The wording “clothing these conceptions with… an aura of factuality” also implies that the conceptions are false. In many cases that’s unproven and, to some, it could be offensive.

The core issue, again, is that Christianity is seen as the prototypical religion, and it is not a particularly representative example… It’s as if Europeans had lived for thousands of years with penguins as the prototypical example of a ‘bird’, and now were scrambling to extend their definition to accommodate wrens, eagles, and ravens.

Obviously, I am not saying that it’s a good idea to push the idea of domestic terrorism as an expression of faith, but it is a situation where the normal protections involving speech are at least partially circumscribed in a way that the protections involving religious expressions are not. There may also be issues with people whose legal rights are partially circumscribed (prisoners, for instance) should have access to writings regarding their philosophy (say, an atheist who subscribes to the beliefs of Scientific Materialism who wants access to books by Dawkins or on a particular subject), but are not guaranteed that access under speech could legitimately have it under religion. And yes, I do know that the New Atheists are pretty adamant about not being a “religion”, but that may be due to their intuitive sense of “religion” as Mr. Lilly presents it above – that is, that they see “religion” as “like Christianity” – and that they may come to perceive it more broadly if it is presented more concisely as a general rule than as a mapping of a prototype.

Interesting stuff, thank you for your comments!

It is difficult to separate ideology from religion, so much so that it is difficult to say that they are actually different things. It is quite possible that the only real difference is in arbitrary categorization, resulting in a slightly differing social perception, so that, for instance, Leninism is an ideology, despite having rituals, hierarchy, scriptures, and many other trappings that we would normally consider religion, while LaVeyan Satanism is a religion, despite having, as you note, no real conception of the “supernatural” (I’d argue that neither do most other religions, outside of Christianity, but that’s splitting hairs in this context), and, in fact, being not much else than Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy with differing symbols and rituals.

As for why it is important to have a definition that encompasses all religions, we currently have, in the US, a small but increasingly vocal group of Dominionists who are making the claim that those things which are not Christianity, or at least related to Christianity such as Judaism, are not religions, and do not deserve equal protection under the Constitution (see, for instance, the WallBuilders amicus in McCollum v. California). Any definition which excludes one or more actual religions, then, is dangerous to members of minority religions in the US, since it could be used to support that Dominionist argument. In any case, are we to conclude that something which describes itself as a philosophy (Objectivism) has no standing for protection under the Constitution, but something which is substantially similar but describes itself as a religion (LaVeyan Satanism) does? Is it merely a matter of self-identification? What about those religions which consider themselves as “not a religion, but a lifestyle” (such as I’ve heard the practitioners of some forms of evangelical Christianity say)? I say that we should use the narrowest definition which includes all things we conventionally describe as religions (and Geertz’s definition above seems to fit that criterion), then let anything else that falls in with them be considered as well (eg Objectivism, Leninism, Scientific Materialism, and so on).