Western Religion

It has occurred to me, since my father first introduced me to the study of diverse religions at a tender age, that the only western religions that have ever existed were either corruptions of eastern religions or belief systems that did not last very long. About the only idea that came out of the western intellectual tradition and might conceivably be considered a major religion is the idea of explicit atheism that also denies the possibility of the supernatural and insists on logical positivism.

I've referred to this idea before, in this post. But the question still hanging in the air is, "How do you distinguish between East and West?" Or is this merely a political construct based on the phrase 'East of Suez'? Edward Said wrote about this 'orientalism' concept in a strongly negative sense, but looking back on the history of colonialism tends to buttress his stand.

Perhaps what distinguishes East from West is not just geography, but the whole idea of God. If 'the North is full of tangled things, and texts, and aching eyes' (Chesterton) or the 'Idea of South' is one of inversion and oddity, then the East is always about the supernatural—that which can never be known, and the West is about the frontier of imagination—that which may not yet be known but can definitely be known.

I wonder what differences there are between northern religions and southern ones...