Defining “religion” is a thankless task, for no single definition will satisfy everyone. Belief in a god would seem mandatory, but some groups that look like religions, such as Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Unitarian Universalism, don’t even have that. Other “religions,” like Tibetan Buddhism, may not worship gods, but do accept supernatural phenomena like karma and reincarnation.
Rather than argue semantics, I’ll choose a definition that fits most people’s intuitive conceptions of religion, and certainly corresponds to the tenets of the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—that comprise about 54 percent of the world’s inhabitants. This is also the form of religion that most often conflicts with science. The definition is taken from the Oxford English Dictionary:
Religion. Action or conduct indicating belief in, obedience to, and reverence for a god, gods, or similar superhuman power; the performance of religious rites or observances.
One can derive three characteristics of religion from this definition, all part of the Abrahamic faiths. The first is theism: the claim that God interacts with the world. The notion of “superhuman power” implies that God’s power is exercised, and the ideas of obedience and reverence, as well as performance of rites, imply that God must not only observe you but judge you, and his approval implicitly carries rewards or punishment. This means that I am considering religion as largely theistic, rather than a deistic belief in a remote, noninteractive God. As we’ll see, few religionists are strict deists anyway. But even deism, though denying God’s influence in the world, conflicts with science by making claims about God’s existence, and often about his creation of the universe.
The second feature of religion is its embrace of a moral system. If the supernatural agent confers or denies approval based on obedience, that means there are behaviors and thoughts that are either worthy or unworthy of that approval, including obedience itself. This yields a framework of divinely based morality. Even faiths like Taoism and Jainism that, lacking gods, could be considered philosophies still have moral codes. (Jains, for instance, devoutly abjure harming any creatures, including insects, and even try to avoid injuring plants!)
Codes of morality imply the third trait of religion: the idea that God interacts directly with you in a personal relationship. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James saw the ideas of a moral code and a personal connection to God as the nucleus of all religions:
There is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts [an uneasiness and its solution]:
1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.
2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.
Finally, what do we mean by a “supernatural agent”? As we’ll see, the term “supernatural” is slippery, for even supernatural powers can affect natural processes, bringing the supernatural into the realm of empirical study. I’ll rely again on the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the adjective: “Belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal.” Here “beyond scientific understanding” means “outside the realm of the material world.” As a supernatural being, God is often seen as a “bodiless mind,” but one with humanlike emotions.
From now on I’ll concentrate on religions that make empirical claims about the existence of a deity, the nature of that deity, and how it interacts with the world. But what do we mean by “claims”? Are they the claims of the church itself (that is, official doctrine and dogma), the claims of theologians (which, of course, differ, even among clerics within a faith), or the claims of regular believers, which needn’t coincide with those of either theologians or church doctrine? We all know Catholics, for instance, who consider themselves members of the church although rejecting its doctrines on homosexuality and abortion, as well as the theory of evolution, which is accepted by the Vatican but rejected by many Catholics. When I discuss the claims of “religion,” I’ll simply go back and forth between theologians, believers, and dogma, trying to make clear which I’m discussing. Except for those rarefied theologians whose claims are either terminally obscure or close to atheism, it makes little difference, for believers, dogma, and theologians alike make existence claims and promote “ways of knowing” that make their faith incompatible with science. But do religions really make such claims? One needn’t look far to discover that most do, although more sophisticated believers and theologians tend to downplay that fact.

Does Religion Look for Truth?

It seems obvious that if religion is based on the existence of a god, then that is a contention about reality, and such a reality constitutes a basis for belief. In other words, the existence of God is taken as a fact. Surprisingly, some theologians come close to denying this, saying that God cannot be contention, in a book about Islam, that it’s irrelevant whether Muhammad was really a prophet of God. Such a statement would get one killed if uttered publicly in some Muslim lands.
It would seem unnecessary to document the importance of empirical claims about God, except for those vociferous and liberal theologians who argue that faith doesn’t depend on statements about reality. Let’s begin with the Bible, which clearly grounds Christianity on the Resurrection, a supposedly historical event that has become the linchpin of virtually all Christian faith: “Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”

Existence Claims: Is There a God?


Some faith claims are more important than others, but nearly all theists have at least one or two bedrock beliefs that support their religion. The most important, of course, include the existence of a god, whether there is only one of them or, in polytheistic faiths like Hinduism, a panoply of gods with different abilities. Existence claims about gods are clearly empirical claims—claims that require some kind of evidence—and although they can be hard to test depending on the kind of god you worship, advocates of theism argue that God’s interventions in the universe should be detectable. At the very least, those theists should be able to describe what the world would be like had it arisen in a purely naturalistic manner, and if their god didn’t exist.
Many surveys show that belief in gods is universal and strong. A 2011 survey of belief in twenty-two countries, for instance, found that 45 percent of all people asked agreed with the statement “I definitely believe in a God or a Supreme Being.” But there was wide variation among nations, ranging from 93 percent agreement in Indonesia to only 4 percent in Japan. (Besides Turkey and Indonesia, “Muslim countries” weren’t surveyed, nor were any in Africa, though belief in both regions is surely very high.) European countries were on the low side, with between 20 percent and 30 percent of people being “definite” believers, with Great Britain coming in at 25 percent. The United States, the most religious of First World countries, ranked seventh, with 70 percent espousing definite belief in God. (Definite nonbelief, by the way, was expressed by 18 percent of Americans—about half the level found in France, Sweden, and Belgium.)
God, of course, can be construed along a continuum from the traditional bearded man in the sky to the ineffable “ground of being” of modern theologians. But three surveys conducted by the International Social Survey Program between 1991 and 2008 narrowed this down, asking people in thirty countries whether they believed in a personal god “who concerns himself with every human being personally.” This goes further than just assuming that God affects the world. But the results resembled those given above: there was wide variation, ranging from 20 to 30 percent in most European countries to 68 percent in the United States, but there was also widespread acceptance, in studies spanning two decades, of an involved and intervening God. Clearly most of those who accept God are theists, not deists.
Right before I wrote these paragraphs, a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses e-mailed me an article, “The Untold Story of Creation,” which was quite specific about God’s nature:
God is a person, an individual. He is not a vague force devoid of personality, floating aimlessly in the universe. He has thoughts, feelings, and goals.
The more intellectual believers would sneer at such a description, claiming that God is not at all like a person, and that their own nebulous and impersonal deity is the “correct” description of God.

Good question

Looking for trouble ? some atheists gats knock on you soon.


Religion means reliability on undefinable/s for some rescue . thanks.

religion is a slavery process in which slaves are convinced that there is an old whiteman living in the sky who will punish them if they dont eat the flesh and drink the blood of his dead son.
the slaves are also made to eat live snakes, spend days without eating, bring 10% of their earnings, shout holyghost-fire to their enemies, travel to die in collapsed illegal structure, etc. hoping that they will see this old whiteman in the sky when they die.

Religion is an institutionalized belief system for population control making the individual believe they build on their morality. Religion indoctrination makes you do what you instructed to do no matter what's wrong or right.

MrPresident:
religion is a slavery process in which slaves are convinced that there is an old whiteman living in the sky who will punish them if they dont eat the flesh and drink the blood of his dead son.
the slaves are also made to eat live snakes, spend days without eating, bring 10% of their earnings, shout holyghost-fire to their enemies, travel to die in collapsed illegal structure, etc. hoping that they will see this old whiteman in the sky when they die.

You are shallow.
Let me enlighten you on slavery.
Slavery is when the very phone you use gives you cancer and you use the same phone to call the doc about it.
Slavery is when the air conditioner you use depletes the ozone layer, making the air hotter and causing you to need it even more.
You are not as free as you think, but a "freerer" man choses and it's aware of his own slavery.

aaronson:
Religion is an institutionalized belief system for population control making the individual believe they build on their morality. Religion indoctrination makes you do what you instructed to do no matter what's wrong or right.

And what are those you do that are right that 'religion' indoctrination teaches otherwise and things you won't do that 'religion' indoctrination teaches otherwise(limit to Christianity).

Religion is a n at tempat nya Man to under stand God in human reasoning

Eddlad:


And what are those you do that are right that 'religion' indoctrination teaches otherwise and things you won't do that 'religion' indoctrination teaches otherwise(limit to Christianity).

As for christianity, the bible says stone your "child to death" Dueteronomy 21: 18-21

aaronson:
As for christianity, the bible says stone your "child to death" Dueteronomy 21: 18-21

And you see someone do this somewhere? Or ask why no one does that?.


The question is in 2 folds, go on.

Eddlad:



And you see someone do this somewhere? Or ask why no one does that?.


The question is in 2 folds, go on.

Perfect answer,"The question is in 2 folds" lol just what I wanted to prove the denial defence mechanism of christians!

aaronson:
Perfect answer,"The question is in 2 folds" lol just what I wanted to prove the denial defence mechanism of christians!

Go back and my posts in response to yours, then come again.If you cant reason properly then don't bother.

Eddlad:



Go back and my posts in response to yours, then come again.If you cant reason properly then don't bother.

I thought atheists tends to be aggressive and salty but your pastor could come on this thread and see how militant and psychopath his member is acting out.

aaronson:
I thought atheists tends to be aggressive and salty but your pastor could come on this thread and see how militant and psychopath his member is acting out.

Scratch that, get yourself a copy of English comprehension first.

Eddlad:


Scratch that, get yourself a copy of English comprehension first.

Tell you what, Its called English text book because composition/letter write up,vocabulary building,part of speech,figure of speech,comprehension etc, are all topics that makes up every chapter in the text book,hope I done enlightening you on that one?