I believe in belief! And believe me, seeing is believing! Believe if you will, for believing in belief is a fundamental of the belief system, where believers congregate to celebrate believing in belief as believable...believe me!
But..to believe as we do, believing in the belief that believing will actually believe in belief itself,is far-fetched, for belief is intangible!
So..being so intangible, believing in an intangible belief system of disbelief to non believers is, believe it or not, believable; should you believe it? Yes, I suggest you believe, for if you don't believe in belief itself, then all unbelievers will ( again I suggest, and believably), fall into the trap of vacant belief with a believable outcome of misunderstanding....
This I believe, so help me God!

PS...and posters, don't believe for one minute, Ronny Corbett is dead! I refuse to believe it!

AJ Philips,

>>I take it the third definition (which is the third for a reason) was the one you were wanting to highlight.<<

No, it is the one that was missing in Suseonline’s list and which I thought Jardine K. Jardine had in mind. And the author of the article, although he seems to confuse these three different meanings of the word “religion” of which there allegedly exist 300 (please don’t ask me where I got that number from) different definitions by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers etc..

Anyhow, you are right, English is not my mother tongue but I do not think this is true about (most of) the “people at Oxford” who authored the dictionary.

I have to agree with Spencer that the “No religion” response would better serve the purpose of Question 19 “What is the person’s religion”, by being placed as the last response.

Let me explain why:
The present structure of responses leaves many holes in the religious demographic, hence the validity of data gathered would be questionable.
May I suggest that a more comprehensive set of responses, set out alphabetically and under subtitles would give more credible data.
The subtitles may include but not be limited to Ecumenical, Evangelical, Pentecostal...

Religions that don’t sit under such titles would simply stand on their own, and be located alphabetically in the main list.

For example, under the Ecumenical subtitle would be Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, etc but after the Ecumenical list is exhausted, then further responses could be provided for other Ecumenical options such as:
• Non-church attending believer
• Other : Comments ___________________________________________

These last two options would apply under each subtitle, and could also apply under each religion.

Belief systems such as Agnostic and Atheist would be toward the top of the list by alphabetical order (both of which may require a brief definition in brackets after them as there could be many respondents who may not be clear on what they believe or what the term means).

Such a structure would benefit by the “No religion” response being the last option and if the form is comprehensively structured, may not even be needed.

Posted by Form Designer

Seems to me that Spencer Gear is the fruitcake.

David

Yes, George, I understand that.

<<No, it is the [definition] that was missing in Suseonline’s list and which I thought Jardine K. Jardine had in mind.>>

Which is precisely why I said it would be the definition that you were trying to highlight.

I agree that English would be the mother tongue of most (if not all) of those at Oxford, but no dictionary is perfect, which is why they are being updated all the time. Nor does the fact that English being the mother tongue of those at Oxford negate the points I made.

Take the new Pokémon Go craze, for example. Some may have, colloquially or in jest, labelled it “the new religion”, but no one in their right minds would suggest officially declaring it a religion, nor would they seriously suggest adding it to the new census as a religion to be selected.

Furthermore, take the posts of those here (or on any other thread for that matter) who have labelled non-religious beliefs/interests/pursuits as ‘religions’ for example. In every instance, it has been done to denigrate the person/people that it was directed towards. Hardly a good reason to have the definition of religion expanded to non-religious beliefs/interests/pursuits.

I'm fairly confident that if I was to email the relevant people at Oxford about my suggested alteration (possibly with a link to this thread as as an example) that at least some there would agree with me.