ABSTRACT
Many attempts have been made to define religion from the points of view of a number of different disciplines: psychologists have characterised it as a projection of human desires (or even as a kind of neurosis), while political thinkers have understood it to be a means of social control which preys upon instinctive human fears. Anthropological definitions, by contrast, attempt to describe religion on its own terms-to understand it from within. Emile Durkheim argued that the cardinal distinction between the
sacred and the profane lies at the heart of all religious experience. It is, he claimed, ‘the most profound distinction ever made by the human mind’. On this basis, he defined religion as ‘a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden’. In more recent times, Durkheim’s notion of the sacred has
come to be viewed as inadequate on the grounds that it cannot be defined by scientific criteria. Alternative definitions have tended to be more descriptive, avoiding the use of privileged terms like ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’. Clifford Geertz, for example, has proposed the following definition: ‘a religion is: (i) a system of symbols which acts to (ii) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (iii) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (iv) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (v) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.’ The problem of definition attested to by the bewildering array of
claims and counterclaims aimed at uncovering the essence of religion, is a reflection of the sheer scope and diversity of its formulations, both temporal and geographical. As Ninian Smart has said: ‘[W]e are not confronted in fact by some monolithic object, namely religion. We are confronted by religions. And each religion has its own style, its own inner dynamic, its own special meanings, its uniqueness’. In order to reflect this diversity, and to attempt to do justice to the multifaceted nature of each and every example, Smart proposes a kind of anatomy of religion rather than a definition: ‘a religion is . . . a six-dimensional organism, typically containing doctrines, myths, ethical teachings, rituals, and social institutions, and animated by religious experiences of various kinds’ (Smart 1971: 31). Another problem associated with the issue of definition is that it is
difficult to be clear about the nature of a phenomenon whose origins
are obscure. There is evidence to suggest that Neanderthals practised ritual burial of their dead, which may indicate that they believed in an invisible realm or some kind of an afterlife. But it is open to question whether such beliefs can be termed ‘religious’. Smart points out that where life is bound up in cultural practices associated with an all-embracing belief system, people are not free to opt in or out of ‘religion’. There is, in such circumstances, no secular life by contrast with which religious life can be defined. The development of religion is also contested. Those who have
propagated evolutionary theories (Rudolf Otto, for example) have construed the history of religion as a process by which primeval polytheisms have been refined. Sometimes such refinements result in monotheism, sometimes in more highly developed versions of polytheism. E.B. Tylor, influenced by Darwinian theory, contended that all religion has its roots in animism. According to his developmental narrative, belief in the existence of the human soul led to the inference that natural objects also have souls. Gradually, natural phenomena came to be perceived as working together, and a controlling influence was inferred: a single deity emerged from the primeval dispersion. Wilhelm Schmidt, on the other hand, claims that the most primitive form of religion was monotheistic, and that, subsequently, it was overlaid with animistic and spiritistic elements. Some approaches to the subject characterise religious phenomena
as purely human constructs. On this account, religious beliefs grow out of the need to explain human existence, to answer its problems and to account for its sufferings. Raymond Firth writes: ‘Everywhere belief in religion arises from attempts to save man or console him from the consequences of his own and other people’s impulses, desires, fears and actions.’ This humanistic view is the result of the decline of Christianity in
Western cultures after more than a thousand years of dominance. That is to say: in order for religion to be defined ‘from the outside’, its grip had first to be loosened sufficiently to make such a perspective possible. It was, above all, the rise of science in the West in the seventeenth century that opened a way beyond religious thought. Human life and natural phenomena came to be explained in radically different ways. The mysterious cosmos, controlled by capricious, and in some cases malign, entities, was supplanted by a rational universe which operates according to fixed laws, and which can be grasped by human reason. Once this leap was made, religious explanations began to appear obsolete.
