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Religion and mathematics are perceived as two things that are very reciprocally exclusive; this is due to the opinion asserting that mathematics is considered as valid and objective knowledge. On the other hand, religion is something interpretive and subjective. Historically speaking, religion and mathematics have a strong association and in certain aspects, both of them have points of contact that can permeate each other. The forms of intersection between mathematics and religion need to be analyzed so that we will be able to see more clearly the current religious phenomenon. This study investigates and discovers a potential encounter between religion and mathematics. To see the relationship between religion and mathematics, and even their fusion, the first thing to do is determine the definition of religion and mathematics. With a clear understanding of both, the encounter points will be easier to recognize. The research method used in this study is a literature review. This study collects systematically a variety of literature related to the theme under study. The encounter between religion and mathematics undergoes at five dimensions, they are ontological, epistemological, teleological, theoretical and application dimension. This study more focused on similarities to reveal the connection between religion and mathematics.

The article focuses on the theoretical and methodological status of the concept of religion in the essentialist interpretation of ethnic community by analyzing the material of foreign researches. The key effort is to reveal whether the essentialist views on ethnic communities are compatible with the constructivist paradigm of religion. The essentialist approach to the notion of an ethnic community now develops in the frame of primordialism, which can be divided into two main directions: cultural and socio-biological. Proponents of the former concentrate on a detailed description of cultural differences between ethnic communities, with cultural diversity being accepted only to describe the essence of a particular ethnic community. Sociobiological primordialists deny cultural features’ status at the face of biological evolution. The common theoretical assumption of primordialisms turns out to be the essentialist vision: an ethnic community is endowed with the essence defined by a number of attributes, including religion. The constructivist approach, however, suggests that religion has no referent in reality and its notion is defined conventionally and empirically. Accepting this approach would deprive religion of its essence. Rendering the essence of religion relative, therefore, means blurring the boundaries defining the essence of an ethnic community. This consequence clearly contradicts the essentialist approach to an ethnic community. Thus, embracing an essentialist approach to ethnic community leads to the need to adopt the essentialist interpretation of religion.

This article advocates for the production of stipulative definitions of religion, a type of nominal definition that articulates new ways of applying a word to a thing. I propose that scholars look to sites where phenomena historically have been labeled “religion” on lexical or real understandings of the term, this to query how religious agents there chose, implicitly or explicitly, to systematize thought, speech, emotion, and action. Such self-consciously ordered systems, I argue, may properly be labeled “religion.” Next, I apply this method to premodern South Asia, suggesting “religion” refers to the second-order structuring there that links normative social relations to normative states of subjectivity, any innovation in the one demanding innovation in the other. I conclude by inviting other efforts at stipulative definition, all with an eye toward an inductive approach, allowing that the myriad locations of religion present mutually distinguishable systems that may all properly be so labeled.

Reflection on the future study of religion(s) poses three questions: What is the definition of religion? What should ‘study’ mean in the academic discourse about religion? And how about its...

In a recent article, Ireneusz Zieminski (2018) argues that the main goals of philosophy of religion are to (i) define religion; (ii) assess the truth value of religion and; (iii) assess the rationality of a religious way of life. Zieminski shows that each of these goals are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Hence, philosophy of religion leads to scepticism. He concludes that the conceptual tools philosophers of religion employ are best suited to study specific religious traditions, rather than religion more broadly construed. But it’s unclear whether the goals Zieminski attributes to philosophy of religion are accurate or even necessary for successful inquiry. I argue that an essentialist definition of religion isn’t necessary for philosophy of religion and that philosophers of religion already use the conceptual analysis in the way Zieminski suggests that they should. Finally, the epistemic standard Zieminski has in view is often obscure. And when it is clear, it is unrealistically high. Contemporary philosophers of religion rarely, if ever, claim to be offering certainty, or even evidence as strong as that found in the empirical sciences.

The article touches upon different approaches to religion's conceptualization. The author makes an attempt to check the accuracy of the proposition according to which many ways of conceptualization of religion are reduced to two main approaches. One of them is the normative approach; which is associated with essentialism. Another approach is dimensionalism; which originates in constructivism. The author comes to the conclusion that this thesis is not correct. The article identifies other coordinates in the light of which it is possible to correctly typologize a wide range of existing approaches to religion's conceptualization. The author considers dimensionalist's models of religion to oppose to those ways of religion's conceptualization which involve explicit genetic definitions. The latter group of approaches can be divided into normative and non-normative.The author proves the thesis that essentialism is not a necessary part of approaches which based on generic definitions of religion. One of the arguments in favor of this statement is the existence of such religion's conceptualization strategies; which derived from the constructivist paradigm. Moreover; the essen tialistic traits have been found in dimensionalist's models of religion. This fact testifies to the incorrectness of reduction of dimensionalism to the sum of constructivist approaches to the definition of religion.The author comes to the conclusion that many approaches to the definition of religion can be considered in two independent dimensions: on the one hand; there is a pronounced controversy between supporters of using of an explicit generic definition of religion and supporters of dimensionalist's models of religion; on the other hand; there is a confrontation between essentialist and constructivist paradigms; which are implemented in a plenty of contemporary attempts to define a religion.

For the Western thought and the social theory that emerged based on it, it can be argued that it was shaped on dichotomous structures such as nature-culture, action-structure, individual-society, and mind-body. These dichotomous structures and way of thinking established on a hierarchic system and directed towards the purpose of recognition and dominance over what it recognizes have been the foundation of the discourse that societies will become secular as they get modern in the light of the secularity-religion distinction. The distinction between the dichotomous concepts which we evaluate as the most ancient ontological and epistemological arguments (e.g. intelligence-revelation, material-meaning, earth-afterlife, subject-object, public-private), in other words, the intervention may be the characteristic of the Western thought but seems to have influenced the whole world including the Muslim communities. Based on our argument "Each dichotomization is a process of secularization", this study addresses the dichotomous structures established in the sociological thought. Furthermore, issues such as universal definition of religion, determination of its boundaries based on the Western history, and transformation of "religion" into a scientific object are scrutinized within the framework of the dichotomous thinking. This paper draws attention to the fact that the secularity-religion dichotomy, which makes marginalization inevitable, serves the justification of colonialism. Moreover, the paper handles the fact that interpretations such as the "return of the sacred" for the resurrection of religion since the second part of the 20th century are just another practice of marginalization. Because theorizing efforts for the increase in piety are discourses that can be put forth the secularity-religion distinction at the end of the day and cannot go beyond solidify the secular paradigm which is grounded on dichotomization.

This essay responds to the three main position papers of the 2018 CIAS workshop, which were published in Religion & Theology 26, no. 1&2 (2019). The main thrust of the essay relates to the concept of hermeneutics and the location of the discourse of comparative hermeneutics. The essay defines the fundamental question at stake as a question of discourse. From this basis, the paper proceeds to consider four main issues that constitute the framework for conceiving a Centre for the Interpretation of Authoritative Scripture: to wit, historicising of scripture and tradition, the character of texts and textual traditions and canons, comparative religion and hermeneutics as discourse and the implied definition of religion (and of religion as social discourse). Firstly, comparative hermeneutics raises the problem of what a tradition is. What constitutes its essential identity? Secondly, it is possible, and this essay explores this line, to redescribe hermeneutics as a social discourse, that is, to understand interpretation as social interaction. It is when the concept of religion is historicised, and the complex and contestatious processes of social and identity-formation are investigated, that the social discursivity, authority construction and power-effects, and the ideological work performed by tradition-formation can be brought to light. In this manner, the essay argues for the de-essentialisation of religious traditions such that it is possible to think beyond narrowly delimited boundaries and rather see the common human activity of social discourse productions that bind adherents of different religious traditions in a given social aggregation together – which enables thinking common social purposes.

The concept of religion is a fundamental concept of religiological sciences. Still it is not devoid of difficulties. Its critics attempt to prove that plurality and variety of religious phenomena excludes the possibility to define religion. On the other hand the lack of the general concept of religion constitutes a serious problem for theology of religion since it is difficult to study relationships between Christianity and other religions not knowing what religion is and what its theological essence is. The present article consists of three parts. The first part analyses the history of the concept of religion (Latin religio). Second part considers the problem of the definition of religion. Third one presents some of contemporary attempts to specify the theological concept of religion. Finally the last part shows the significance of the concept of religion for theology of religion.

The guarantee of religious freedom appears in almost all modern constitutions. One critical constitutional question that has arisen relates to how the term “religion” or “religion or belief” should be interpreted. This definitional question is crucial as it determines which religion, religious beliefs, and practices would fall within the scope of constitutional protection. Where definitions are used to draw boundaries, this raises significant questions as to what would constitute an appropriate definition. It also raises issues concerning the competence of a non-religious court imposing its views on religion on religious adherents, especially where their subjective viewpoints differ. This article critiques this definitional conundrum using religious freedom cases in Singapore and Malaysia. It examines the use of a definition of religion as well as the essential practice test to exclude constitutional claims. Furthermore, this article advocates for a deferential approach to the definitional questions, albeit a limited one where constitutional claims are further subject to a second-stage inquiry as to the legitimacy or appropriateness of the state-imposed restrictions.

The paper first proposes a new definition of religion which features a novel four-layered element and which does not involve any circularity (as some definitions do); thereby, it allows to clearly distinguish the phenomenon of religion from certain other worldviews, in particular from certain political ideologies (a number of other definitions do not). Relying on the findings, the paper develops two structural conceptual models which serve to describe religious and non-religious belief systems. Further, the definition and the conceptual models allow to establish a clear criterion to distinguish pivotal structural differences between religious and non-religious belief systems. The criterion is based on the concept of two kinds of rationality: first-level and second-level rationalities. These will demonstrate to what degree religion can be a rational enterprise, and what role logic can play in it. The result is a clear-cut line in the structures of religious and certain consistent non-religious belief systems (e.g. a scientific theory).

Eliade’s sacred seems to refer to an autonomous entity but close inspection indicates a response to experiences to which we attribute sacrality. This allows the postulation of a natural ‘sacred’ that can be defined, and become the basis for an empirical definition of religion. Such ascriptions are commonly associated with art objects, from narratives and texts to dramas and architecture. Consideration of anthropology and ethology of art reveals a relationship between skill and the sacred, which clarifies the origin and function of 'sacrality' as a cognitive experience characteristic of, but not exclusive to, religious behaviour. The same trait is operative in other behaviours, such as art and sport, but it is less restricted in art and less comprehensive sport. Nonetheless, art and sport (and other secular behaviours) do have an affinity with religious behaviour. They are consanguineous with religion – descendants of a common ancestor.

Schilbrack presents the data and methods of disciplinary philosophy as contributing positively to the academic study of religion and gives his understanding of religion and of its study based on this contribution. I suggest we go further—the methods of disciplinary philosophy should provide a centralizing paradigm around which the various contributory disciplines of the study of religion might be better and more sustainably organized. Schilbrack adopts an approach that focuses on practice and embodiment rather than doctrine and belief. Again, I recommend going even further, still avoiding eliminative behaviorism but adopting a “philosophical ethology,” and seeking to refine the “superempirical realities” of Schilbrack’s definition of religion with reference to behaviors that produce and surround certain elements of material culture. This, I believe, would advance Schilbrack’s theoretical understanding of both religion and the philosophy of religion, taking it to an even greater level of generality and utility.

David Sloan Wilson argues that religion has evolved in human beings as a group adaptation. Part of Wilson’s argument relies on an analysis of a randomized sample of religions that he selects fromThe Encyclopedia of Religion. One significant methodological problem with this strategy is that Wilson offloads the work of defining the boundaries of each religious tradition to the encyclopedia he uses and allows the category ‘religion’ to do the conceptual heavy lifting in his argument. An examination of the way this category is used by Wilson will demonstrate that an insufficient attentiveness to the use of the word ‘religion’ makes Wilson’s argument circular and invalid. Wilson’s argument would be strengthened by rejecting any causal role for the category ‘religion’ and examining specific practices, rituals, and other acts of identification for an adaptive advantage irrespective of their association with the category ‘religion’.

In this article, I offer a decidedly philosophical response to Schaffalitzky de Muckadell's essay "On Essentialism and Real Definitions of Religion." I contend that her account is not appropriately motivated by the evidence supplied. Focusing nearly entirely on the first half of her essay, in which she sets up an exclusive disjunction regarding three forms of definition, I argue that this disjunction should not be understood as exclusive and, hence, her account of the necessity of “real definitions” is less compelling than it might otherwise be. Even though I am sympathetic to the importance of striving toward real definitions, in response to Schaffalitzky de Muchadell, I resituate how such striving might look when the exclusive disjunction is abandoned.

This article claims to uncover the core problematics that have made the debate on defining and conceptualizing “religion” so difficult and argues that this makes it possible to move beyond radical deconstruction towardsreconstructing the concept for scholarly purposes. The argument has four main steps. Step 1 consists of establishing the nature of the entity “religion” as areified imaginative formation. Step 2 consists of identifyingthe basic dilemmawith which scholars have been struggling: the fact that, on the one hand, definitions and conceptualizations do not seem to work unless they stay sufficiently close to commonly held prototypes, while yet, on the other hand, those prototypes are grounded in monotheistic, more specifically Christian, even more specifically Protestant, theological biases about “true” religion. The first line of argument leads to crypto-theological definitions and conceptualizations, the second to a radical deconstruction of the very concept of “religion.” Step 3 resolves the dilemma by identifying anunexamined assumption, orproblematic“blind spot,” that the two lines of argument have in common: they both think that “religion” stands against “the secular.” However, the historical record shows that these two defined themselves not just against one another but, simultaneously, against athirddomain (referred to by such terms as “magic” or “superstition”). The structure is therefore not dualistic but triadic. Step 4 consists of replacing common assumptions about how “religion” emerged in the early modern period by an interpretation that explains not just its emergence but its logicalnecessity, at that time, for dealing with the crisis of comparison caused by colonialist expansion. “Religion” emerged as thetertium comparationis— or, in technically more precise language, the “pre-comparativetertium” — that enabled comparison between familiar (monotheist, Christian, Protestant) forms of belief and modes of worship and unfamiliar ones (associated with “pagan” superstition or magic). If we restore the term to its original function, this allows us to reconstruct “religion” as a scholarly concept that not just avoids butpreventsany slippage back to Christian theology or ethnocentric bias.

This paper presents information on the shamanic religious system practiced among the Tu ethnic group of Qinghai Province in Northwest China. After presenting ethnographic information on the spirit beliefs, rituals, and shamanic specialists of the Tu, the paper will use a systemic definition of religion to (1) identify changes that have occurred in the focus of Tu shamanism and the role of the shaman, and (2) identify a cluster of causal factors—techno-economic, sociopolitical, and ideational—exogenous to the religious system itself that appear to have played a role in generating these changes. The paper will focus on two specificcorresponding increase in the importance of shamanic leadership in collective rainfall rituals that affect the entire community. The explanatory paradigm utilized is a modified adaptation to contemporary Chinese reality of the Historical Materialist paradigm pioneered by Marx and Engels and the Cultural Materialist paradigm developed by Marvin Harris. While continuing to emphasize the causal power of technological and economic factors, the Chinese experience, both at the macro level of transformations changes: (1) a decrease in the frequency of private shamanic healing rituals, and (2) a corresponding increase in the importance of shamanic leadership in collective rainfall rituals that affect the entire community. The explanatory paradigm utilized is a modified adaptation to contemporary Chinese reality of the Historical Materialist paradigm pioneered by Marx and Engels and the Cultural Materialist paradigm developed by Marvin Harris. While continuing to emphasize the causal power of technological and economic factors, the Chinese experience, boThis paper presents information on the shamanic religious system practiced among the Tu ethnic group of Qinghai Province in Northwest China. After presenting ethnographic information on the spirit beliefs, rituals, and shamanic specialists of the Tu, the paper will use a systemic definition of religion to (1) identify changes that have occurred in the focus of Tu shamanism and the role of the shaman, and (2) identify a cluster of causal factors—techno-economic, sociopolitical, and ideational—exogenous to the religious system itself that appear to have played a role in generating these changes. The paper will focus on two specific changes: (1) a decrease in the frequency of private shamanic healing rituals, and (2) a corresponding increase in the importance of shamanic leadership in collective rainfall rituals that affect the entire community. The explanatory paradigm utilized is a modified adaptation to contemporary Chinese reality of the Historical Materialist paradigm pioneered by Marx and Engels and the Cultural Materialist paradigm developed by Marvin Harris. While continuing to emphasize the causal power of technological and economic factors, the Chinese experience, both at the macro level of transformations of the Chinese economy and at the micro level of Tu shamanism, forces analytic attention on the causal impact of socio-political and ideological variables.th at the macro level of transformations of the Chinese economy and at the micro level of Tu shamanism, forces analytic attention on the causal impact of socio-political and ideological variables.

Purpose of the article is to examine the theoretical foundations of Paul Tillich's theology of culture, which affirmed the necessary postulate of "courage" – the powerful self-affirmation of man despite the Christian world values crisis. The methodology of the research consists in the application of analysis methods, synthesis, comparison, generalization, as well as in the use of terminological, ideological-content and historical-philosophical approaches. The mentioned issue allowed us to reveal the features of rethinking the values of Christian culture in the works of P. Tillich "Systematic Theology," "Theology of Culture," "Dynamics of Faith," "Courage," representing the organic representation of the theological and anthropocentric value of coordinates in the cultural plane. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that in the domestic history of philosophy, religious studies and cultural studies for the first time, the concept of the positive revitalization of Christian culture values are analyzed in the works of P. Tillich, and its specificity was substantiated. There were characterized the categories and concepts that form the basis of the Tillich theology of culture ("ethical ethics", "courage to be", "anxiety", "marginal interest", "ultimate concern", "new being", "new morality"). Conclusions. In the conclusions, it is proved that the conceptual conception of religion by Tillich consists of the disappearance of the distribution between the sphere of sacral and secular. The ratio of religion and culture is connected with P. Tillich with his definition of religion as a substance of culture, and culture is a form of religion. Culture should be described regarding movement, which is dominant in the time of the corresponding historical period. Trying to solve the problem of the value priorities of the authentic existence of man in the context of the transformation of her religious worldview, P. Tillich contrasts modern morality with the "new" morality of a religious, highly spiritual person; reanimates traditional, faith, love, justice, freedom, humanity; warns of the threat of mass conformism, which is increasingly formed under the influence of the ideology of liberal humanism in modern democratic countries.

In this response to Knut Melvær’s discussion of “The Spiritual Illusion: Constructive Steps Toward Rectification and Redescription,” I clarify some of the theoretical and methodological background that informed the original article, redress places where Melvær appears to have misread or miscast my positions, and offer some suggestions as to what may really be most at stake in this “spiritual” dispute.

In a previous article, in this Journal (2011, 21.1) Steve Bruce put forward a practical definition of religion which he held out as offering considerable explanatory scope: religion consists of beliefs, actions and institutions which assume the existence of supernatural entities with powers of action, or impersonal powers or processes possessed of moral purpose. This article proposes that this definition holds dramatic explanatory scope that has yet to be realised by sociology. The element ‘moral purpose’ in that definition represents a not clearly acknowledged, but nevertheless substantial, agreement amongst sociologists that religion is a life-meaning-making enterprise defined by the imposition of moral order on a universe that is incomprehensible and indifferent to human existence. The full implication of that definition is the reversal of the conventional perspective on secularisation. If the placement of life within a meaningful sense of existence is the domain of religion, it follows that today's se...

This short paper aims to respond to some of the observations and insights of the five reviewers of our book, The Sacred Is the Profane.

The author presents the influence of reflections on religion in the last decades, which radically changed the way of perceiving the reality which this concept define. The author claims that the main factor on these changes had cultural anthropology, and its influence on theology. In this context Clifford Geertz formulated the most famous definition of religion. Religion is an open process which is subjected to a constant progress, elaborations, and alterations. The most radical attitude was held by C.W. Smith who, already in the sixties, suggested to reject the concept of religion itself and postulated to concentrate on the context of the believers’ experiences. For the cultural anthropologist the changes in theology are a fascinating field of observation. The concept of „symbol” was called to mind for using two realities – human and divine – which it evoked. The intensity of the debate is not a new phenomenon, it only confirms the vitality of this field of research. Its uncertain methodological status is not a limitation, but rather a peculiar challenge.

The purpose of this paper is to assess Durkheim’s approach to religion and the validity of the time-honoured principle of the social determination of mental representations. The thesis to be defended is that Durkheim was essentially right in understanding religious ritual as a symbolic language. But he was wrong both in his social deterministic theory of mental representations and in his definition of religion as an exclusively social phenomenon. As current evolutionary sciences have amply demonstrated, human mental architecture has been shaped by a long evolutionary process and cannot be easily reconfigured through cultural indoctrination. Two consequences can be derived from this. First, religious ideas can successfully colonise human minds thanks to their ability to parasitize on biologically evolved human cognitive structures. Second, due to their counterintuitive properties, this colonisation can only succeed if those ideas are culturally transmitted through a special language.

This paper rejects the definitional ‘vagueness’ argument against religious freedom and the attempted recourse to ‘equality’ as a supposed ground for liberty. The first argument is, that religion is not as evasive of legal definition and utility as has been made out. Secondly, that all other terms argued as superior, such as ‘equality’ are even more difficult to define; they depend, in fact, on a context and a realization that religion is an equality right itself – being universally listed as such within Constitutions and Bills of Rights in both domestic and international settings. No term is without ambiguity and language is prone to require contextual interpretation. Pluralism is about accommodating diversity and difference, and these are the grounds against which legal analysis of all terms must be placed. Finally, the use of large terms such as ‘belief’ or ‘opinion’ or ‘conscience’ in rights documents must be extended to include atheists and agnostics. The paper argues that claims for ‘state neutrality,’ and ‘international neutrality,’ often import subtextual atheistic or agnostic claims. More work is needed to expose the atheistic and agnostic biases that too often operate unobserved or uncommented upon in contemporary law and religion scholarship, policy work and judicial analysis.

Until the late eighteenth century, religions, particularly in the West, were defined by their sacred texts and dogmatic formulations. Friedrich Schleiermacher, in the late eighteenth century, was one of the first scholars that attempted to define “religion” by switching from a doctrinal emphasis to a more cognitive, visceral, or intuitive one. Schleiermacher defined religion as a “feeling of absolute dependence.” Since his day most attempts at a general definition of religion have relied heavily on emphasizing the intuitive, emotional, or visceral elements rather than the doctrinal ones. This shift has important implications for bringing a neuroscientific approach to the study of religion. However, this also results in a neuroscientific approach to both religious and non-religious spirituality and spiritual experiences. In fact, as the definitions have evolved, the distinction between spirituality and religiousness has become much more complicated.

First, (1) a definition of religion is offered in order to articulate what constitutes a quasi-religion, then the study moves on to (2) identifying one of the dimensions of proper religion in Commmunism, and underline the crucial role of doctrine. By appling these two theories, it is possible to make some valuable comparisons between Christian religion and communism. It is also argued that (3) eschatology is one of the most essential aspects of the doctrinal dimension not only of a religion proper, Christianity but that of a quasi-religion, Marxism and its inculturated form communism. My intention is to shed light on how remarkably similar (4) characteristics exist between an atheist ideology, dialectical materialism of communism and theist religion, Christianity. These can be discerned when the researcher scrutinizes their fundamental ‘doctrinal’ teachings about the (4.1) conditions of life and human beings in the world and (4.2.) the kind of solutions both, a religion proper and a quasi-religion offered to save the world from evil in the last days, the eschaton of Time. Some selected texts and songs of international and Hungarian communism will be used to show how they understood (a) crucial issues of life, (b) the role of believers (proletariat or church), and (c) the kind of the solutions they offered as a remedy to the issues they identified as problems. All of these will be placed under the framework of “end of times” notion which may be comparable to Christian eschatological expectation of the end of times.

During the last decade or so of teaching introductory religion courses, I began the term by asking students their definition of religion. My assumption was that they would have some minimal underst...

In the afterword to the third edition published more than twenty years after the initial publication of The Invisible Religion, Thomas Luckmann seeks to summarize and to clarify his position as described in his book. He argues against the idea of the decreasing importance of religion in modern society, and proposes a renewed understanding of religion that would not be confined to the intuitions of the Western world. Luckmann’s definition of religion is based on the notion of “transcendences”, which he divides into “small”, “middle”, and “great” categories. It is the experience of the “great” transcendence which leads everyday life away to another reality that plays a key role in the emergence of what is meant by religion. There is a certain order of signs that corresponds to the order of transcendences, and makes it possible to transfer the content of subjective experience of transcendence into intersubjective reality. Symbols appear to be a way of “great” transcendence appresentation, and ritual is considered as its implementation in a social action. By way of a specific set of communicative actions and with the use of symbolic and linguistic resources, subjective experience of transcendence is converted into an objective social structure, so that transcendence experiences become intersubjective and can now serve as a subject of discussion, modification and interpretation. In conclusion, Luckmann turns to the modern situation of religion, and characterizes it as the “privatization” of religion.

If man is an animal religiosum this suggests that religion is rooted in evolved cognitive and emotional structures of the human brain and mind. Although obviously a cultural system, which takes extraordinarily varied form across different cultures, the application of evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology to the understanding and explanation of religion, which has become increasingly prevalent in the last decade or so, is potentially a fruitful line of investigation. Rather than religion involving the transcending of our biological nature, as Luckmann argued, this approach would see religion as rooted in that biological nature. There are two rather different stances within evolutionary psychology, namely that which sees religion as a by-product of otherwise adaptive traits, and that which sees religion as itself adaptive, either at the individual or at the social level. These may have rather different implications for the concepts of implicit and non-institutional religion. These concepts might seem to relate more closely to more fundamental cognitive proclivities, rather than to socially adaptive and, consequently, institutionalized forms. The study of implicit and non-institutional forms of religion might thus throw considerable light on such deeply rooted factors. Here a number of fundamental cognitive mechanisms that may be relevant for the concepts of implicit and non-institutionalized religion are briefly examined. From this it is concluded that it may be time to discard a unitary definition of religion as such and concentrate instead on those diverse aspects of what has for so long inevitably defied attempts at coherent definition.

W artykule zostaje podjęty problem filozoficznego realizmu i jego wpływu na teorię wychowania w odniesieniu do kwestii religii. Analizy są prowadzone w oparciu o prace Polskiej Szkoły Filozofii Klasycznej, która kontynuuje tradycję filozofii starożytnej i średniowiecznej, a w szczególności myśli Arystotelesa i Tomasza z Akwinu. Początek działalności Szkoły datuje się na koniec lat czterdziestych ubiegłego wieku, gdy po II wojnie światowej Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski stał się mekką dla badaczy reprezentujących realistyczną filozofię. Do najbardziej znaczących filozofów Szkoły można zaliczyć: Jerzego Kalinowskiego, Stanisława Kamińskiego, Mieczysława A. Krąpca, Mariana Kurdziałka, Andrzeja Maryniarczyka, Stefana Swieżawskiego, Karola Wojtyłę, Zofię J. Zdybicką. Artykuł składa się z sześciu części. Część 1 wyjaśnia ukierunkowany na mądrość klasyczny model uprawianej w Szkole filozofii i stwierdza, że ma on wpływ na model wychowania otwartego na religię. Część 2 dotyczy problemu przedmiotu poznania, tak jak jest on przedstawiany przez Szkołę krytykującą ujęcia kartezjańskie, kantowskie czy fenomenologiczne (tzw. filozofię refleksji). Kluczowe dla realizmu Szkoły są stosunek do problemu refleksji i pierwszeństwo poznania przedmiotowego. Kwestia jedności bytu i poznania jest poddana głębszej analizie w częściach 3-4, poświęconych wartości poznania przednaukowego i przedmiotowi poznania filozoficznego (koncepcji bytu jako bytu). Części artykułu od 2 do 4 pokazują, jak filozofia zorientowana przedmiotowo wpływa na definicję religii zaproponowaną przez Szkołę. Specyfika filozoficznego wyjaśnienia w odniesieniu do religii i wychowania jest analizowana w częściach 5 i 6, z których pierwsza podejmuje problem obiektywności wartości (w tym świętości), a druga koncentruje się na metafizycznym charakterze definicji religii. The article examines the problem of philosophical realism and its implications for the theory of education concerning the issue of religion. The analysis is based on the works of the Polish School of Classical Philosophy, which continues the tradition of ancient and medieval philosophers, primarily Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. The School goes back to the late 1940s when, after World War II, the Catholic University of Lublin became a Mecca for researchers that represented realistic philosophical thought. The most important philosophers are Jerzy Kalinowski, Stanisław Kamiński, Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, Marian Kurdziałek, A. Maryniarczyk, Stefan Swieżawski, Karol Wojtyła, and Zofia J. Zdybicka. The article consists of six parts. Part 1 explains the model of classical philosophy practiced by the School, which is wisdomoriented, and argues that this model contains the determinants of the model of education open to religion. Part 2 deals with a subject of cognition, as pointed out by the School, which criticizes Cartesian, Kantian and phenomenological philosophy (the so-called philosophy of reflection). The approach to the problem of reflection and the priority of objective cognition are the core of realism presented by the School. The issue of unity of being and thinking is further analyzed in Parts 3-4, which deal with the value of pre-scientific cognition and the object of philosophical cognition (the concept of being as being). Parts 2 to 4 show the impact of objective-oriented philosophy on the definition of religion proposed by the School. The specificity of the explanation related to the phenomenon of religion and education is examined in Parts 5 and 6 – while Part 5 addresses the problem of the objectivity of value (including sanctity), the focus of Part 6 is on the metaphysical character of this definition.

El artículo presenta un acercamiento a la nueva espiritualidad. Dentro del mundo contemporáneo cada vez es más frecuente encontrar personas ateas y espirituales. ¿En qué coordenadas ideológicas es esto posible?, intentaremos abordarlo. En primer lugar se esboza un acercamiento en torno al concepto de religión y se presenta una perspectiva histórica de los avatares del término en el siglo XX. Entendemos que hay una dependencia directa entre la definición de religión y la posibilidad o no, de una religiosidad atea. Por otro lado, analizamos, como ejemplo del contexto del siglo XX, la previsión freudiana en torno al fin de las religiones y plantemos las posibles causas de su fracaso. In this article we present an approach to the new spirituality. In contemporary world we find atheistic and spiritual people. How is this possible? We try to analyze. First we make an approach to the concept of religion. We present a historical perspective of the concept. An atheistic religion is possible depending on the definition of religion we use. Also we analyze, as an example of the context of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud forecast around the end of religions and analyze the causes of failure.

Mauss's contribution to his uncle's classical study, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, has not been widely acknowledged. It is, however, difficult to assess in the light of inadequate knowledge. This essay is an introduction to the study of the relation of nephew and uncle with regard to this problem. The difference between them as people and their achievements is first briefly considered. Then attention is turned to the way they approached the sociological study of religion. Only two aspects of religion have been selected. The first considers the problems in defining religion. Durkheim holds to the notion of the sacred and Mauss to mana as being central to a definition. The second area is ritual, where there is considerable agreement, although Mauss shows little interest in effervescence. In the final analysis, the two tend to show a complementarity in their work.

This essay affirms some of the basic insights of the so-called New Atheists, while criticizing their narrow definition of religion as belief in God as a supernatural being. It then attempts to explore the liminal space between the atheists' scornful rejection of all things religious and the still-pervasive belief in God as a supernatural being by pointing to two authors, one an atheist and one a post-traditional theist, who advance novel spiritualities in accord with a twenty-first century scientific worldview.

The main aim of the article is discussion of the conceptual framework for defining religion from a sociological perspective. One of the possible orderings of its development is showing historical periods and conceptual streams. As far as history is concerned the author distinguishes three periods: classical, post-classical and contemporary, showing dominant themes and ways of approaching religion in each of them. An alternative way of ordering is proposed in the second part of the article based on the source of religious change identified as the crucial point by sociologists working on theories of religion. There are three perspectives in identifying religious change: giving priority to individuals, to social systems and to religion itself. Every perspective has some outcomes for understanding the place of religion in social and individual life. The last part of the article is devoted to presenting the impact of religious conceptions on interpretational disputes between sociologists of religion.

After addressing the post-modern argument that defining religion is impossible, bad or both, the case is made that functional definitions of religion are generally not definitions but assertions about the consequences of religion substantively defined. A substantive definition of religion is proposed. The relationship between ordinary and sociological language is discussed. A review of recent debates in the sociology of religion makes the point that our arguments rarely concern the definition of religion; they are much more often about the practical identification and measurement of the features of the social phenomenon which we want to study and those problems are not peculiar to the sociology of religion.

I shall argue that Durkheim does not avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism in attempting a cross-cultural theory of religion. Durkheim’s theory of religion does not avoid using a culturally specific, and/or derived, view of religion upon religious data. But, in a way, it doesn’t really matter, because we all do the same thing inevitably anyway. Indeed, I shall also argue that his theory of religion remains as eth- nocentric as commonplace Western theistic theories of religion that insist we conceive religion as "belief in God." The difference is that Durkheim’s conceptual thought about religion is ethnocentric in a most unexpected way. It is thus not ethnocentric in being either Jewish, or some other "Western" (i.e., Christian) theory, in disguise. It is, instead, Indian—a melange of Hindu and Buddhist conceptions. Despite this, I am prepared to argue in future that his theory of religion marks progress in forming a useful cross-cultural category for comprehending religion.

The following paper reconsiders Jacques Derrida's vision of a "religion without religion," the pristine, originary moment of the religious. What exercises Derrida are the dogmatic and exclusionary implications of the concept of revealed religion. I refer to David Koigen (1877-1933) and Martin Buber (1878-1965) as two philosophers who presented alternative ways to broach this problem. Rather than restructuring historical religion into a universal faith unfettered by the paradigms of Abrahamic religion, as Derrida does, they map a self-corrective religion. They thus allow for a new reading of key Derridean notions such as "performativity," "acts of faith," "possibility," "decision," and "ambiguity." Koigen introduced the term "meta-religion" into the debate on religion. I propose to extrapolate from his and Buber's writings on religion a concept of meta-religion that delineates a self-critical reflection on the foundations of theistic faith. What remained implicit in Koigen's writings gains a much more pronounced articulation in Buber's biblical hermeneutics as amplified by his philosophy of dialogue. Buber identifies basic faith postures in the biblical text that can furnish the discursive framework for a meta-religious reflection on the institutional and normative configurations of Judaism. In a recent symposium sponsored by the Swiss daily newspaper, the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, scholars and representatives of the world religions were chal- lenged to contemplate "what is a good religion."1 Phrased in a fundamentally ambiguous, even an artful way, the question effectively plays upon the increas- ing unease felt by many concerning the role of religion today. Yet the ques- tion also seems to presuppose the Enlightenment's critique of religion, which judges historical religions by their capacity to approximate pure rational faith, enabling them to dispense with institutional structures and hence their supposedly pernicious particularism. This critique betrays a profound misunderstanding of the complex cultural significance of particularism and fails to distinguish between institutional religion and "the religious." The latter term denotes primal religious impulses that often function independently of religion, and endure even when the institutions of faith are questioned and falter. As a philosophical current that most uncompromisingly addresses the endemic injustices perpetuated in the name of religion, deconstruction resumed and redefined the program of the Enlightenment. By dislodging the religious from tradition deconstructionists seek a reformatting of religion. It seems, however, that the study of religion in a post 9/11 world requires a new approach to historical religion. Hence, it might be beneficial to rephrase the question and to ask whether a philosophy of religion can (afford to) disregard historical, institutional religion. In other words, can a "religion without religion" serve effectively as the edifice for a non-supersessionist faith? In addressing this question, one must acknowledge that an all-comprehensive definition of religion is inherently elusive. Nonetheless, with respect to the monotheistic conceptions of religion one may at least note a shared claim to a transcendent referent as the ultimate source of truth and visions of the good. This claim lies at the heart of the debate spurred by the deconstructionist critique of historical religion. Is a self-reflective religion only feasible when the conceptual semantics of theistic religion is purged of what Jacques Derrida calls a "logic of presupposition"? Is such an exercise a sine qua non to attain the uncompromised, anti-foundational, and anti-representational "being-before" (l'etre avant), that is, before revealed truth and its attendant dogmatic and exclusionary implications? Can the deconstructionist discourse on religion ground religion sufficiently such that it could exert the responsible "geopolitical" role the "new tolerance" that Derrida envisages, a religion "at the limits of pure reason" that would be "effectively universal" and thus "no longer be restricted to a paradigm that is Christian or even Abrahamic"? …

This article analyzes the main lines of the French debate or ‘war’ over the ‘sacred’ during the 20th century. Durkheim, who emphasized the social origin of religion and its integrating function, tied this idea closely together with the sacred/profane -distinction: it is through this distinction that society reflects itself in individuals and imposes its norms and values on them. On the other hand, he explains the alleged universality of the distinction precisely by its social origin. In spite of Durkheim's emphasis on the central place of the sacred in the analysis of religion, the French religious sociology has ever since contested this claim. However, the article claims that these criticisms can be divided into two categories depending on the reasons given for the attack against the Durkheimian conception. These critical approaches, in turn, constitute two ultimately antagonistic sets of theories of the religious itself. The defenders of the ‘subjective sacred’ (Eliade) find the Durkheimian thesis about...

Proposals for a scientific study of religion have never been realised because, Daniel Dennett argues in Breaking the Spell, religion is surrounded by a spell that protects it from the critical inquiry characteristic of other academic fields of study. Dennett suggests two reasons for proposing such a study anew at this time. The first is political, namely, major policy decisions are currently being made on the basis of perceptions about religion; the second is theoretical, namely the establishment of an evolutionary psychology and of a cognitive science of religion which can provide the basis for such a study. Surprisingly, a number of those scholars in the field who are well-known for advocating precisely such a scientific study of religion have reacted negatively to Dennett's proposal. Do their very reactions confirm his thesis that an enchanting spell surrounding religion remains unbroken?

A starting point for a constructive exchange between two groups, devout religionists and scientific skeptics, is that they can hold certain religious ideas in common. These ideas, however, must preserve the compelling nature of religious commitment with- out unduly compromising rational sensibilities. In the histories of both science and religion progress has been made by synthesis. The definition of religion is a key issue for the success or failure of synthe- sis, and I propose a new definition. Both devout religionists and scientific skeptics must make compromises if synthesis is to be suc- cessful. For the devout these compromises include waiving the pre- requisite of belief in the supernatural and placing behavior above belief. For the skeptic they include abandoning explanatory exclusivity, ac- knowledging the authority of moral experts, and recognizing the ne- cessity of community in achieving moral excellence. I defend each of these compromises as reasonable and tolerable costs of integration.

Danièle Hervieu-Léger gives an account of religion as a chain of memory, that is, a form of collective memory and imagination based on the sanctity of tradition. According to her theory, in the postmodern world the continuity of religious memory has been broken and all that remains are isolated fragments guarded by religious groups. This twofold study aims at showing, firstly, in what sense religion can be conceived of as memory which produces collective meanings (Part One) and, secondly, what may happen when individualised and absolutised memories alienate themselves from a continuity of tradition, thus beginning to function as a sort of private religion (Part Two). Being the first part of the study in question, this article is dedicated to a historical-theological analysis of religious memory as a source of collective meanings, as seen from a Christian perspective. Firstly, it situates Hervieu-Léger’s definition of religion against the background of the most topical religious contexts in which the notion of memory appears today. Secondly, the dialectics of individual and collective memory is discussed, notably through the lens of Ricoeur’s original proposal. This is followed by an overview of the traditional functions of memory in Christianity. Lastly, the interpretation of the way in which Christian tradition, in its premodern continuity, served as a source of collective cultural meanings, is recapitulated. What underlies this analysis is the conviction that to comprehend, and even more so to challenge mechanisms based on which the dominant purveyors of meaning (such as economic and information market) function in our day, one should have a clear understanding of what they attempt to substitute for. In brief, before exploring how memories become religion, one ought to be able to conceive of religion as memory.

In this article the author has presented several important issues regarding the sociology of religion, but primarily the issue of the sociologically acceptable definition of religion both in theoretical and empirical research. Bearing in mind the sociology of religion in former Yugoslavia the author has first discussed the possibility of a general definition of the sociology of religion, but has stated the opposite view as well. Then he has dealt with the two basic approaches towards religion and two general definitions of sociology, namely substantial and functional ones. Finally the author has tried to define the religiousness in terms of sociological empirical research of human attachment to religion and church in post-socialism.