good and bad; "I wanna be just like this guy" is not a system of morality. Additionally, most theists try to make the point that you can't have morality without god, which implies their whole morality hinges on the system of reward and punishment; if you can take morality by example, that means you don't need the supernatural for your source of morality.

Except, not. The Bible's entire content of laws and morals is underpinned by the notion of eternal torment to people who don't follow those laws and morals. Leviticus, say, ends with a whole chapter on the bad things that happen to people who don't follow Leviticus.
Most religions tack on some rules of behaviour to their overall message; but the overall message on the origin of morality, for Christian and Muslim texts and philosophers and believers, is that morality stems from God. Most espouse the view that morality without the threat of punishment is impossible.

Which is a ridiculously bigoted view, of course, which fits right in with the notion that Judaism is here because it wants to spread, not because of the validity of its supernatural content. One of the messages of most religions is "You can't have morality without having me; people without me are immoral; if you become immoral, you will no longer have me".

Are you going to substantiate those bizarre claims?

I am not sure how being ignorant of something is a personal attack. Your statements show your ignorance.

If one should know anything it is that A. Judaism ONLY applies to Jews. If you are not Jewish, there is no reason why you should care one iota of what Judaism says. B. It is very much against "spreading" infact, until the Reinasance when the nature of non Jewish education changed, it was forbidden for Jews to teach non-Jews anything about Judaism. So again, you just show your ignorance. Since you have decided to completely misunderstand the very simple statement I guess I will have to explain it to you. It is called a paradox. There is no "me" to be had.

I believe you are completely misunderstanding the idea that you can't have morality without G-d. You do not need punishment to have morality, you need G_d, those are two completely different statements. G-d gives us an "Objective view", from which all other things can be judged as being in the good thing to do, or the bad thing to do. Without the basic belief that there is one source of everything, you can't make judgments between two things. As Aristotle used to argue, if two gods disagree, which one is correct? Which one is the moral one? You can't make such declarations.

Read the essay, its pretty straight forward.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/firstsup.htm

Here, a link to the text.

Interesting is footnote number 4


The basic concept of perpetual peace is that the world was create with war in mind, the purpose of each war is to bring the world towards harmony. In the end, you will have a great war, a world war and that in turn will result in a clear victor whereby the world can be in peace. Sounds like the basic concept of Armageddon to me.

http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/rbbr/toc.html

Here is the other essay/book Kant wrote, where the concept is fully fleshed out and developed.