A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world vi

ews that relate humanity to an order of existence.

Many religions have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that are intended
to explain the meaning of life and/or to explain the
origin of life or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human na
ture, people derive morality, ethics, religious
laws or a preferred lifestyle. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,
200 religions in the world.
Many religions may have organized behaviors, clergy, a definition of what consti
tutes adherence or membership, holy places,
and scriptures. The practice of a religion may also include rituals, sermons, co
mmemoration or veneration of a deity, gods or
goddesses, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services
, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music,
art, dance, public service or other aspects of human culture. Religions may also
contain mythology.
The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith, belief system or
sometimes set of duties;
however, in the words of mile Durkheim, religion differs from private belief in t
hat it is "something eminently social".
A global 2012 poll reports that 59% of the world's population is religious, and
36% are not religious, including 13% who are atheists,
with a 9 percent decrease in religious belief from 2005 On average, women are mo
re religious than men.
Some people follow multiple religions or multiple religious principles at the sa
me time, regardless of whether or not the
religious principles they follow traditionally allow for syncretism.
Religion (from O.Fr. religion "religious community," from L. religionem (nom. re
ligio) "respect for what is sacred, reverence
for the gods,obligation, the bond between man and the gods) is derived from the
Latin religio, the ultimate origins of which
are obscure. One possibility is an interpretation traced to Cicero, connecting l
ego "read", i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense
of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully". Modern scholars such as To
m Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the
derivation from ligare "bind, connect", probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e.
re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect," which
was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.
The medieval usage alternates with order in designating bonded communities like
those of monastic orders: "we hear of the
'religion' of the Golden Fleece, of a knight 'of the religion of Avys'".
There are numerous definitions of religion and only a few are stated here. The t
ypical dictionary definition of
religion refers to a "belief in, or the worship of, a god or gods" or the "servi
ce and worship of God or the supernatural".
However, writers and scholars have expanded upon the "belief in god" definitions
as insufficient to capture the diversity of
religious thought and experience.
Peter Mandaville and Paul James define religion as "a relatively-bounded system
of beliefs, symbols and practices that
addresses the nature of existence, and in which communion with others and Othern
ess is lived as if it both takes in and
spiritually transcends socially-grounded ontologies of time, space, embodiment a
nd knowing".
This definition has the virtue of taking into account the emphasis in the litera
ture on the relationship between the immanent
and transcendent without treating it in the modern way as a dualism of two separ
ate worlds. There is no mention of 'God' or
'gods', allowing Buddhism, for example, to be considered a religion.
Urarina shaman, Peru, 1988 Edward Burnett Tylor defined religion as "the belief
in spiritual beings".He argued, back in 1871,
that narrowing the definition to mean the belief in a supreme deity or judgment
after death or idolatry and so on, would
exclude many peoples from the category of religious, and thus "has the fault of
identifying religion rather with particular
developments than with the deeper motive which underlies them". He also argued t
hat the belief in spiritual beings exists in
all known societies
According to the philologist Max Mller, the root of the English word "religion",
the Latin religio, was originally used to
mean only "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, pi
ety" (which Cicero further derived to mean
"diligence").Max Mller characterized many other cultures around the world, includ
ing Egypt, Persia, and India, as having a
similar power structure at this point in history. What is called ancient religio
n today, they would have only called "law".