Religion is a broad category that encompasses many different beliefs and behaviors. It is a complex phenomenon that can be challenging to study. While there is much debate about how to define religion, the term has been around for millennia and people have always been able to find ways to practice it.
A major point of contention in the academic study of religion is whether or not it can be defined in a meaningful way. There are those who believe that a definition of religion should be monothetic, which would mean that it can only be true or false. Others, including many scholars of religion, have rejected this view, arguing that it is not possible to correct a real or lexical definition of the word (for example, if one offered the definition “ice-skating while singing” then they could only correct it by showing that it is not actually ice-skating). Stipulative definitions are therefore acceptable, as long as they are purpose-relative, since they will be assessed not for their truth but for their usefulness in understanding certain types of social phenomena.
Most studies of religion focus on the consequences of religion for individuals and society. Some scholars, such as Emile Durkheim, have argued that religion acts as a kind of glue that holds societies together. Others have suggested that religion provides explanations of life’s mysteries and can be comforting or terrifying. Still others have suggested that religions can encourage healthy behaviors. For example, religious communes tend to outlast those based on secular ideologies and some research suggests that people who regularly attend church, synagogue or temple seem to have longer lives than those who do not.
It is important to note that all of these different functions and consequences can be accounted for without resorting to any supernatural explanations. This is a key point that distinguishes a polythetic approach to the concept from a naturalistic or materialist approach. The latter may imply that any form of human behavior can be explained by naturalistic or materialist means, but polythetic approaches to the concept are based on the fact that humans have been creating their own forms of religion for thousands of years without any need for supernatural explanations. This is an important distinction to make since the concept of religion has a history of being used to denigrate some cultures as godless or superstitious, or, in more recent times, to categorize them as inferior to modern ones. The polythetic approach to the concept of religion recognizes this history and aims to avoid its misuses by treating it as a social genus that can exist within more than one culture but that must have some common features. The resulting taxonomy of religions can be used to understand these different cultures and their relationships to one another. It can also help us to develop theories of how they interact and evolve over time. This is an exciting prospect for future research on religion.