Episode 409: Religion Unburdened by Belief and the Way of Open Inquiry with Joshua Pritikin

Well, okay.

So the, um, the inspiration from the book came from, uh, another book that I encountered, uh, some years ago written by James Kars and his book is, has a similar title.

The title is, uh, the religious case against a belief.

And that's where I got the idea that religion and belief, um, maybe pointing in separate directions.

I found his analysis very insightful and persuasive.

But about halfway through the book, I felt like he dropped the ball.

And then that's kind of what prompted me to write my book.

I want to develop this argument to its uh full full extent and so that's what i've tried to do in my book um the other uh the other thing about the title so you meant like there's a title and a subtitle so i addressed the title part the uh the subtitle um the way of open inquiry is a kind of a thought experiment that i um that kind of appears in a few different places in the book like it's a uh uh the idea is like if we developed a religion from scratch what would it look like and uh so that's the the thought experiment that i play with in the book and uh like i don't um i don't address in one place like it's it's like a a model that i update you know a few times after after certain chapters after certain developments to um continue refining it and uh I try to refrain from making the impression that it's like a polished, finished product.

It's something that will always be in development.

Well, sort of like the way of opening inquiry itself, right? Yeah, exactly.

Always

open inquiry.

You never get to the end of that.

It's always a matter of...

Keep asking questions.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, it's definitely, it's a provocative title.

Um, it's challenging in its kind of unique way of, I mean, I'm just looking at it here of religion unburdened by belief.

So we're going to be talking about the contents of the book, but I just wanted to kind of, you know, riff off of this title for just a minute.

Um, because what's so challenging about it that in the United States, religion is almost exclusively defined by belief, both in the cultural sense and often in the legal sense as well, that we have a very narrow definition of what qualifies as religion in United States culture.

You know, I formally taught religious studies at Southern Oregon university.

And one of the first things that we would start with is, uh, by asking the students, how would you define religion? And almost always people come back with, Oh, it's a system of beliefs or it's a faith system.

It's what you believe in.

And then, you know, as the, the job of the professor is then to problematize that assumption or that definition of what religion is.