Reply #65: That isn't a necessary definition of religion

[kiahzero]

In my World Religions class (working off of The Sacred and the Profaneby Mircea Eliade as our foundational text), we defined religion to be a sense of connection to community, a higher force (God as a general word), nature, or one's self. To sum up Eliade's work to an extreme degree, the sacred is heterogeneity of value. For instance, applying Eliade's ideas leads to understanding nationalism as a religion without a supernatural reference.

However, with that said, if I understand what you are referring to as materialism correctly, it alone would not qualify as a religion with this understanding; materialism in of itself does not impose any heterogeneity of value on to time or space - no point in time or space is more valuable or "real" than any other.