What's the difference between belief in a religion based on
some supernatural god, and belief in a supernatural god without
an accompanying religion? A religion may be a set of beliefs,
but without a god figure the remaining beliefs wouldn't hold
together. Religion and (some) god and supernaturalism go
together. Without a god, a belief system is just a belief system.

[QUOTE=davar55;385356]What's the difference between belief in a religion based on
some supernatural god, and belief in a supernatural god without
an accompanying religion? A religion may be a set of beliefs,
but without a god figure the remaining beliefs wouldn't hold
together. Religion and (some) god and supernaturalism go
together. Without a god, a belief system is just a belief system.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/civil-religion/can-you-have-religion-without-god/article_9cd2ffca-7b7a-57e0-877a-ca65a3c22991.html?print=true&cid=print"]Can you have religion without God?[/URL]
[QUOTE]The Ethical Society of St. Louis was founded in 1886. (Our original home was Sheldon Memorial Hall, named for the first Leader, Walter Sheldon.)

It’s one of a couple dozen Ethical Societies around the country. Ethical Societies were dreamed up by 19th-century freethinkers who noticed that most religions seemed to share basic ethical ideals such as kindness, justice, and charity. Where religions seemed to differ and often caused conflicts was in their conceptions of God (or gods) and their beliefs about the afterlife.

So Ethical Societies were created as communities that practiced religious humanism. “Religious humanism” may sound like an oxymoron to people who consider religions only as systems of supernatural beliefs. But we believe that religions were created by people to serve human needs — including meaningfulness, ethical guidelines, and motivation to live ethically.

Religious communities also fulfill social needs for people of all ages, help organize social-justice activity, and provide ways to celebrate and mourn and mark important times together. Ethical Societies do all these things, while leaving supernatural questions about the existence or nature of gods or an afterlife to the conscience of individual members. Many of our members don’t believe in a god or an afterlife, but some do, and some others “don’t know and don’t worry about it.”

The name for the worldview shared at the Ethical Society is Ethical Humanism. You will likely get as many definitions of Ethical Humanism as there are Ethical Humanists, but our basic shared beliefs are that every person has a potential for goodness, that every person deserves to be treated with fairness and kindness, and that human beings are responsible for caring for each other and for solving our problems.

Ethical Humanism asserts that suffering and cruelty are the result not of supernatural devils or sin or bad luck, but rather natural events or human errors and bad choices. Therefore, it is up to human beings to reduce suffering and cruelty by increasing our understanding of nature and of ourselves and by learning how to motivate people to do more kind acts and less harmful acts.[/QUOTE]

-illion is meant to denote a power of a million (rather than the American English custom of denoting a pwoer of a thousand), but I heard that -illiard was meant for the intermediate powers of a thousand.

1,000,000: One Million
1,000,000,000: One Milliard
1,000,000,000,000: One Billion
1,000,000,000,000,000: One Billiard

It's admittedly a much nicer way of organizing it since a quintillion can quickly be figured out as 1,000,000[SUP]5[/SUP] (5 for quint) but an american quintillion is pretty much 1,000[SUP]5+1[/SUP] which is still easy enough to figure out, but still kind of effed.


A fun anecdote from yours truly, who grew up in a Francophone school in the middle of an Anglophone environment:

I was describing some fairly large numbers once to someone and I said "Un Billion" and I got a bit of hell for that.

"No, child, I the number you mean is 'Un Milliard'"

The reason they said this was every other kid in the school, having a heavy Anglophone influence just from living in Saskatchewan, would say "Un Billion" because they translated from "One Billion."

They had wrongly assumed that I meant 10[SUP]9[/SUP] whereas I was correctly referring to 10[SUP]12[/SUP] which is actually "Un Billion"

Instead I just said "Mille Millions" and "Un Million de Millions"

I'd heard of milliard (fillmore, a U.S. prez) but the not the higher
-iards. I think that nomenclature is terrific, almost as good as the
american versions. Removes any qualms I had about having to
say thousand billion and such. Could be memorized just as easily.
Thanks for presenting it.

Secular humanism, ethical societies and the like are perhaps
the best representation of a community of people devoted to
some non-religious, non-supernatural way of living among men/
women. They are societies with a point of view. I would applaud
most if not all their purposes. But I would not insult them by
calling any of them a religion. They avoid the supernatural.
They elevate reasonable values. They respect believers and
non-believers. If there is any shared concept of god among all
members of such groups, I haven't heard. They are not religions.

I maintain that religion without a supernatural god(s) is a
contradiction in terms.

I can't express an opinion on the truth of the matter, but someone once told me, "That which you fear is your religion."

[QUOTE=davar55;385363]I maintain that religion without a supernatural god(s) is a
contradiction in terms.[/QUOTE]
How do you describe Buddhism?

This is a serious question.

[QUOTE=xilman;385383]How do you describe Buddhism?

This is a serious question.[/QUOTE]

As a mystical, supernaturalistic-based belief system with
a "godhead" considered and revered as much as or more
than a god. From wikipedia:

"The [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha"]Buddha[/URL] said that [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deva_%28Buddhism%29"]devas[/URL][/I] (translated as "gods") do exist, but they were regarded as still being trapped in [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_%28Buddhism%29"]samsara[/URL][/I],[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religions#cite_note-3"][3][/URL] and are not necessarily wiser than us. In fact, the Buddha is often portrayed as a teacher of the gods,[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religions#cite_note-4"][4][/URL] and superior to them.[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religions#cite_note-5"][5]"[/URL]

It has god or gods, just not a "creator" god.

[QUOTE=kladner;385369]I can't express an opinion on the truth of the matter, but someone once told me, "That which you fear is your religion."[/QUOTE]

So an atheist, having no religion, is essentially fearless? Considering
what they're up against, it's true they must be very brave.

But your quote is generally used to imply that everyone has a greatest
fear, so everyone is subjected to some kind of religion, some kind of
religious aspect within themselves not capable of denial.
Well, I deny that.

[QUOTE=davar55;385387]So an atheist, having no religion, is essentially fearless? Considering
what they're up against, it's true they must be very brave.

But your quote is generally used to imply that everyone has a greatest
fear, so everyone is subjected to some kind of religion, some kind of
religious aspect within themselves not capable of denial.
Well, I deny that.[/QUOTE]

As I said, it's just a quote. It always seemed a bit too glib for me.

[QUOTE=kladner;385392]As I said, it's just a quote. It always seemed a bit too glib for me.[/QUOTE]I think it is a decent quote. Another is "there are no atheists in foxholes."