Oliveira 1 Samantha Oliveira REL2121 Paul Anthony 28 June 2022 What the heck is religion Religion is and always will be a touchy subject but the question what the heck is religion is even harder to answer Nobody knows what religion is Is it a social construct Is there a heavenly being who dictates everyone in the world Or is it just a way of comforting people with the question what happens after death To get a bit closer to the answer let s see how chapter 1 from Craig Martin s book A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion and the podcast Keeping It 101 What the Heck Is Religion address this question Let s also take a look at how these sources agree or disagree with each other and finally I ll insert my answer to the question In both the chapter and the podcast the writer speaker s goal is to sort of answer the question above So much so that the podcast is quite literally titled What the Heck Is Religion In the podcast Ilyse says you ve also learned or absorbed the study of religion without knowing it For me texts are a problem because hashtag not all religions not all religions have a sacred text Some religions have many some religions have none 3 09 Keeping It 101 What the Heck Is Religion This enlightens the audience that maybe we have no idea what religion is We can t categorize religions as all religions because they all differ in unique ways Martin says that the word religion is more like sea creatures than fish a lot of different things are grouped together Oliveira 2 under the word religion and that prevents us from making any substantial generalizations Martin 5 Both the reading and the podcast acknowledge that we don t have a true understanding of what religion is and how to categorize it There is no set in stone definition so it makes things a bit more complicated when we are sitting on a plane and asked about religion Megan 1 33 Keeping It 101 What the Heck Is Religion The podcast and reading also agree that religion and belief are not the same I have a lot of conversations with journalists and a thing that I have noticed about American journalists who write about religion many of whom are very very smart and know a ton about religion tend to use religion and belief interchangeably So one of the things that we want you to think about today and frankly all day is is our religion and belief the same thing Spoilers They are not For some people they are not for everybody Megan 9 08 Keeping It 101 What the Heck Is Religion One can choose to identify with a religion but have specific beliefs that don t exactly coincide with that religion In Martin s writing he uses an example from 9 11 where he says that many believe that the terrorists were enlightened to commit these terrible acts due to their beliefs As noted above not all cultural traditions colloquially called religions focus on between the two beliefs as this theory implies some Zen practitioners even go so far as to say that beliefs are completely irrelevant Martin 7 We cannot justify these terrorist actions as beliefs because many people who follow the Islamic religion do not agree with their actions and would tell you that what these people did does not correspond with their beliefs Martin also uses the examples of catholicism and the immorality of using Oliveira 3 birth control Most American Catholics support the use of birth control despite the fact that official Catholic doctrine says it is immoral The idea that religion is a belief system that directs practitioners behavior collapses quickly under investigation Martin 7 Religion cannot be defined as a belief system and belief systems cannot be defined as a religion They are completely different things that correlate at times Beliefs are clearly part of those cultural institutions we call religions but the evidence shows that beliefs are often contradictory ignored outright rejected and so on in which case the overly simple claim that religion is a belief system becomes nonsense Martin 8 However these two sources do differ in ways when it comes to answering the question above The podcast focuses on what the heck religion is to minority religions and the reading focuses on the functionalism of religion and how that answers the big question My mom maintained a kitchen that had two sets of plates which is common for Jews that keep kosher but we did not keep kosher Ilyse 23 34 Keeping It 101 What the Heck Is Religion In Ilyse s moms case religion isn t really something that is followed correctly in her everyday life Religion is simply who she is She is a jewish woman and that wont change regardless of if she eats bacon or not So like internally would some Jews see my mom s eating a bacon double cheeseburger as disqualifying her from the label of Jew You betcha You betcha She is super in violation of kosher law But if we did that as scholars of religion so if we just looked at texts and said like yup Flo Morgenstein definitely violated texts probably not a real Jew We would lose an entire window of American Jews Right We d just lose it Ilyse 26 17 Keeping It 101 What the Heck Is Religion In spite of that Martin argues that religion is simply Oliveira 4 functional He says that religion is hermeneutic method of interpretation Martin 8 Religion to Martin isn t just who you are as Ilyse explains in the podcast It s how you can use it to benefit your daily life Martine also bases a lot of his argument on what religion on Freud s point of view Sigmund Freud s theory of religion is a perfect example of a functionalist approach joined with a hermeneutic of suspicion Martin 8 To them religion is still something everyone has their suspicions about it s ever changing as people evolve and there is no true answer to what religion is because it works differently for everyone In all the question what the heck is religion can never be answered Everyone has a different take on what religion is and even though at times peoples opinions about it cross over we each have our own interpretation Personally I feel like I agree mostly with the idea that religion and belief can not be considered the same I personally identify as Christian but I don t necessarily agree with all the beliefs that outsiders think all Christians automatically believe I think like Craig Martin religion is what you make it You cannot justify others actions with religion and you cannot categorize people because religion differs for everyone In the end religion is what you make it Not what anyone else thinks