http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY
Language changes, and words take on new meanings in time, but this is an example of a meaning-shift a bit bewildering to me. I’ve seen it enough so I should be fine with it; but the word “religion” is being used to mean “everything I dislike about religion” or “bad religion.” Here in this Youtube video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” the speaker, after a list of grievances against the churches, goes on to state a series of propositions about life which in the aggregate would have no other name than a “religion.” I agree with the video’s speaker theologically, and I do think that Jesus’s attempts to reform Judaism are steps that are universally applicable to all religions. Still, to me this would be like Copernicus saying “I hate Science” because everyone around him subscribed to Ptolemy’s geocentrism. And this is a widespread phenomenon: people who entertain any number of propositions about the meaning of life and a Deity and a mode of life in accord with those propositions will still bristle at the term “religion.” A psychological complex like that, buried in the subconscious, is often enough to push a word’s meaning around. We’ll see what happens. I’m generally of the opposite tendency – if a thing is of ultimate importance to someone I am inclined to call it their “religion” – “art is my religion,” “pleasure is my religion,” etc., echoing Paine’s “My church is the world, to do good, my religion.”
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