Religion is Good, Actually

So I think you're getting at a big thing I want to push back against with this post and why I felt it was worth writing.

Christianity presents a very narrow view of what religion is. Because it's so popular and is the main religion most readers of this blog have the most exposure to, their view of religion is highly influenced by what Christianity is rather than by what the broad set of things that self-identify as religions are.

For example, you suggest religion involves a set of beliefs matching certain criteria. But some religions really don't care what you believe! All they ask is that you carry out their rituals. Others ask for faith but not belief, but this is really weird if all you have is a Christian framing where faith is exclusively considered with respect to beliefs.

On a different note, there's a big difference between your attempt to redefine murder and what I'm doing in this post with religion. Murder is a word we all basically agree on what it means. Religion is a word with a very vague definition that even scholars of religion can't agree on. This means it's reasonable to vie for a particular definition or framing of what counts as religion, whereas it's not for murder, except in so far as we try to argue of the legal definition of murder, for example so we might distinguish between murder and manslaughter.

"Religion" as conventionally used is already so broad that it includes examples that lack almost every individual feature we typically associate with the category. It hardly seems coincidental that the OP chose Soto Zen, which manages to reject a lot of the components of other religions that are more problematic.

Some religions lack gods. Some lack moral laws. Some lack a consistent set of claims about the universe at all. Some lack worship or prayer. Some lack priests or other intermediaries. 

If we start from words being defined extensionally instead of by dictionaries, then this is fine. But if you try to find any vaguely natural seeming intensional definition at all, I think it's going to include a lot of extra stuff we don't usually think of as religious. Some of that stuff is good, and it might add up to a net good.

Is it, though? As I see it part of my confusion when younger is that I only really thought of religion as one thing. By expanding what we think of as religion it changes the category in a way that is more useful to us. As I think of it, it's like taking back a word that we've let a few organizations take away from us and control the meaning of.

This is a good question.

The trouble is that ideology has a meaning distinct from religion in my mind.

An ideology isn't wedded to particular rituals or a community. It's just a big idea people believe in and organize their lives around. There's overlap, and I think we can reasonably say that every religion contains an ideology, but not every ideology is enmeshed with a religion.

My belief is that the rituals and community aspects are really important. In fact, they're far more important to wellbeing than the actual ideology of the religion. If the ideology is at least neutral then the religion is probably on net good (assuming the rituals aren't something like human sacrifice).

There's a cluster of things that people like to derogate by calling them religions, and they usually get away with it. But the second someone decides that actually that cluster is good, it's all "stop irritating people with this abuse of language".

And you may say "well personally I'm the type to object to people who try to derogate things by calling them religions when they're technically not." But why gatekeep the meaning like that in the first place? The supposedly neutral conception of religion doesn't seem like a relevant cluster of things; both people who want to derogate and people who want to compliment things by calling them religions have converged on roughly the same descriptive cluster of things, and they are both interested in whether that cluster is mostly good or bad. 

Insisting "that's not what religion is" is just denying people the natural language for discussing this natural cluster.

It's more like "Being a part of a movement is good, actually". The social parts are important (ironically even if the movement denies it).

One could go for the Rimworld concept of an ideoligion.  I think I'll quote the relevant chunk of the wiki page below; some of the stuff is about game mechanics, and the world depicted in the game is, ah, brutal; but the description is pretty comprehensive and reasonably applicable.

An ideoligion consists of many separate aspects to customize:

Primary

• Structure - What deities (or lack thereof) that followers believe in. Examples include Abstract theist, that "gods are formless and everywhere", or Christian origin, which is closer to the Abrahamic religions of the west. Structure helps determine the randomized names and lore of your ideoligion. This is almost entirely cosmetic, but can add a few ritual options.
• Memes - The basic beliefs of the ideoligion. An ideoligion with the Cannibal meme will definitely enjoy human meat. Each ideoligion can have up to 4 memes. Most memes do not add much on their own, but affect what precepts the ideoligion has and cannot have. Some memes have access to role specialists.
• Precepts - What a follower's belief systems are. Precepts directly determine how colonists will react to certain actions. An ideoligion with Cannibalism: Preferred will have followers enjoy eating human meat. An ideoligion with Cannibalism: Required (Ravenous) will want to eat human meat for every meal.

Certain precepts have statistical effects beyond mood. For instance, Drugs: Essential boosts drug crop yield, synthesis speed, and sell price. These tend to be locked behind their associated meme.

Secondary

• Rituals - Special occasions, from Dance Party to Animal Sacrifice to Funerals. Every time you do a ritual, you can end up with a good or bad outcome. Good outcomes will increase colonist mood, and come with a special, defined reward. For example, a spectacular festival can give you a random recruit, or cause a gauranlen pod to sprout.

You can increase the chances of a good outcomes by following the ritual's requirements. A funeral can be done without your colonist's body, but the quality will be increased if present.

• Roles - Every ideoligion has a Leader and Moral Guide. From there, you can have up to 2 types of specialists. A Shooting Specialist will be great at ranged combat, but is unable to do many types of skilled work. Note that you can have as many specialists of a specific type as you want. For example, you can have 3 Shooting Specialists in a single colony, but cannot have a Shooting, Plants, AND Research specialist in the same ideoligion.
• Relics - Ideoligions can have relics. Relics can be either Legendary quality weapons or specific types of items that serve no other purpose. Relics must be found from a specific, multi-part relic hunt quest, which can take many years. Having a relic present will cause a number of benefits.
• Buildings - Buildings used by your ideoligion: altars, sacrificial flags, etc. Largely used for rituals. Altars and the like will eventually be demanded by followers of your ideoligion.
• Preferences - Ideoligions can prefer apparel, weapons, and xenotypes, as well as venerate specific animals. Colonists will like having/being around preferred items. Whenever a colonist will dislike a non-preferred item is dependent on the preference in question.

Descriptive

• Styles - How buildings made by an ideoligious builder will look. Largely cosmetic. However, it interacts with the Diversity of Thought precept. If colonists are neutral or bigoted, then they will enjoy being near styles of the same ideoligion. If colonists appreciate Diversity of Thought, they will enjoy being near styled buildings that their ideoligion could not make. Certain styles will affect more or less buildings.
• Cultures - Roughly where your ideoligion comes from. Astropolitian represents those coming from space. Corunan represents tribes in general. Entirely cosmetic.
• Lore - A randomly generated description of the ideoligion, based off of memes, structures, cultures, etc. Entirely cosmetic.
• Icon / color - An ideoligion's icon is used whenever an ideology will be displayed. The color of the icon will be a preferred color for followers. Followers gain a +1 moodlet for wearing their ideology's color, or their own favorite color. All colors require dye and the same amount of dye.

I don't think I'm trying to redefine it in a way that only includes what I like about it. I'm pretty explicit about saying lots of religions do bad things. That doesn't mean religion as a concept is bad; it just means particular religions are bad.

As to your second point, sure, but I think you're just making the point we all already know about equal and opposite advice, and as with every article in this series I assume my readers are smart enough to notice if they need to apply the opposite advice because they've gone too far in the opposite direction. If you think this is an issue with this post, why make it on this post in the series rather than on a previous entry? I think this concern applies to literally every post I've made in the series.

I guess, but I do want to make the point that the category of things that includes some traditional religions are good, as I happen to think since I am myself religion and am ordained within a religion. My take, because this is the mistake I made when I was younger, is that people anchor too much on a single religion or group of religions, namely Evangelical Protestant Christianity, and this leads to thinking of religion as too narrow a category of thing.

I don't like Evangelical Protestant Christianity much: it doesn't really speak to me and some of the people who it does speak to have treated me badly at times. But because I anchored too hard on that as the central example of religion, I missed out on a thing that is very important to me and helps me live a good life.

I kind of feel like you failed to read or engage with the post. Like are you willing to say that effective altruism is basically a cult? Or are you rejecting my reframing of religion and just not saying that?

I also feel hurt when people get mad at me for believing that which I believe to be true. It sucks, especially when they give you grief or it and try to coerce you into believing things you know not to be true.

But not all religion is like that. In my own practice of Soto Zen, I've not been asked to accept any doctrines on faith or follow any rules that don't serve a useful purpose. Instead I've been given some practices and rituals to follow, and because I found them useful I've developed trust in the teachings and myself. This is honestly not too different from what goes on around Less Wrong, except that in Zen we get to wear special robes. :-)

I'm glad you've not felt lost. Perhaps you have no need for religion. My experience is that something like 90% of people are not so lucky.