The Ultimate Question

What is religion? This is a burning question that has been haunting not only scholars, but the minds of many people for years. How does one define religion? And how is it possible for their only to be one true definition of such a complex concept? The truth is there is not only one way of looking at this question, as many have found. Some have tried approaching it as though religion were an object to be picked apart and wanted to find what function religion actually served in society and to people. These were the functionalists, and their approach was popular for quite some time, but it failed to address the actual beliefs themselves and why some people acted so drastically in the name of religion.

I found this debate quite interesting, though there was a whole lot of reading and I did have to go back on some ideas more then once. I had never actually thought of the potential problem in trying to define religion....all I thought of was maybe a dictionary definition and that it involved worship of one kind or another. Apparently it is a much larger, tougher question then I had made it out to be, and has yet to be solved.

The first method used by scholar I believe have already mentioned and that is of functionalism, and there is no effort to look at anything in a religion aside from it's "purpose", meaning how it fulfills a person or manages structure in society. Essentialism is the group that will classify and group certain characteristics and behaviours and group them together, and that in the end, most of them will share the same characteristics with only a few differences. But therein lies yet another challenge. Which differences do you compare it too? General similarities and differences? Differences from Christianity? Differences from Hinduism? Or contrary. which do you set as the prototype to compare with? It is these issues that cause a break in agreement between scholars.

I believe that perhaps a solution to this problem would not to use a prototype, but maybe to just compare basic actions that are common in all, like some have already done. Nothing more and nothing less. It is not pertinent to get too specific like saying "all religions have a god" as this is not true. That is merely true for MOST religions, but not all. If one wants to try categorizing religion, they must be completely unbiased and not try to base of the religion they see as the "best one to use".

This is a problem, as there IS no true middle ground. You are pretty much religious or you are not, and thus are forced to see it from the side you know, and can never be without bias, no matter how hard you try. What I think can be done about this then is take opinions from both sides and try to combine them into one, so we can see the views of both right next to each other combined into one.

I shall conclude this with my own personal definition of religion. It is a complex gathering of people who share similar views with each other and unite alongside one another to "voice" this. As the views differentiated along the years, the groups still maintained basically the same beliefs, but the differences were great enough that they did separate. I do realize that this veiw is extremely simplistic, and perhaps even naive, but that was how I viewed religion up until now. I do hope that in taking classes such as these that I can expand my definition of the true meaning of religion. I know this is not a very good explanation, nor will it probably be agreed with by many, but the subject is so controversial and complex, that a conclusion will probably never be reached in the end.