Religions are complex systems that create and transmit the means to attain some of the most important goals imaginable. They do this in a wide variety of ways, and it is for that reason that they can be so difficult to study. Religions may be large-scale and coherently organized and hierarchical: a Roman Catholicism with its Vatican, cardinals, bishops, priests, lay people running in parallel with a spiritual hierarchy of apostles, saints, martyrs, doctors, and so on; or they may be extremely loosely organized, with no overall structure at all, with a variety of highly strong subsystems based, for example, on gurus, temples, or holy places. But whatever their structure, all religions have in common that they are, for good or ill, a context within which sanctions and rewards, approval and disapproval, inspiration and ideation are held in common, and the terms on which these are established.
The concept religion was originally derived from the Latin religio, which means “scrupulousness”, “conscientiousness”, or “devotedness”. However, it was not a social genus, but rather a taxonomic category that sorting out practices characterized by a certain degree of scrupulousness, devotion, and moral obligation.
It was only later that the concept came to be used to describe a specific religious practice. This shift from a taxonomic to a descriptive category raised questions about how one might understand the categories of human behaviour and what sorts of phenomena would be considered to fall within them.
A great deal of work has been done in trying to understand what a religion is and why it has the effects that it does. Most of the work has been what might be called monothetic, relying on the classical view that every instance that accurately fits a particular category will share a single defining property. More recently, there has been a move to a polythetic approach to the concept of religion. This treats it like a prototype, and looks for the co-occurrence of properties that might lead to an explanatory theory.
One important issue that has been raised by this is the extent to which religions, especially those that are polytheistic, are in some sense mutually exclusive. It is important to bear in mind that, as is clear from the examples given above, there are many forms of religious life that can coexist in a society without conflict.
It is also worth noting that, although it is wholly possible to be a good and moral person without religion, there are many people who are more successful at this with the help of a religious figure to guide them. The practice of religion improves health, learning, economic well-being, self-control and self-esteem, and reduces the incidence of social pathologies such as out-of-wedlock births, crime, delinquency, drug and alcohol addiction, and prejudices. It also provides people with an explanation for the meaning of their lives and a sense of purpose. All of these benefits make it a worthwhile endeavor. This makes it a very important part of the world’s culture.