Swap "religion" for "secular ideology" and you've pretty much arrived at the conclusion of the article.

I am biased as a Hindu but I find that Hinduism stands apart here as a religion in that the emphasis is on one's own and the truths discovered therefrom rather than blindly accepting beliefs.

Hinduism is not a religion in western sense. We don't have a set list of doctrine and rules to follow.

When I say I am allowed to be atheist or agnostic according to Vedas, your typical dumb Purohit also screams and tries to justify it's not that.

It's almost like Vedas or Upanishads or the values they emphasize have no place in preist centered medieval / modern "Hinduism".

Your typical dumb purohit is not needed to follow Dharma. No one's going to issue a Fatwa if you do your own research and find your own way. You are free to choose between the Astika or Sramana or any of the heterodox schools. The doctrine is there but not in form of DIY commandments.

This is true but doesn't apply to those of us who have to follow certain traditions for the satisfaction of parents. Given a choice I am an atheist / agnostic.

Edit: And 'Dharma' in texts is used to refer to qualities such as 'dhriti' (courage) and r'ta (truthfulness), much more than its being used to refer to rituals. So I don't necessarily even need to read any of these to follow "dharma".

If that's case, I can hardly take Hinduism as a religion. If the burden is on an individual to discover and accept his/her own truths rather than blindly accepting beliefs, then isn't this the same as any secular belief system? Secular people also emphasize on one's own and discover truths themselves to make up of their own belief system.

This might not be true. Most religious people change their beliefs.

A religion is a set of assertions or axioms that, like any mathematical or logical system, cannot ever be proven or disproven (by their very definition).

When one goes about living one’s life, they require life experiences that guide them one way or the other.

That's not a good definition of religion. It allows one to sneak in a history-laden term with a relatively innocuous definition, have someone accept the given definition, and the introduce the rest of the history without having to prove it.

For prior art see arguments that "something must be the first mover, and that thing we call God". Curiously, the sudden leap to "therefore the Judeo-Christian deity is proven to exist" keeps getting snuck in there without any extra proof.

In other words, you're attempting to define a term of art using an existing word, and this just obscures the argument because most people will use its common definition, and not the meaning you're defining for it.

Mathematics is distinguished by at least two characteristics from religion:

1. Precise definitions

2. Not proven inconsistent

(As for 2, we know we can't prove the bulk of mainstream maths consistent. However, since the crisis triggered after Russell's paradox was discovered and set theory was formalised in a better way, nobody has been able to poke a fundamental hole into current mathematics. Moreover, there are certain subsets of mathematics - say, Presburger Arithmetic - that are provably consistent.)

I have never seen a definition of "God" that is both precise and not self-contradictory.

Conflating mathematics and religion is just disingenuous.

Sorry if it seemed like I was conflating the two, I was just trying to compare one facet of each. My use of the word ‘like’ was supposed to be an allegorical one.

(Assuming, by conflate, it is the combining two into one, per definition).

‘God is Love’ doesn’t seem contradictory.

> ‘God is Love’ doesn’t seem contradictory

That's because it doesn't mean anything.

That’s one assertion certainly :)

Others have been beheaded asserting it. Life is certainly interesting though.

If you want to have a discussion here you should try harder.

edit: let's just play the game, shall we?

"God is Love", first of all - is this a definition of God or one of love? I have a feeling it's trying to be both, but that is invalid. It's probably trying to tap into some intuitive understanding of what "love" is and to connect it to some other concept, such as God.

In any case, a) we haven't defined what "love" is and that's not gonna be an easy definition - maybe we should start there; b) suppose we know what love is: if you say "God is love", and you use that as a definition for God then... why do we need a concept of God? We can just go and rewrite the entire bible and substitute every occurrence of God with "love"? So, in the beginning, love created the universe? Love died for our sins? Love sent the great flood and told Noah to build an ark? Even if you don't take these stories at face value, the bible clearly ascribes agency to God, but if God is just love, then love supposedly has agency something that... probably doesn't make sense with most people's definition of love. See point a)

I would suggest for you to pick up an introductory textbook to some topic in analytic philosophy and compare the rigour of the explanations therein with "God is love".

Do you believe this applies to Taoism? At least by my interpretation, it lacks many of the shortcomings of other religions.

“Taoism”, the religion, has, as I am given to understand, many of the normal trappings of religion, including formal dresses for priests, and, IIRC, quite a lot of alchemy.

This is probably not the “Taoism” which you read about in western pop-culture paperbacks or hippie-age TV.

Perhaps they have priests with costumes, and I am not aware of any alchemy, but are these "shortcomings" in any sort of fundamental, materially important way?

It's 'internal alchemy' [0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neidan

Ah, thanks for that. These seem fairly harmless to me but I'm not so knowledgeable, what do you think?

I think they're things best practiced with a guide, and not something to go attempt yourself. Whether there's any actual effect from it or not, who knows. But it's always better safe than sorry.

I mean, alchemy is not a really an advantage for a religion to include these days. Most religions have dropped their medical claims long ago.

It's worth noting that modern Daoist alchemy is internal alchemy [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neidan

Sure, but I am more interested in this idea of whether alchemy is a fundamental and substantial part of Taoism, and then also the question of whatever negatives may come with that (if it is actually true), is Taoism in the aggregate net beneficial to humanity, or not. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the matter.

The major religions and also secular ideologies each have their strengths, otherwise they wouldn't have millions of followers.

Individuals, including religious people, frequently change their mind. Have you never met a person who used to be religious, and I am not just talking about raised religiously but actually believing, lose their faith? The idea that religious people are religious just because they don't want to change their views is ridiculous.

Apostasy is a death penalty offence for some religions, and the cause of a fair number of wars in other religions.

Its certainly frowned upon in general

I am talking about religion in general in the West (since that is what the article is about). People frequently stop being Christian for example.

Yes they do it, but that's clearly against the rules of their religion. You can only decide that a religion is not true while not practicing that religion, because curiously they all have the same virtue-associated principle of never reaching that conclusion.

I would be curious if you could find a rule book that says you must believe this rule book.