[Air-L] Religious Dimension of Sustainable Development

Jonathan Marshall Jonathan.Marshall at uts.edu.au
Tue Jan 8 14:37:45 PST 2008


Even though we have been asked to not post on this. I suspect it is worth pointing out that anthropologists firstly do not 'define' religion in a way that they all agree with, and secondly they may also not mean by the term 'religion' quite the same as people in western english speaking societies generally mean by it. 

Many anthropologists I know of would tend to talk of 'cosmologies' and 'world views' for example to avoid the connotations of religion. We could talk of the 'rituals of science' without supposing a compulsory or necessry 'belief in god'.  While we are at it, anthropologists can also spend a lot of time arguing about the cross cultural applicability of terms like 'belief', 'ritual', 'magic', 'nature', 'biological' etc.

Statements like Religion is "indispensable to attain full human development beyond the physical, biological, and intellectual levels" seem to presume an awful lot to me as well as being hopelessly unclear. 

jon

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