Catagories of philosophy and religion

I've noticed (and had my observation confirmed by many others now) that philosophies fall in to two main catagories: personal and universal. The personal philosophy is all about the human experience and deals with humans in the abstract but is intimately tied to humans. We'll come back to this one. The other type is (what I'll call) universal meaning it tries to tell us about the real universe (what is still true when we are dead or before we are born). Universal philosophy seems to fall into three subcategories: naturalistic philosophy, theology type and abstract.

Naturalistic is grounded in science and materialism and deals with the ethics and repercussions of science and technology (like chimera research). It seeks to guide and refute or reinforce the conclusions science has made. A truly interesting and useful field.

Theology type is not grounded in materialism and takes a starting assumption that is chosen for tradition or interest. The most common is plain theology which is simply the philosophy of materialism minus anything that contradicts the starting assumption of "there is a god" or "there is such thing as absolute good" etc... While sometimes this can be fun to do (for instance assume the Marvel universe is real and ponder the superhero registration act as in the Marvel Civil War) ultimately it is an acedemic endeavor since it is fantasy. Basing an entire philosophy or world view on an indiscriminate starting assumption is just silly (it is unfortunate many people realize this in the Marvel example but not the god example.

Lastly there is abstract philosophy. This is philosophy for the sake of philosophy and ponders such questions such as what is justice or purpose. Practitioners construct definitions of objects and try and make logical relations between them. If that sounds like something else you are correct: mathematics. In fact it is nothing but mathematics except it uses a very inefficient mode of communication. Structures in abstract philosophy must be isomorphic (the same) to mathematical structures to be logical. So while this may provide an interesting way of understanding group theory or something else it cannot show anything new about the universe. Sometime people confuse this structure and try and talk about justice or purpose in the real of abstract philosophy (at least in discussions I've had). This is a terrible mistake since these words bear no definition outside of personal philosophy.

Religion is nothing more than a theology type philosophy which it too bad since natural philosophy has made the world so much better, theology type practitioners seem bent on blowing it up.

In terms of personal philosophy's I would say this is where religion must go. Religion must say it does not talk about physical truth but personal truth such as love thy neighbor or giving is a great joy (I know these don't stem from religion they stem from biology, but it's something they can still use). I'm sure they exist, although I've not met any so I'll call it philisophical religion. The idea is the same as the Simpsons episode were Lisa discovers Jeremiah Springfield was a fraud. She realize it is the message that is important, no the messenger. We have a saying don't shoot the messenger but perhaps we need one that says "don't deify the messenger." This type of philosophical religion (were god is equatable to an imaginary friend) has the added advantage that people will need to think for themselves since they have to interpret the"holy books" as (they were meant) allegorically. Any other type of religion is contrary to natural philosophy, dangerous and constantly on the defensive since it won't be able to defend it's ridiculous claims against rational thought.