Religion is a broad term that encompasses many different forms of life. It can include worship, moral conduct, devotion to a particular deity or spirit, sacred books, symbols, days, and places that are holy. Most of the time, religion deals with what is seen as supernatural or spiritual, things that are outside of human control. These things are often viewed as powerful and worthy of worship, and there is usually some belief in the possibility of salvation or a return to a previous state of being.
Most of the definitions scholars use today are “substantive” in that they judge a form of life to be religion if it has a certain set of properties that are unique to the field. However, in the past several decades one has also seen a “reflexive turn” in social science that takes the concept of religion and criticizes it as an invention of modernity. Some scholars even go so far as to claim that there is no such thing as religion, or that the term was created to categorize forms of life in a way that went hand in hand with European colonialism.
Some scientists, such as psychologists and neuroscientists, argue that religion is a response to emotional and psychological needs in humans, such as a fear of death or a desire for transcendent experiences that cannot be found in the everyday world. Others, such as philosophers of religion and sociologists of culture, argue that it is an important social institution that has evolved with human societies over the course of history. Like other social institutions, religions change slowly and often mix together older and newer features.