n0mesorah,
“It’s hard to be specific on this thread.”
You wrote a lot, and it seems to me that you’re trying to make a specific point, I just wish I could understand it. “The paragraph is about all religions” – what paragraph? “Religions are not for one person. They are only for people.” – I never heard of this limitation in the definition of religion. It’s not what makes religion distinct from ethics, if that’s what you’re trying to argue. “So what the people as a group think of their religion tends to make up what their religion consists of. But that is not the religion itself.” – These two sentences seem to directly contradict one another.
“I never heard of this specific label [EO] before.”
No, but it’s quite common in the non-Orthodox movements. A notable example is the Conservative Movement’s “hechsher tzedek” where they seek to “certify” food that is made according to their own ethical and social justice standards. They claim a distinction between Torah and “Jewish values”, which doesn’t exist. Orthodox Jews refute the notion that the Torah, written by Hashem, is lacking something that must be filled by a separate set of ethics. I think what really bugs the OP is that someone who keeps Shabbos, kashrus, and taharas mishpacha, but is mean, or took benefits he wasn’t entitled to, is still considered “Orthodox”, while someone who’s a nice guy and submits a squeaky clean tax return to the IRS on Jan 2, but who eats out in non-kosher restaurants or uses a smartphone on Shabbos, is not considered Orthodox. So he created his own category of “Ethical Orthdox” where he could exclude the former. The thing is, inclusion in the frum community is not necessarily an attestation that a person is good or doing the right thing.
“It was all a lead up to the statement in bold and the question. As in, does the OP feel confident about adding a clause (ethics – or whatever they think it means) into something (Judiaism – as it was Divinely given) that will eternally outlast them?”
Seems so. He’s already done it after all, right?
“Religions are not for one person. They are only for people.”
Says who?
So what the people as a group think of their religion tends to make up what their religion consists of. But that is not the religion itself. It is only how they relate to it. It doesn’t go by what people claim they think of their religion. It thrives off of how they perform as a religious group.””
As I wrote above, these seem like contradictory notions to me, and thus needs more explanation. How I’m interpreting it:
1. Religion is a collective exercise, not a personal thing. Huh? Religion is all about one’s personal beliefs in the divine. Adherents with similar beliefs may opt to form religious communities though it’s not a requirement, e.g., Protestant Christianity, or one’s religious tenants may dictate that adherents form communities, as is the case with Orthodox Judaism.
2. Religion is what this collective group thinks it is, except that it’s not. Huh? I can’t reconcile these two statements.
3. Religion is independent of the people who adhere to it, but what it is depends on what those people do. Huh? I feel like the definitions of terms are shifting rapidly.