RELIGION Jithin Mathew p.

Religion
Religion is a cultural system that establishes symbols that relate
humanity to spirituality and moral values. Many religions have
narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended
to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the
universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a
preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human
nature.
The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or
belief system, but religion differs from private belief in that it has
a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviors, including
clerical hierarchies, a definition of what constitutes adherence or
membership, congregations of laity, regular meetings or services for
the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places
(either natural or architectural), and/or scriptures. The practice of
a religion may also include sermons, commemoration of the activities
of a god or gods, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations,
funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, music, art,
dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.
The development of religion has taken different forms in different
cultures. Some religions place an emphasis on belief, while others
emphasize practice. Some religions focus on the subjective experience
of the religious individual, while others consider the activities of
the religious community to be most important. Some religions claim to
be universal, believing their laws and cosmology to be binding for
everyone, while others are intended to be practiced only by a closely
defined or localized group. In many places religion has been
associated with public institutions such as education, hospitals, the
family, government, and political hierarchie.
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According to the philologist Max Müller, the root of the English word
"religion", the Latin religio, was originally used to mean only
"reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things,
piety etc.Religion is an unavoidable matter in the life of the most
people.