Are You Religious Or Not?

I wonder at the context of Gandhi's words. What is religion?

Sociologist Emile Durkheim defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things".

That's a great definition, but what are "sacred things" then?

I define the sacred as reality tunnels, big pictures, metanarratives. Stuff of the mind that emanates down into the material realm, where it can be translated into the communicable, or rather translated into dogma, into a belief that can be preached.

We all find worth in belief. To worship is nothing more than to acknowledge the worth of something. We hold ideology as sacred, as absolute truth. This is what God got upset about in Jewish and Christian Scriptures - people holding to an absolute truth, that is not absolute truth.

We all think we have the truth, or we are all in the process of seeking the truth. Most people are so sure that their worldview is true, they never have even thought of testing it, much less examining it. They are good at criticizing other worldviews.  That brings to mind something called the law of projection. This is why religion is so infuriating. Thesis and antithesis rarely result in synthesis. What we get is a more pig-headed thesis, and a more stubborn antithesis. The majority of religion, of belief, is made strong by opposing belief alone - not by its truthfulness. Beliefs in ideas are guarded like Fort Knox. Try to break in and tell me how that goes.

Of course the sacred often is regarded in material objects, but the real thing being worshiped is the belief in the idea being projected onto the object. The objects are no more than symbols of the idea.

So, my conclusion is that religion pertains to belief and sacraments, which are ideas. If you believe any idea, you are religious. If you believe nothing, nothing is that which you believe in the absolute, is an idea, and you are religious. We have no choice but to be religious.  Our minds are bound by religion.

I'm not crazy about religion, about belief. I do like the sacraments though - the ideas. I am concerned with truth. You can have religion without truth. Once you have the absolute truth, you have no need for religion, for belief, you have the knowledge of it being the absolute truth.

There are those who say there is no absolute truth. Are they absolutely sure? More religion, and asinine at that. Logic, experience, knowledge. These will guide you as you travel through the realms of the mind. Don't get waylaid with religion - by holding sacred a relic of someone else's idea. Don't be an antithesis. They are angry old sticks in the mud.