Charting the deity-isms of RF

[Kapalika]

So in my other topic Poll: are you an atheist, theist or ? (the poll is still up for 5+ days so I intend to make use of it still to compare to more fine-detailed data later for a future poll next week) it became clear that a few people didn't think I defined the terms the best or that I had the best spread of terms. I wanted to try to interpret the results in a really general way, to make more sense of the forum tendencies. But now I think it might make more sense to have specifics and then generalize from there (this might seem to have some possible bias but so does defining the terms in the first place for a generalized poll like the original. I can't see any way to avoid human bias when it comes to labels and definitions it seems).

But then something occurred to me, when saying I couldn't list 50 different labels... why couldn't I? Even though many have overlap that isn't an issue. I joked about a Venn Diagram and then I thought "why not?"

However I thought this might better be done by getting every label I can, getting some definitions and working on making a chart of all of them in sets and subsets and overlaps ect and then somehow visually represent the RF distribution.

So with that said, some labels I can think of or find online:

Atheism, autotheism, monotheism, polytheism, theism, post-theism, naturalistic pantheism, supernatural pantheism, panentheism, henotheism, anti-theism, transtheism, nontheism, deism, apatheism, agnosticism (?), pathenotheism, Omnism, Monolatrism, Panpsychism, Ignosticism, ditheism, dystheism, animism, monolatry

So I'm going to attempt to understand these definitions as best I can as charting them, but if you are a member of any of these ideas let me know how you define it so I can work it into how i chart it. Seems to me I can have 50 options and probably should of, and just work from there.

We can always add more as we go..so feel free to add and/or define terms here as a discussion. I ain't no professional pollster or a scientist or anything, so bare with me for the rough start of the last topic and the way I am going about this lol. This is the first time I've ever done something like this and it's purely out of curiosity.

 

[The Holy Bottom Burp]

What do you want to get out of this exercise Kapalika? It seems to me many of the definitions of recent "isms" are just slight variations on existing labels. A new one will doubtless pop up tomorrow when someone comes up with a belief they claim is not adequately covered by the existing "isms". I honestly think a lot of it is to do with contrarianism (sorry for bringing in a "secular" ism!), people seeking distinctive individuality. I'm not convinced they add anything useful, but good luck anyway. Rather you than me!

 

[Kapalika]

My post was some what tongue in cheek for exactly the reason you brought up. However, it isn't hard to just nod and smile and then have them as an element in a set labeled what they more or less all are with just marginal nuance. So they are still there, but it's put into context. And I say set and element in the mathematical sense not descriptive.

The overall design is actually pretty good in my head, a cross between a venn diagram and scatter plot. This way we don't only see who's what but which specific version of what is popular to what degrees. For example in my more generalized poll theism was a possible answer, but with a more specific poll I can then see what types of theism (monotheism, polytheism, henotheism ect) are the most popular. By forcing people earlier to answer in a non-overlapping way then later letting them answer with very precise albeit overlapping labels I can then compare the two to see how much it matches up. I'm assuming there will be some variance because I don't think everyone who answered one will answer the other, but given the sample size so far I think I can safely do it within a reasonable margin of error.

 

[Desert Snake]

Ok.

Should be interesting.

 

[Liu]

Looking forward to see your diagram.

I'd be wary about putting agnosticism into the list since one can be any of the other terms and an agnostic simultaneously.

However, the fact that one can be agnostic means that one might belong to more than one of the other terms since one isn't sure which one to rather believe in but believes in those more than in others.
Also, there can be people who recognize more than one set of deities, each of which would fall under different terms, too.

A bigger issue is that the terms describe completely different aspects of the concept of deity. Dystheism is about its morality, mono- and polytheism about its number, panpsychism a question of metaphysics, henotheism vs. monolatry is about whether other deities besides one's own are deserving of being worshiped,... your diagram would need a lot of dimensions.

Anyway, I therefore wouldn't worry too much about terms overlapping; even with completely un-overlapping definitions people would have reasons to vote for more than one.

For example, from the list I more or less identify with
autotheism, nontheism, naturalistic pantheism, panpsychism, dystheism, monolatry, agnosticism
and probably a bunch more (would have to look closer into the definitions to decide).
Explanation in your previous thread: Poll: are you an atheist, theist or ?

Btw, about pathenotheism I find zero information online.

 

[Kapalika]

Looking forward to see your diagram.

I'd be wary about putting agnosticism into the list since one can be any of the other terms and an agnostic simultaneously.

However, the fact that one can be agnostic means that one might belong to more than one of the other terms since one isn't sure which one to rather believe in but believes in those more than in others.
Also, there can be people who recognize more than one set of deities, each of which would fall under different terms, too.

A bigger issue is that the terms describe completely different aspects of the concept of deity. Dystheism is about its morality, mono- and polytheism about its number, panpsychism a question of metaphysics, henotheism vs. monolatry is about whether other deities besides one's own are deserving of being worshiped,... your diagram would need a lot of dimensions.

Anyway, I therefore wouldn't worry too much about terms overlapping; even with completely un-overlapping definitions people would have reasons to vote for more than one.

For example, from the list I more or less identify with
autotheism, nontheism, naturalistic pantheism, panpsychism, dystheism, monolatry, agnosticism
and probably a bunch more (would have to look closer into the definitions to decide).
Explanation in your previous thread: Poll: are you an atheist, theist or ?

Btw, about pathenotheism I find zero information online.

Well I figured no one could complain I didn't cover this or that or their thing if i put everything i Could grab off of wikipedia. If no one indicates any particular ones it won't go in the graph. I probably shouldn't have agnosticism and the morality ones like you said.

 

[Quintessence]

I was doing a series a while back in the Theism subforum exploring different types of theism and theological concepts. What I aimed to highlight with that series was the almost mind-boggling array of ways humans have approached the idea of deity. As part of that we also started exploring a few divine attributes too, which goes beyond the list in the opening post to add even more boggling possibilities.

Of course, this is all made a great deal simpler if one adheres to a theistic religion that basically instructs "this is what god is, and all other gods are not really gods." Not being such an adherent, that approach doesn't work for me so I go for something more culturally-neutral. When we take a more culturally-neutral approach, it seems the only requirement for something to be a deity is for people to deify that something. After that, the characteristics of the deity depend on what has been deified. What does it mean to deify something? On the whole, it means holding something in high regard or honor - something worthy of worship (aka, celebration, respect, praise, gratitude).

Taking a culturally-neutral baseline has the awkward result of making the term "theism" pretty much meaningless. It just says "this person accepts some particular concept of deity in their lives." I don't have any solutions. I just aim to remember the diversity, try to not make assumptions, and go from there.

 

[LuisDantas]

I like the idea.

For all of the following, "deity" should be understood as an inherently arbitrary concept.




atheism

The absence of any form of belief in a deity.



post-theism

I like Wikipedia's definition: "a variant of nontheism that proposes that the division of theism vs. atheism is obsolete, that God belongs to a stage of human development now past."


anti-theism

The proposition that belief in deities is actually harmful (at least most of the time) and should be avoided whenever reasonable.



transtheism

I technically agree with Wikipedia's definition as "a system of thought or religious philosophy which is neither theistic, nor atheistic, but is beyond them." However, atheism is so inconsequential that there is no point in attempting to avoid it. So a better definition IMO is, in effect, "synonimous of apatheism".


nontheism

Systems of thought that do not reference any deity.



apatheism

The belief that it is ultimately of little or no consequence whether there is any deity.


agnosticism

The belief that it is impossible to truly know whether there is any deity.

(I am a bit in doubt if I still belong to this one, since I have concluded in recent years that deities are custom-made by the believer, and in that sense they do exist as fully human creations).


Ignosticism

The belief that there is no meaningful way of discussing the existence of any deities without first agreeing on a clear definition of deities (which involves a necessarily arbitrary call).