What is Religion?

Religion’s core function, across widely different traditions, is to help individuals live with existential uncertainty—especially the fear of death—by creating a felt relationship to what they consider “divine” or an “order of existence.” That personal, emotionally grounded role matters because it explains why religion persists even when specific doctrines are disputed, and why it can’t be reduced simply to belief in gods or to organized institutions.

The lecture draws a boundary around what counts as religion. Organized faiths such as Christianity are treated as only a slice of a larger phenomenon that also includes small-group traditions and even personal, loosely structured “religions.” It also challenges the common assumption that religion must center on supernatural beings: Buddhism is cited as a major “godless” example, showing that worship of gods is not the defining essence.

To capture what is essential, the discussion leans on William James’s definition of religion as the “feelings, acts, and experiences” of individuals in solitude insofar as they relate themselves to whatever they take to be divine—leaving open whether the divine is a God, nature, the unknown, or something else. James’s emphasis on solitude and personal experience is paired with Robert Bellah’s account of religion as a system of symbols that, when enacted, produces “powerful pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations” aligned with a general order of existence. In both frameworks, religion works through emotion and relationship: individuals feel themselves connected to something all-important, and that connection supplies answers to questions that haunt human beings since the beginning of civilization.

Those questions are framed as existential: Where do humans fit in the universe? What is the purpose of life? What happens after death? How should one live amid uncertainty? The lecture argues that people seek religious “certainty” because everyday life offers little of it. Daily routines may keep fear at bay, but anxiety—especially fear of annihilation—returns when life is disrupted by grief, boredom, or sudden reminders of mortality. Religion then offers narratives, rituals, worship practices, moral codes, and structured relationships that quell doubt and provide psychological relief.

The relationship between science and religion is treated as more nuanced than a simple clash. Abraham Maslow is invoked to distinguish between religious answers and religious questions: even if science rejects the answers offered by organized religion, the underlying human need to ask existential questions is “perfectly respectable” and rooted in human nature. Ludvig Wittgenstein is used to argue that the “solution” to life’s riddle lies outside the scope of natural science, and that what is “mystical” is inexpressible yet real in how it shows itself. On this view, religion addresses a different category of human concerns than science does, so it cannot be “destroyed” by scientific progress.

The lecture also contrasts religion with philosophy: philosophy relies on reasoned argument, while religion can draw on myths, narratives, revelation, or even feelings—yet what ultimately matters is the experiences and emotions religion generates. Finally, it tackles why mass religions dominate: Theodore Dostoevski is quoted to suggest that people crave shared worship and agreement, not just private answers. Even atheism is reframed: rejecting belief in a deity does not eliminate the existential search for comfort, so an atheist may still pursue religion-like certainty in personal, non-theistic ways. The closing point returns to James: religious feeling can redeem an “interior world” when outward life collapses into doubt.