Definitions of the undefinable

Recently, this quest to find the meaning of life has led me to read and write about religion. I've gone about both tasks in a haphazard way and today I'd like, in typical fashion, to loop back to where I should have begun. I'd like to find out what is meant by 'religion'.

Much like irony, most of us know a religion when we see one, but defining exactly what makes a religion a religion proves difficult.

Defining religion seems to be a task that has defeated many others apart from myself and the web is littered with articles that discuss the difficulties that arise when one attempts to formulate a precise meaning for this commonly understood word.

I began my own search for the meaning of religion with the Oxford English Dictionary. AskOxford.com provides the following definition:

religion - noun 1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

2. a particular system of faith and worship

3. a pursuit or interest followed with devotion.

I find this definition lacking. 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power' could describe how some people might feel about a charismatic dictator. Plus, explanations numbers 2 and 3 would equally apply to fervent support of a favourite football team.

I continued my search with reference to my very old and indispensible copy of Roget's Thesaurus (yes Mum, I did steal your copy when I moved out). My mum's thesaurus provides the following suggestions for synonyms: religious instinct, religious bias, religious feeling.

Well, if you don't know what 'religious' means these are most unhelpful. A quick glance to the entry for religious turns up such words as: holy; sacred; spiritual; sacramental; yogic; mystic and devout.

After that first foray, I am no closer to finding any definition of the term.

I then opened my copy of Wordgloss by Jim O'Donnell, a surprisingly entertaining book that I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who is interested in the origin of words. O'Donnell provides the following explanation of the word's etymology:

from the Latin religio, religionis, was related by Cicero to relegere 'to go over again in thought' and by other Roman writers to religare 'to bind'. In both etymologies it denoted man's response to an awareness of the bonds that bound men to the gods. Religare derives from the prefix re 'again' and ligare 'to bind', which also gives us ligature (either the act of binding or a bond itself) and ligament (the bands of tough fibrous tissue that connect bones or support muscles).

Hmmmm, in my opinion, it is a good thing to know where a word came from, but I can't help but feel that this is merely an explanation of a word as a thing and that it goes little way to help me to understand what actually renders a religion religious.

Feeling technical, I then turned to the Harvard Human Rights Journal and to an article entitled 'The complexity of religion and the definition of 'religion' in international law'. This article makes two excellent points about the problem of defining religion.

The first of these states that to define religion you must first decide what is being defined and then, what type of definition you're aiming to draw up.

The second point, which I found to be particularly interesting, is that any attempt to define religion will be influenced by how the person or persons defining it understand religion. Some people believe that religion is something metaphysical, others that it is a psychological experience and still others that religion is a cultural or social force. In other words, if you are religious your definition of religion may be quite different from that that would be provided by someone who does not believe in any God or gods. Equally, people who worship in different ways may understand religion very differently, even if they all share a belief in a god.

Feeling even more confused than I had felt when I began today's posting, I turned to Wikipedia for a basic, collectively created, definition. Wikipedia offered the following explanation:

A religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances and often containing a moral code governing the conduit of human life.

This explanation would suggest that religions should answer for us the two most fundamental questions pertaining to life on earth: why are we here? how should we behave while we're here? For some people, religion does provide this very function however, here's another big BUT - many people believe in religion, but few of us can answer these questions.

Plus, if I were to believe that we were created by giant aliens to amuse them in a similar manner to how we might amuse ourselves by playing Monopoly or better, Risk, and did I worship icons of these beings and live my life in accordance with a set of rules that I believed had been sent down to me by the little green men, would this constitute a religion? If others began to believe similarly, would our belief system then constitute a religion? At what point would beliefs be recognized as such?

I've come to the conclusion that I can't define religion absolutely. I THINK that a religion has the following elements: a creation story or explanation for why or how we got here; a practice that involves worship of a God or gods.

And I'm not even sure if that's correct!

Finally, because defining this seemingly simple term has stumped me, I will leave you with some other people's definitions, which I found at a Canadian website about religious tolerance (and the kind of website that I never thought I would find myself perusing of a Friday afternoon - does this mean I am growing as a person or that I have way too much free time?)

Religion -

William James: "the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."

Alfred North Whitehead: "what the individual does with his own solitariness."

Robert Bellah: "a set of symbolic forms and acts that relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence." Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." Paul Connelly: "Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses."