📌 Definition
Religion is a set of beliefs and practices that connect human beings to a higher reality (God, gods, or the sacred). It involves rituals, sacred texts, moral codes, and communities of believers. Religion addresses the major existential questions: Who are we? Why is there suffering? What happens after death?
🧭 The Functions of Religion
1. Explanatory Function
Religion offers an interpretation of the world, its origin, and its purpose (e.g., the creation of the world by God).
2. Moral Function
It provides norms for behavior (right/wrong) and a vision of the good life, often expressed through commandments.
3. Social Function
Religion helps unite communities, establishes traditions, shared rituals, and taboos (Durkheim).
4. Existential Function
It responds to human anxiety in the face of death, suffering, and evil. It gives meaning to life.
❓ Possible Essay Questions
- Is religion an illusion?
- Can one be moral without religion?
- Is faith opposed to reason?
- Does religion liberate or alienate?
- Are all religions equal?
🎯 Philosophy and Religion: Opposition or Complementarity?
🧠 Philosophy = Reason
Philosophy seeks truth through the use of reason, doubt, and logical thinking.
🙏 Religion = Faith
Religion is based on faith, revelation, and adherence to dogmas, sometimes without rational proof.
➕ Tensions:
- Religion can conflict with reason (fanaticism, dogmatism).
- Yet some philosophers show that faith and reason can complement each other (St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas).
📚 Key Thinkers and Quotes
- Karl Marx – Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
📌 “Religion is the opium of the people.”
→ Religion comforts, but hides the reality of social exploitation. - Sigmund Freud – The Future of an Illusion
📌 “Religion is an illusion born of infantile needs.”
→ Religion calms our fears, but is based on wishful thinking, not facts. - Émile Durkheim – The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
📌 “Religion is a social fact.”
→ Religion unites communities and creates moral order. - Blaise Pascal – Pensées
📌 “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”
→ Faith is rooted in deep inner experience, beyond rational analysis. - St. Augustine – The City of God
📌 “Believe so that you may understand, understand so that you may believe.”
→ Faith and reason can enlighten one another.
✅ Key Takeaways
- Religion is an existential and social response to the human condition.
- It can conflict with reason, but also engage in dialogue with it.
- Religion is criticized for being illusory or manipulative, but it remains a universal phenomenon.
- Philosophizing about religion means neither blindly believing nor rejecting without thinking.