Religion is one of the big ways that human societies have hit on as a solution to induce unrelated individuals to be nice to each other. It is a system of values, moral guidelines and organizational structures for evaluating behavior and providing incentives to perform it scrupulously. People who are religious tend to act generously, devotedly and ecstatically for the good of others. They also pray fervently, sacrificially and superstitiously to make the world a better place and to ensure their own salvation.
The word “religion” has evolved to mean more than just a set of beliefs and practices; it describes an attitude towards life which is both skeptic and romantic. It is a view that the universe is both material and immaterial, real and ideal; it carries the idea of transcendence and of a higher goal, destiny or purpose for humanity. It is also a view that life should be lived as a project – to an acknowledged but largely unknown future for which we are evaluated and for which we have to prepare by means of an evaluation procedure.
Most definitions of religion are monothetic in character. They assume that there is a characteristic found in every religion and that if the form of life has this, it will automatically be categorized as a religion. Such definitions may be correct, but they are problematic because they ignore the fact that religion is a concept constructed by humans and it has the power to discriminate among phenomena.