Taking a glance at a diverse continent, such as North America, there are many individuals coming from various background countries with different cultures, races, beliefs, and ultimately, different religions, or none at all. The interesting aspect about these differences, however, has to do with the ‘religions’ part and whether individuals consider themselves to be ‘religious’ or not. This is because there are numerous religions worldwide, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to name a few. Though what makes looking at ‘religion’ problematic is that one cannot clearly define ‘religion’ and definitively say what constitutes ‘religion’. Considering this, how then can one say what a religion is and is not? In Arthur Greil’s “Defining Religion,” the issues regarding defining ‘religion’ and what constitutes a religion, is clearly discussed. Greil starts off by saying that religion is a “western folk concept” (Greil, 135), he continues to explain that this means that they believe in a supernatural, transcendent being, …show more content…
This approach, proposed by Benson Saler, is comprised of a list of characteristics given by various individuals as possible approaches to defining ‘religion’ (146-147). However, as Greil continues to say, adding more characteristics to the list will not necessarily solve the problem and help define the term (148). Furthermore, it is also not clear how many traits in the list are required for a phenomenon to possess before it is considered a religion. For instance, looking at the list, if an individual proposed that what he/she believes is a religion because it has a mythology (Martin Southwold 1979) and no other characteristics on the list, that individual could then declare it as an official religion as it does, in a sense, fit the criteria. So, although this has been proposed as a way “out of the morass” (146), it still does not fully resolve the issue at