I was engaged in an interesting discussion the other day, in which it was proposed to me that there really is no such thing as religion. Rather, we artificially pull out aspects of cultures or groups and classify them as religion or religious. Part of why this is a beneficial approach is this... sure, we can point to institutions as religious (the Catholic Church, for example). But that's only the surface level of what religion is.... religion encompasses smaller, less obvious things, though too. In many cultures, cooking is a religious process. Bathing. Birth. Death. Walking. Sitting. Meditating. Those things can be collected as religious in some contexts, and in others, they're not. I think this thread has established that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to defining religion. So the I guess the question must be asked... is religion actually a "thing" that's out there in and of itself, or is it just something that we've come up with that we've tried pull out, artificially construct, and define.
Thoughts? (Does that even make sense?)  |