The Philosophy of Religion
Religion is a complex and varied social taxon. It is commonly used to describe a range of practices that generate and sustain social groups bound by a common worldview, identity, and ideology. It also has a number of effects in the lives of those who practice it, including providing moral guidance, offering a sense of community, promoting healthy behaviors, and even influencing health.
The fact that so many different things are said to fit under this umbrella raises two philosophical issues about how we can understand this contested concept. The first is whether the term can be viewed as a real thing with an essence that is shared by all its members. The second is how we should sort the disparate practices that are categorized as religion.
While there are a variety of definitions and approaches to the question, one popular option is an open polythetic definition that defines a religion by requiring a group to have at least three of a set of features. This approach resembles the way that scientists might sort bacteria by their ability to survive without oxygen or by their size.
There are a number of critics who go further and argue that the modern semantic expansion of the term went hand in hand with European colonialism, and that we should therefore stop treating this particular group of concepts as if they correspond to something that exists outside the sphere of influence of European culture. While these arguments are not without merit, they do not address the more basic philosophical questions about how we should treat this class of abstract concepts that are often used to sort cultural types.