Poll: Is Omnism a Useful Term?

[Exaltist Ethan]

I made a thread here telling and announcing to people on RF that I intend on describing myself as a cultural omnist. In a brief summary, what that means is that I'm non-religious but pro-religion at the same time.

One of RF's finest members, @sun rise , labels his religion as "love/omnism". What does that exactly mean? What does it mean to be an omnist? Back in my previous apartment my friend and I signed a ledger for something I called, "syncretic omnism", meaning, we believed that all religions had some validation to them, and that our beliefs were syncretic in nature.

I am putting this up in general religious debates, so please, debate with each other as to if you find the term omnism is useful or not. Honestly, I can see both arguments for omnism and against it at the same time. If someone calls themselves omnist, does that help you understand that person as well if they called themselves Christian, atheist or some other term? Generally, is omnism a useful term to describe yourself?

I plan on making a poll with three options: Yes, No, and Unsure. And honestly I plan on answering this poll with the "unsure" option. While at my very being the more I think about religion the more omnist I get, I typically don't use the religion status option of the website to call myself omnist, because it doesn't say much to other people about who I am. Even the term "cultural omnist", while being specific, doesn't tell anyone about my actual beliefs. So I delegate that description to my signature instead.

TL;DR - Just talk and debate with us, do you think omnism is a useful term? If so, why? If not, why not? Let us know what you think below.

 

[dybmh]

I voted yes; Omnism is belief that all religions and god concepts contain some truth. Seems useful to me.

 

[Quintessence]

There was something I read recently about defining terms that is important for us all to remember.

Just because your cultural group doesn't find a particular term useful doesn't make it so for someone else's.

As far as I'm concerned, if those using the term find it useful and meaningful, good enough. Other people's cultural terms don't need to be useful to me as an outsider.

 

[The Hammer]

Useful? That depends on the users perspective. Understandable, is a different beast altogether. It's not a very well known term afaik. Which will make it a limited label for explaining ones leanings.

 

[gnomon]

I voted no.

Sorry.

 

[Ella S.]

I'm interested in how to distinguish "omnism" from the related terms of "perennialism" and "eclecticism."

Eclecticism "is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases." It's very similar to your description of "syncretic omnism" and syncreticism is often seen as a form of religious eclecticism.

There are also the eclectic pagans who often recognize the deities, spirits, and cosmogonies from a wide variety of religions. Some eclectic pagans are animists and have expressed the view that all (or the majority of) animistic ethnic religions are true and merely describe the different spirits of various locations and/or communities.

Perennialism "is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown."

Does omnism refer to something different, a subset of one of these ideas, or maybe a superset of some or all of these ideas?

 

[syo]

Only the word is accurate. The definition they give is laughable.