[Air-L] Religious Dimension of Sustainable Development

[Jonathan Marshall]

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

-- 
UTS CRICOS Provider Code:  00099F
DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain
confidential information.  If you are not the intended recipient, do not
read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments.  If
you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately
and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the
individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority,
states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before
opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.

Think. Green. Do.

Please consider the environment before printing this email.