Alternative World Religion

When exploring the idea of “religious studies” and/or “world religions” there are a variety of ways these terms can be interpreted or explored. This can be dependent on how the person exploring or interpreting views religion and the factors that determine if it is deemed a religion or not. In class, we have explored how rituals in day to day life in America such as brushing your teeth can be seen as weird and torturesome. This was exemplified in the Body Ritual Among the Nacirema by Horace Miner story we read in class. Since, this story showed how different things can be seen by insiders versus outsiders. I wanted to explore how if Aliens were to come down and land in the Earth might view the practices here. 

Pothero offers a way by which someone can begin to define a religion. He discusses Atheism and how their beliefs and practices can be determined as a religion. According to Pothero “they defend reason over revelation, logic over faith, and scientific experimentation over magical thinking”. (318) This general statement about Atheism shows how they have a collective way of viewing certain topics. If the Aliens were looking to define religion and chose to use the idea that a religion has collective ideas either written down or spoken this would be in line with how Pothero is defining Atheism.

In The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices by Casper ter Kuile, the idea of “we might not be religious, but that doesn’t mean we are any less spiritual”. If the Aliens were wanting to incorporate this idea as well it could help narrow what they define as religion. However, this might be hard for the Aliens to understand when people here on earth want to be categorized as just spiritual; and not religious. A thought the Aliens might have would be to take down the stigma that some people on earth have towards the word religion. 

In Pothero’s introduction he states “those who claim world’s religions are one and the same do not deny the undeniable fact that they differ in some pictulars.”(2) However, this is challenged by the variety of religions worldwide that the Aliens have observed. They feel it is necessary to not “claim world’s religions are one”. The Aliens when coming up with “alternative world religions” want to take what has been explored by others and combine them to come up with terms they see fit. 

First the Aliens decided to create a new name for the term people on earth known as “religion”. Based on the reading and observation of the people on earth the new name the Aliens chose is “tradition”. The Aliens chose this name because it encompasses the history of some religions, potential of newer generations to create new religions, and incorporates the practices that can be done in certain religions. 

Second, the subgroups that the Aliens came up with for tradition are spiritual, belief, cultural, and experience. Within the spiritual category it includes the tradition that people practice for spiritual purposes. Belief is the category of people whose beliefs are central to their tradition. The next subgroup is cultural. In this category is the tradition that has culture as a central part to the tradition. The final category that the Aliens chose was experience; this is due to experience being the central portion to the tradition.

Below are images for each category

Cultural: Demonstrates the variety of cultures on earth

Experience: Each puzzle piece is a past experience that makes up a persons whole experience

Belief: A tree to represent the story of if a tree has fallen and nobody was there did it make a sound

Spiritual: This image represents what spirit might look like if represented visually

However, the Aliens model comes with problems. The earth is inhabited by a lot of humans all with individual experiences and this is problematic for their model. Yuval Noah Harari, brings this issue up in Sapiens, “when a group grew too large, its social order established and the band split”(26). This demonstrates how when working with a large group and trying to generalize people into categories problems will naturally arise. In he God is One review by The Journal of the American Academy of Religion “This framework for surveying each tradition is to examine the problem, its solution, the technique for moving from problem to solution, and the exemplar(s)”(1). This shows how even though this framework is missing aspects of people’s religion the Aliens is missing what Pothero had included in his framework.