Religious beliefs and practices play a significant role in the lives of people around the world. They influence their personal and social development, and provide a framework for their values and behavior. Some religions have also developed unique teachings about how to live a good life and help others. This makes them a source of comfort for many people in times of stress, as well as an important community resource. Whether it is a matter of faith or not, most people feel that religion has a positive impact on their lives.
The concept of religion has shifted a great deal over time, from a simple sense of scrupulous devotion to the notion of a kind of cultural practice. As a result, the semantic range of the term has expanded to encompass an almost unlimited number of practices, some of which are radically different from one another. The resulting confusion about what counts as religion highlights two philosophical issues that arise when a concept is used to sort distinct kinds of practices.
Some scholars use the term “religion” to name a general feature of human culture, which they assume appears in all cultures. This is the “monothetic” view of the concept, and it is sometimes used to contrast with a polythetic view that treats the term as a family resemblance concept. The latter approach is supported by examples from anthropology and philosophy, and it is not unusual for the concept of religion to be viewed in this way.
Both monothetic and polythetic approaches to the concept of religion raise questions about what it means for something to be a “religion.” It is often assumed that all members of a religious group share a set of characteristics, such as belief in a creator or commitment to helping others. However, a person can believe in multiple gods and still be considered part of the same religion, and the same is true for most other religious practices.
In the past, scholars have treated these debates as a matter of definition. For example, Durkheim defined religion as whatever function it served in a society, and Tillich defined it as a dominant concern that organizes a person’s values (whether or not that concern involves belief in any supernatural realities). The idea is that, once the right definition is chosen, one will be able to discover a universality in religion that will not be found when examining different groups.
But this assumption is flawed. As a new study from the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University shows, there is little evidence that some of the benefits of religion are specific to practicing it or to being religious. In fact, it is possible to get some of the same benefits without being religious at all, such as increased levels of social support and greater psychological well-being. The study was published in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science. It is one of a growing body of research that suggests the benefits of religion are largely the result of being in a community.