Religion has a relation to the individual and society, and it gets into the way of thinking of many people from the past and at present times.
What is religion from the point of view of philosophy?
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1you aren't meant to ask for opinions here– user65174Mar 23 at 21:36
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Since you ask, my opinion is that most religions are: a form of social conditioning; perpetuated by cliques with a vested interest to do so; the cause of much of the trouble in the world; taking advantage of a human tendency to wishful thinking and tribalism; mutually incompatible, and hence cannot all be true. In many respects religions have parallels with other forms of irrational human behaviour encouraged by those with vested interests, such as political affiliations, brand loyalty, patriotism and so on.– Marco OcramMar 23 at 22:11
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Perhaps propose your view and your basis for it, and then ask for something, like known refutations or different conclusions about it or something?– Scott RoweMar 23 at 22:59
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Religion is "a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements" (Wikipedia). Religion is broad. If you want a more specific answer, then you'll need to ask a more specific question (e.g. if a religion is false, why do people believe it, or how could it have come about, although that might be a bit beyond the realm of philosophy).– NotThatGuyMar 24 at 8:17
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1@PaulRoss For what it's worth, I think this is too broad / unclear, rather than opinion-based (as per the reason it was closed for). If philosophers have commented on religion as a whole, then I stand to be corrected.– NotThatGuyMar 24 at 8:35
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3 Answers
The human condition is in some ways incomprehensible. When people grow older and gain experience of life and take time to reflect on the nature of things, they start to become troubled by various problems of the human condition. For example:
Where do we come from? We know, of course, about birth and death, but many of us aren't satisfied with that one step answer; we want to know the ultimate answers: what started it all? How did it start? Why did it start? Science tries to answer these questions, but science is about what happens within nature, so it is powerless to answer where nature came from.
Why are we here? Going through life and experiencing responsibility and failure, humans are prone to begin to feel that they have some higher, more fundamental responsibility than merely the responsibility to survive and enjoy themselves. Even responsibilities like taking care of ones family seem like merely a part of a higher responsibility. What could that higher responsibility be? To live the best life possible? To leave the world a better place than you found it? To serve mankind? To serve God?
What comes next? People fear death, and this fear goes beyond the instinctive urge to self preservation. We, each of us individually, feel a sense of self worth, a sense that something of great value will be lost if we cease to be. What should we make of that? Can we blunt the horror of death by leaving behind a large family? A legacy of some sort, perhaps a novel we write or a large endowment to a charity? Or should we forget about our own personal survival and transfer our concern instead to some corporate entity like our country or society as a whole? Or should we hope for reincarnation or resurrection?
These are the sorts of issues that religion is meant to deal with. They are issues that most of us don't really grasp when we are younger and even when we are older, the tragedy of human existence doesn't really strike someone unless they have raised a family and had to face these sorts of questions from children, seen their children suffer, and had to contemplate one day leaving their children behind.
For people who don't really grasp the tragedy of human existence, religion can seem silly or pointless. Also, science has given us pseudo-answers to many of these questions. I think of Darwin, Freud, and Marx as the trinity of science (many people don't know that Marxism was widely considered a scientific theory at one time). Science has become a sort of pseudo-religion for a lot of people, in part because of the enormous proselytization we all face in education and culture and partly because the solutions of science come without overt responsibilities, unlike religions, which generally create harsh duties.
But the harsh duties also seem to be something that people need, because you will find many people who reject religion, then go on to embrace other forms of harsh discipline such as veganism, radical environmentalism, or hating and despising their own race or sex. Each of these can be seen as a variation of a religious discipline. Veganism reflects the dietary discipline of Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Radical environmentalism reflects the ascetism of many religious faiths, including Catholic monks and Hindu gurus. Hating your own race or sex reflects the Christian teaching of original sin.
Whether any particular religion is true is debatable. What is not really debatable is that religion fills a very real need in the human heart, one that people will try to fill even after they reject the religion of their parents.
answered Mar 23 at 23:57
A religion is a repository of, and a means of transmission of, some form of a moral code. That is, a religion is the place people keep their "should" rules, and the way they teach their children these rules.
Religions often (not always) base this in reference to a deity (or more than one) of some kind.
Religions usually have something to say about a wide array of topics. Clothing, food prep and eating, decoration, music, festival days, etc. etc.
But the "big three" are "hatch, match, and dispatch." That is, children, romantic relationships, and funerals. These are aspects of human life that are basically inescapable. If you have a culture that lasts more than a few years, you will have children, romantic attachments, and deaths.
So religions nearly always have something to say about how children should be cared for, educated, when they are to be treated as adults, etc. They nearly always have something to say about how couples (and families in general) are permitted to behave, how they are required to behave, how marriages (or something similar) are to be marked and observed, etc. And religions nearly always have something to say about death, often something that will (at least attempt to) provide comfort to both those facing death and their loved ones.
What is religion from the point of view of philosophy?
Religion offers answers to what is right and wrong, the path to enlightenment and an afterlife. It is the one of the earliest sources of morality in a society and the basis of philosophy. The understanding of God is one of the earliest uses of philophical techniques.