Inquiry to the definition of Religion

I suspect most of the people have a religion. Whether it is inherited or owned. Since the rise of Scientific Revolution in 17 century onward, people have been questioning frequently the importance of religion in life yet still, the fact of the matter is, religion still being discussed widely. Either in form of affirming it or rejecting it usefulness. However, what is the definition of religion in the first place? Can religion be defined?  The easiest way to define religion is to define it as a close act of alliance toward a sacred place. If someone go to the church, mosque or temple we can says that, "Hey, that guy owned a religion". But suppose the person does not go to the sacred place of worship, can we say that they have no religion at all? In the time of Pandemic, most people are not going to sacred place for a time being. They gather via online but I assume, they all will says that they are all religious and have a religion. So to define religion only base on sacred place is quite unlikely definition of religion, we can think of. 

People like Dawkins argue that Religion is a destructive virus. For Dawkins, religion brain-washed people so that so it hinders them to use their intellect properly. The greatest crime of parents is to teach religion to their children. Dawkins and proponents of New Atheism agree that Religion is full of fairy-tale and teaches people to belief on something without any evidence (blind faith). But having say that, how about the religious people who won Nobel prize? How about people like John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicists or Francis Collins as the director of Human Genome Project. They both are devout Christian and brilliant in their thinking. Very unfair definition of religion provided by Dawkins.

Moreover, the great scientists in the past like Newton, Faraday, Galileo, Mandel and so many more, owned a religion and a devout believer. And in fact, they all agree that religion have boosted their interest in nature and foster their mind to search for the truth critically and scientifically. Hence, to say religion is like a nasty virus is a very sentimental approach toward the definition of religion. Often time, the people and their ideology (-ism: fundamentalism, fanaticism, radicalism, and religionism) are the main actor that give religion a bad name not the religion per se (excluding primitive and ancient religions).The problem is not in religion. The religious follower, and their misguided ideology are to blame. So here, we need to be very careful and not too quick to give negative label to religion. 

Out of depression in defining religion, some try to define it base on the etymology. They say religion was derived from Latin which means, superstitious awe. But etymology of a word cannot substitute the definition of the word. Otherwise, we will fall into the etymological fallacy. For instance, the word parliament comes originally from France which mean, talking. In English we understand the word as the supreme legislative Body of the United Kingdom, which cannot be reduced and defined as equal of talking. The word is evolving. Although helpful, we should not define a word from its historical roots. 

So far, are we arrived to a conclusion yet? Not at all. Maybe John Hick is right. Regarding the matter of defining Religion as he writes: "Religion is one thing to the anthropologist, another to the sociologist, another to the psychologists (and again another to the next psychologist!), another to the Marxist, another to the Mystic, another to Zen Buddhism and yet another to Jews and Christian. As a result, there is a varieties of religious theories of the nature of religion. There is, consequently,  no universal accepted definition of religion, and quite possible there never will be." In the similar tone with Hick, Keith Ward  admittedly wrote in his book, The Case of religion: "It is very difficult to know what religion is"! Nevertheless, to say defining religion is difficult isn't the same as saying it is impossible. 

Well, probably one day, there will be someone who can do that (According Harold Netland this is the best definition of religion that he ever heard, it come from  Roger Schmidt, religions in the plural as "systems of meaning embodied in a pattern of life a community of faith and worldview.") And who knows perhaps, it is one among us who could best define it, and that definition can be accepted widely by various myriad and diverse groups in the future. So I will let this inquiry of the definition religion to be open-ended. But one thing for sure, anytime a person want to try to define religion, one should be careful not to be confused as D.F Pacock says, most of the people defining belief rather than religion. In addition, while we are trying to define what religion is, at least, we will always encounter these three basic ideas down the road: The sense of Transcendence (Rudolf Otto), The ultimate concern (Paul Tillich), the feeling of total dependency (Fredrich Schleiermacher).  These three basics elements of religion are very helpful to guide our attempt to define religion for essentially, throughout the history of mankind, religion is never purely of naturalistic. Furthermore, religion also never merely addition in life but essential to the life and last but not least, religion is universally known to be the ultimate source of which meaning and eternal security derived. It was no surprise that Michael Gottsegen called religion as the "public good".