The word ‘religion’ is one of the words at the center of this clutter.
There are many competing definitions of ‘religion’ and each carries with it a set of implications and entailments.
Two of these many will serve as examples.
Among individuals and societies, two phases can be discerned - and possibly many more, in addition - which are not necessary temporal phases, although they probably are, but certainly one phase has a logical priority over the other:
Phase 1: Some individuals and societies structure their thought around myths and magic.
Phase 2: Others shift the primary emphasis onto a relationship with the deity.
The word ‘myth’ may be used to refer to a narrative which has explanatory powers - it is usually a narrative designed to explain or to answer some question. Contra some modern usages, a ‘myth’ is not a priori false: there are true myths.
The word ‘magic’ here refers to attempts to control the forces of nature. Traditionally, there is an effort to manipulate the weather, the fertility of crops, the outcome of military efforts, the romantic response of a potential spouse, or one’s physical health. Magic is an attempt to manipulate via supernatural means. In this context, societies offer sacrifices of animals or humans, prayers, songs, and artworks.
Myth and magic are transcended by an outlook which is in some sense Kantian. Historically speaking, some individuals and societies have moved beyond myth and magic centuries and millennia before Kant (1724 to 1804), but the principles involved are Kantian in nature.
At the risk of great oversimplification, Immanuel Kant argued that there are some things which are simply unknowable to human reason. Sifted down to ordinary folk, this means accepting the concept of mystery.
Rather than using human reason to find explanations, or create myths, rationality simply accepts that there is a categories of unknowables.
An allusion to Werner Heisenberg’s work may be in order here: Heisenberg (1901 to 1976) showed that human reason cannot predict, e.g., the direction in which a photon will leave a neon atom when it’s electrically charged.
This Kantian shift nudges the individual, or the society, to de-emphasize myth - the attempt to explain, and to de-emphasize magic - the attempt to control. Instead, emphasis is placed on relating to the deity.
In a post-myth and post-magic framework, the individual seeks knowledge about, and understanding of, God. Questions arise about God’s nature, characteristics, actions, and intentions. These questions are not instruments, i.e., their answers are not sought as tools by which the individual or the society may achieve some end.
Rather, the goal - if a goal it is - is relating to, or with, the deity. But perhaps it is something other than a goal: perhaps it is a way of being. Some scholars use words like ‘contemplation’ and ‘reflection’ for such way.
Relating to the deity includes not only a partial knowledge about, and understanding of, God. It include not only a ‘knowing about’ but rather also a ‘knowing’ - and here one may investigate the difference between ‘knowing about God’ - which could also be the task of an academic philosopher - and ‘knowing God’ - which is a relational concept.
Further, there is a reciprocation: being known by God, and being understood by God. Generally considered to be omniscient, God is seen as knowing and the understanding the individual - and doing so better than anyone else.
Having moved beyond myth and magic, this second phase focuses on a connection or communication between God and the individual human being. In this phase, variety of concepts appear to describe this relationship: grace, mercy, forgiveness, inspiration, vocation.
But the question which lay at the beginning of this investigation was about the definition of ‘religion’ - what does this word mean? Note that it has been studiously avoided for several paragraphs!
Here the competition between definitions becomes clear.
Some scholars use ‘religion’ to designate the phase of myth and magic. Other scholars use the word to refer to the post-myth, post-magic phase of relation.
With two such variant definitions on the table, it is no wonder why discussions of the matter seem endless.
For the one group of thinkers, ‘religion’ is a phase to be left behind. For the other group, it is a goal.
For one group, it is an irrational and pre-Kantian viewpoint. For the other group, it is the achievement of human reason having reckoned with its own limits.
To muddy the waters still further, these are only two of many possible ways of using the word ‘religion.’
