RELIGION is a socio-spiritual construct created by human individuals and societies that serves as a lens through which people choose to see the world. This lens gives structure to ones life by offering answers to many of life's biggest and most unanswerable questions. Belief and adherence to a religion also sets up the mechanics for "faith." Religion acts as a framework for our "spiritual impulse" or "spiritual willingness" and often serves as a foundation for ones "world view." However, Religion is not the same thing as "spirituality," these are two separate concepts, often with overlap, but not necessarily so.
Religions are often based on the mythology of "revealed wisdom" traditions. This is the notion that a theistic supernatural entity (ex: God or Gods) that exists outside of our known reality, revealed itself into our reality in order to give wisdom to human kind. With the exception of Buddhism, all of the major world religions are based on revealed wisdom. Sacred texts from antiquity serve as the basis for the records of such wisdom traditions.
As it trickles down through cultures over time, religion can become a defining property of cultural identities. At the levels of family, race, tribe, nationality and other group identities, religions as heritage and tradition become powerfully sacred and individually personal.
(from Wikipedia:) Religion and philosophy meet in several areas, notably in the study of metaphysics and cosmology. In particular, a distinct set of religious beliefs will often entail a specific metaphysics and cosmology. That is, a religion will generally have answers to metaphysical and cosmological questions about the nature of being, of the universe, humanity, and the divine.
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THE MAJOR RELIGIONS
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| LIST OF WORLD RELIGIONS
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| Deifying a material object due to the need to believe in something divine, from the film: Monty Python's LIFE OF BRIAN (1979) |
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