Religion is the core of the human need to find value and meaning in life. It is the phenomenon that makes people willing to live according to and at times even die for their values. It is also the reason why people need a moral order and answers to their most profound questions. For these reasons it has been the source of a variety of religious traditions, including the major world religions, but also more local ones such as Shinto in Japan or hockey in Canada.
The word’religion’ comes from the Latin religio, which is related to the idea of scrupulous devotion or conscientiousness. It was not used originally to describe a system of beliefs or practices. However, the functional definitions of religion that have emerged in sociology have transformed it into a genus of social types that can be defined by social function or axiological principle.
A sociological functional approach defines religion as whatever beliefs and behaviors generate solidarity among people, irrespective of whether they involve belief in unusual realities or not. The assumption is that these social functions make it inevitable that some such system will appear in any culture. It is not surprising that many scholars have taken this view, although awareness of the complexities of the concept has led to an increasing number of elaborations of the definition.
A more substantive approach to the concept has been based on the idea that religion is a system of protection for the body and mind, which was developed early in human evolution as a way of dealing with fears and uncertainties about survival. This theory has become increasingly important as a scientific alternative to the traditional ideas of religion, which have been seen as the result of cultural selection for various aims, including social cohesion and the control of aggression.