Religion is a system of beliefs and practices that is believed to explain the origins and nature of the universe and human life. It is typically centered around a specific deity or group of gods and includes a range of rituals, sacred texts, moral codes, and a belief in an afterlife. Most religions are also based on a particular set of ethics and offer believers guidance in living their lives.
It is often considered to be a central component of human culture and society, and most societies have some form of religion. The study of religion is part of the academic disciplines of history, archaeology, and social sciences. Historically, most efforts to analyze religion have been “monothetic,” meaning that they have attempted to define the term in terms of some sort of defining property or essence. Emile Durkheim, for example, used the concept of religion to identify the systems of beliefs and practices that unite a group as a moral community and, in this way, create a distinct moral order. The twentieth century has, however, seen the emergence of what might be called “functional” approaches that drop the notion of a distinctive kind of reality and instead use the term to describe a functional structure that all religious forms seem to share.
Attempts to define what religion is have included psychological and biological approaches. Psychologists have found that many people believe in religion because it fills some sort of emotional or psychological need. For instance, it can help them cope with fear of death or a desire for a higher spiritual experience than is available in the everyday world. Neuroscientists have found that certain parts of the brain are activated by religious experiences.
Theologians have generally taken a more philosophical approach to the study of religion, with a focus on theology and philosophy. Theologians have also been concerned with the societal implications of religion and its influence on world events. Some theologians have sought to reconcile science and religion.
Some scholars have used the concept of religion to examine social structure and power. Erich Fromm, for example, modified Freudian theory to suggest that authoritarian religions are neurotic and that the idea of religion as a distinct social kind was created only when language developed and that the concept is essentially a pseudo-realist construct.
The most common definition of religion is that it deals in some way with ultimate concerns such as life after death and the fate of humankind. It also typically includes a moral code and ethical guidelines for human conduct, a specific deity or group of deities, sacred texts, special days or objects that are held to be holy, a system of prayer, a clergy or priesthood, and a specific place or area where the religion is practiced. It may also deal with salvation in a literal sense, as in Christianity’s idea of heaven or in a more symbolic sense such as nirvana in Buddhism.