Definition and characteristics of religion

To put it simply, religion is just a kind of worship of masters recognized by the community and education of cultural customs. Religion is a social and historical phenomenon. Most religions believe in or respect supernatural forces, creators and controllers of the universe. It gives people a soul and continues as a belief system after death. The subject of studying religion is religion.

Most religions believe in supernatural forces or entities (gods, gods, ghosts, etc. ) outside the real world, and think that this supernatural power can affect people's destiny, thus producing thoughts and feelings of awe and worship. But religion is different from superstition. Religion is generally composed of the same beliefs, moral norms, rituals, religious organizations and other elements.

Religion can be roughly divided into spontaneous religion and man-made religion. Spontaneous religion is a very primitive religion, generally the religion of primitive society. Modern religions are basically man-made religions.

-(Wikipedia)

In religious studies, any general religious theory is complicated, because religious theory must be based on the consideration of religious traditions, and various religious traditions are so complex and diverse that there is almost no way to boil them down to a theoretical framework with the same * * * *; However, the pursuit of the theoretical framework of * * * is the basic requirement of any general theory. The complexity of general religious theory is first manifested in the beginning of its theoretical thinking. One of the basic tasks of general religious theory is to answer: "What is religion? This problem is to provide a universal definition of religion. Obviously, the definition of religion can't be divorced from religious traditions. However, due to the complexity and diversity of various religious traditions, we can't extract a universal definition formula from them, so we can't explain what makes one tradition a religious tradition and the other one is not. It seems that this theoretical dilemma presages quite serious consequences. If there is no general definition of religion, we will not have a theoretical standard to distinguish religion from non-religion. However, since religious tradition is the basis of defining religion, when it is difficult to define religion, we should first turn to religious tradition itself as a given fact, not as a theoretical object to be determined.

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Cihai defines religion as "a social ideology". Believing in and worshiping supernatural gods is a distorted and illusory reflection of natural and social forces in people's consciousness "(Ci Hai bound volume, Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House, 1985, p./10 10-0/0).