Religion is the belief in an ever living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind .
(Friedrich Schleiermacher)
Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence or the consciousness that the whole of our spontaneous activity comes from a source outside of us .
(Karl Marx)
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
(Anthony Wallace)
Religion is a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature .
(Emile Durkheim)
Religion is only sentiment inspired by the group in its members, but projected outside of the consciousness that experiences them, and objectified .
(Signmund Freud)
Freud refers to religion as an illusion which is "perhaps the most important item in the psychical inventory of a civilization". In his estimation, religion provides for defense against "the crushingly superior force of nature" and "the urge to rectify the shortcomings of civilization which made themselves painfully felt". He concludes that all religious beliefs are "illusions and insusceptible of proof."
(James G. Frazer)
Religion is a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of Nature and of human life .
(William James)
The very fact that there are so many (definitions of religion) … is enough to prove that the word “religion” cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name …
A Definition of Religion
cautious, recognizing that we cannot escape our own perspective …
The very attempt to define religion, to find some distinctive or possibly unique essence or set of qualities that distinguish the "religious" from the remainder of human life, is primarily a Western concern. The attempt is a natural consequence of the Western speculative, intellectualistic, and scientific disposition. It is also the product of the dominant Western religious mode, what is called the Judeo-Christian climate or, more accurately, the theistic inheritance from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The theistic form of belief in this tradition, even when downgraded culturally, is formative of the dichotomous Western view of religion. That is, the basic structure of theism is essentially a distinction between a transcendent deity and all else, between the creator and his creation, between God and man. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Definitions)
Elements of Religion
Human thought
Feeling
Action
Social interconnectedness
Values
Religion and Human Thought
Religion is intimately connected with human thought.
Even those who focus on practice have beliefs, develop doctrines, and emphasize the importance of certain teachings in the religious life essential to their way of life.
Religion and Feeling
To some extent, all religious experience is an emotional experience.
Friedrich Schleiermacher characterized religion as a feeling of absolute dependence.
Rudolf Otto, characterized religion as the experience of the holy. And this experience is one that inspires feelings of fear, awe, terror, and love.
Religion and Action
While the form and place of religious action vary, the importance of action to an understanding of religion is evident.
Examples of religious action:
Islam = the duty of prayer and salat
Shinto = approach the shrine of kami by washing, ringing a bell, and clapping their hands
Most of the great religions make a place for individual devotion and encourage persons to search for union with the ultimate reality.
But we must be careful not to overstress the individual dimension of religion.
One of the most elementary components of religion is some emphasis on the idea of society.
Thus, the essence of religion is the ways in which it enables individual persons to identify with the values associated with a particular group.
Values and Religion
In most times and places, religion has been closely connected with morality.
To some, religion confirms the moral law and gives one power to perform one's duty.
Religion is a way of expressing important societal values.
For example, when believers in various settings pray or offer sacrifices to honor God, or to ward off spirits that threaten tribal unity, they express their sense of what is important in life.
What kind of stuff? : Substance or Function?
Functionalist Definition of Religion
Focuses on the role religion plays in the lives of persons and groups.
Might focus on the ways religion enables people to sustain hope in the face of difficult circumstances.
“Functionalist” understands religion to have to with the role it plays ordering, making sense, of human existence
Substantive Definition of Religion
Attempts to limit the phenomena that may be characterized as religious.
Seeks to identify what it is that makes certain responses to death and suffering religious and others not.
“Substantive” recognizes that religion to be contrasted with the many other … isms or ways of thought etc. that function to make life bearable, ordered, etc. (cf. Martineau's definition above)
Definition must be both
Considerations of function are necessary but not sufficient to the task of defining religion.
But an adequate definition of religion must include a substantive component.
Thus, any adequate definition of religion must account for both the function and substance of religion.
Religion and politics overlap but are not the same
Religion and morality overlap but are not the same
religion and science overlap but are not the same
… history?
A Proposed Definition
Religion signifies those ways of viewing the world that refer to:
a notion of sacred reality
made manifest in human experience
in such a way as to produce long-lasting ways of thinking, feeling, and acting
with respect to problems of ordering and understanding existence
A Notion of Sacred Reality
A notion of sacred reality establishes a boundary between religion and non-religion.
Sacred indicates a reality that is somehow distinct, set apart, other than ordinary.
Sacred reality includes the God of the Bible, the Qur'anic Allah, the Brahman of Hinduism, Buddhism's Nirvana, the kami of Shinto.
Manifest in Human Experience
Although the sacred is set apart from the ordinary, it nevertheless may be experienced, thought about, and acted upon.
Thus, all religion has to do with the element of the sacred manifesting itself in various ways: in rituals, persons, and natural phenomena.
Muslims = the sacred reality (Allah) is made manifest through prophecy
Buddhists = the goal of Nirvana comes to life in the life and teaching of the Buddha
Navaho = the story of the Navaho people makes wisdom available for those who seek harmony between all things.
Long-Lasting Ways of Thinking and Feeling
Religious ways develop over time. And they come to constitute traditions that may be identified with the history of particular communities.
For example, the prophecy of Muhammad is the beginning of the tradition of Islam.
Islam's message and the story of its revelation in seventh-century Arabia have produced characteristic modes of thought, feeling, and action among a large percentage of the world's population.
Ordering and Understanding Existence
Stresses the way in which notions of sacred reality are related to problems of suffering and death.
Also stresses the way in which notions of sacred reality are related to other problems; such as the ordering of political or economic life.