Defining Religion

Defining Religion

The most fundamental question when examining a religion is "what is

religion?" That is a distinctly hard question to answer considering

that what is ordinarily considered to be religion is not all it is,

and what many consider not to be religion may be near religious (i.e.

sports).

The truth is that there are no genuine answers to the question of

"what is religion". Definitions of religion tend to suffer from one of

two problems: they are either too narrow and exclude many of the

belief systems which most people will agree are religious, or they are

too vague and ambiguous, leading one to conclude that just about any

and everything is actually a religion. Thus defining religion seems to

be a matter of belief more than anything else where the opinion of the

definer matters more than any objectively factual material.

For a person's conception of how religion ought to be examined will

determine to a large extent that person's view of the value (or lack

of value) of being religious, whether or not that person actually

examines religion in depth. The other important factor is what a

person actually finds as a result of engaging in a religious search.

Some approaches make it easier to find something religiously

meaningful in life, while others make it more difficult. For example,

some people would identify "examining religion" with discovering

certain external facts, such as the "true" date and authorship of some

religious texts, or observing people as they engage in religious

practices in order to discover the social or psychological factors

causing them to act in such a way.

Such an assumption often tends...

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...d myself mistaken and punished...."

Far from punishing Darwin, succeeding generations treated his memory

rather well. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, among British royalty

and such notables as Newton and Disraeli; his residence at Down House

is now a government-run museum. In contrast Wallace's last home was

demolished decades ago to make room for apartments. His gravesite,

marked shortly after his death in 1913 with a petrified tree trunk for

a monument, is now overgrown and difficult even to find.

However, it is quite interesting to notice that the question of

priority for the advance in understanding remains wide open. Over the

past few decades, some historians have argued that Wallace (a

self-educated naturalist of humble birth and means) in fact beat

Darwin (an upper-class gentleman scientist) to the punch.