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Ways of Defining Religious beliefs that Fail

So many definitions of faith fail because (1) they don't embrace all religions or (2) the description is so broad that other things outside religions are included. searching for josh.org


For example, the concept of religion as one that features a supreme being or belief in Lord is a common definition of faith. However, it is not enough as a definition of religion because some religions are polytheistic or don't have a superior God or being at all. Brahman Hinduism is such one example which although it has mythical gods at the common people's level believes that Brahman-Atman is 'being-itself' and is not The lord or god like Abrahamic religions.

Other individuals believe that religion is associated with worship but again not every religions do have these kinds of rituals. Hinduism again does not worship Brahman-Atman; neither of the two does the Theravada form of Buddhism worship.

People have also attempted to define religion as that which leads to rituals or is associated with rituals. That route brings about the quagmire of attempting to define what rituals are, even so. In any case, a moment's reflection leads to the view that not all rituals are what would be called 'religious'. We have now parliamentary, politics, family and institution, and military rituals. So ritual cannot be used to specifically determine religion because ritual is found throughout social spheres of different sorts.

Rituals are certainly dominating in religious techniques but ritual by itself is not an adequate strategy to discriminate between the religious and non-religious.

Lastly, other descriptions have opted for ethical systems as what defines religious beliefs. Although many religions do include ethical codes not all do. Whenever we examine the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans we find many gods but no accompanying honest code based on the gods and their directions, in fact, quite the opposite.

Another Tack In Defining Religion

One philosopher, Professor Roy Clouser, has tried another approach to religion meaning.

Initially, he says we should abandon the research to find something that all religions have in common due to its fruitlessness. Rather it could be better to start with the hypothesis that all religions regard something as divine or have got a 'divinity' belief of some sort.

Although this move doesn't appear to improve the cause of religion classification very much because it areas us back in the frustration of trying to determine the common element that most religions have, Clouser's move opens up a new possibility.

For then he proposes to move from trying to identify a specific property that all divinity beliefs share to isolating a common feature of the status that each of these assumed divinities share in each religious beliefs.

Colloquially, that standing can be expressed in the belief that the 'divinity' is 'just there'. Each religion has something or somebody taken to be divine and assumed being 'just there'.

Far more technically, Clouser describes 'just there' as 'unconditionally, nondependently real' (p. 21, Being aware of With The Heart, 1999).

Clouser is not praoclaiming that any religion utilizes the above words or that in every circumstance the nondependently genuine is explicit. In a few religions it is implicit. jashow.org/wiki/index.php/An_Apologetic_for_Apologetics


In Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the divinity belief is explicit. There is only one Lord and God is also the one divine fact. But in other faiths, behind the gods stand the one divine reality as in the Greek ('Chaos') and Roman ('Numen') religions. That is, the divine (the nondependently genuine) is distinct through the gods. This construction is also found in Brahman Hinduism.

Clouser has examined many different religions in terms of this meaning and found no divinity belief that is not going to meet his given criterion. The interesting implication of Clouser's definition is that it has implications for worldviews not normally regarded religions.