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Originally Posted by maverickstruth  But in this case, are you so much separating it, or are you adjusting your perception of it? |
I don't find a distinction between those two things: imagine, if you will, a pair of discs joined together at their centers by a pole. If you look along the axis the pole is on, you see but a circle: they are the same thing. But if you adjust your perception by shifting your position ninety degrees relative to the center of the pole, you see that the discs are distinct.
Is not perception reality? :P
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Originally Posted by maverickstruth I don't think religion can be extracted from its social context |
Yet is a religion the same religion in a different social context? I don't ask this rhetorically, since I can see a decent argument for both answers. For instance, the Christianity of 1st cent. AD might be compared to the Christianity of 21st cent. AD; yet the Christianity of California might be contrasted with the Christianity of Texas, to be a touch Americentric; and the Christianity of Protestants might be distinguished from the Christianity of Catholics. Heck, is mainstream Christianity the same as the Church of Latter-Day Saints?
The decision sounds to me to be a bit arbitrary, in the end: they are the same if we choose to view them as the same.
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Originally Posted by maverickstruth To me, religion is very much a social construct, and so it requires the social framework for it to function. |
It does require a social framework (or, possibly, it
is the social framework), but that can easily be one person imposing a framework onto either a hypothetical society or a real one. Thus, you can disassociate the religion from its society by replacing the actual society with an imagined one. Perhaps it would begin with, "I wish they would..."