How Do We Think About Religion?

In the spirit of the discussion going on below about religious truth, I offer the following reflections from Talal Asad's Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines of Reason and Power in Christianity and Islam I offer these because Mr. Skeptic, you still have not addressed yourself to my (and rehenuma's) critique of the central conceit of western rationalism--that is its claim to be speaking from a place of 'objective' truth. You also did not address my critique of the free market along the same lines you criticize religion. You claim to be speaking from a postmodernist perspective. However, you also wrote:
"You can always tell which religions and belief systems actually do not have the real truths, because they are the ones that demand that you subject yourself to endless quotidian rituals and constantly recite passages from books, as though ostensibly the only way to convince one of a truth is to have them repeat it over and over and over again until one doesn't even think to challenge the habitual thought."

"Now, if truth and meaning are inherently subjective, then how is one 'always able to tell which religions and belief systems actually do not have the real truths'? I agree that truth is often constructed through discipline and instrumental power, but you are making a very interesting leap between postmodernism and rationalism. I don't think you have decided which side you are on, yet, maybe.
Anyway, lets marinate on these quotes from Asad, who draws his critique of anthropological study of religion from Geertz's definition of religion as "affirming something" ("it must if is not to consist of the mere collection of received practices and conventional sentiments we usually refer to as moralism, affirm something.") Geertz also says that religion helps man to cope with his intellectual, physical, and moral limits.

"This modest view of religion (which would have horrified the early Christian fathers or medieval churchmen) is a product of the only legitimate space allowed to Christianity by post-Enlightenment society, the right to individual belief: the human condition is full of ignorance, pain, and injustice, and religious symbols are a means of coming positively to terms with that condition. One consequence of this view would in principle render any philosophy that performs such a function into religion (to the annoyance of the nineteenth century rationalist), or alternatively, make it possible to think of religion as a more primitive , a less adult mode of coming to terms with the human condition (to the annoyance of the modern Christian). In either case, the suggestion that religion has a universal function in belief is one indication of how marginal religion has become in modern industrial societyas the site for producing disciplined knowledge and personal discipline. As such it comes to resemble the conception Marx had of religion as ideology--that is, as a mode of consciousness which is other than consciousness of reality, external to the relations of production, producing no knowledge, but expressing at once the anguish of the oppressed and a spurious consolation."
"Geertz'z treatment of religious belief, which lies at the core of his conception of religion, is a modern privatized Christian one because and to the extent that it emphasizes the priority of belief as a state of mind rather than a constituting activity in the world.

To me, religion is a way of engaging with the world, a method of practice that involves the body and is embodied in physical movement. Consider the following, also from Asad, quoting Mauss approvingly:
"According to Mauss, the human body was not be viewed simply as the passive recipient of 'cultural imprints' still less as the active source of 'natural expressions' that are 'clothed in local history and culture' as though it were a matter of an inner character expressed in a readable sign, so that the latter could be used as a means of deciphering the former. It was to be viewed as the developable means for achieving a range of human objectives, from styles of physical movement, through modes of emotional being, to kinds of spiritual experiences. This way of talking seems to avoid the Cartesian dualism of the mind and objects of the mind's perception.

So to sum up:
1) Religion as a universal concept for describing those practices which attribute divine agency to the world is a culturally conditioned definition, conditioned by our experience of religion as 'one choice among many'. This too is linked with our modern conception of the autonomous self.
2) This view of religion supported (and supports) a particular accretion of power in the modern secular states that constitute 'the West'.
3) Religion is a way of teaching bodies, it is a physical as well as a cognitive knowledge. As such, consciousness is interdependent with bodily practice. It follows then, that one 'knows' something, particularly religious truth, by DOING IT. Critiquing it as an irrational leftover of our primitive brain was and is made possible by the construction of religion as a dangerous historical object that must be confined to the private sphere as a belief, and constitutionally subordinated to the state.
So what do you think?