Religion is a set of beliefs and practices that people use to organize their lives around. It involves a person’s relationship with that which is sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence and is often concerned with one’s fate after death. Many religions include texts regarded as having scriptural status and people considered to have spiritual or moral authority. A common feature of all religions is the division of the world into two groups, sacred and profane.
The concept of religion has shifted over time as the semantic range of the term has grown and expanded. The original sense of religion referred to a scrupulous devotion to a God or deity. The current usage of the term is more general, referring to any system of beliefs or group of practices that people use to structure their lives and help them cope with problems. This shift has raised philosophical issues for the category of religion.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is a contemporary American philosopher with a broad range of interests, including moral and political philosophy and philosophy of culture. He has argued that the concept of religion is a social taxon and that, to understand its properties, we should consider it in the same way as other concepts used to sort cultural types such as literature, democracy, or culture itself.
A number of scholars have taken the view that religion is a universal phenomenon. These have been based on either substantive or functional definitions of the term. When defined as the beliefs and practices that generate social cohesion or provide orientation in life, religion can be said to appear in every culture. However, such a notion of religion is problematic for several reasons.
First, it presupposes a fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane. Those who have no conception of a divine order, disembodied spirits, or an afterlife cannot be described as religious, even if they follow other traditions that emphasize community and moral guidance. Moreover, it is possible to live as an ethical and responsible human being without having any beliefs in the supernatural or cosmological order.
In addition, religion can be very costly. Studies have shown that religiously oriented communities are more likely to have food taboos, restrictions on material possessions, or other costly requirements. These costs can make it difficult to sustain religiously oriented communes, which in turn reduce their capacity to promote and support in-group loyalty. As a result, it is quite common for people to adopt the belief that religion is not essential in their lives. Indeed, in the United States, only 1 member of Congress (Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona) and a few other European leaders are atheists, while 23% of Americans identify as religiously unaffiliated. Nevertheless, some of the benefits that come with religion can be substantial, especially when they are practiced regularly. These can include a sense of community, structure, moral guidance, and hope. In addition, practicing religion can have some health benefits, like reducing stress and depression.