Oliveira 1Samantha OliveiraREL2121Paul Anthony28 June 2022“What the heck is religion?”Religion is and always will be a touchy subject, but the question “what the heck isreligion” is even harder to answer. Nobody knows what religion is. Is it a socialconstruct? Is there a heavenly being who dictates everyone in the world? Or is it just away of comforting people with the question “what happens after death”? To get a bitcloser to the answer, let's see how chapter 1 from Craig Martin's book “A CriticalIntroduction to the Study of Religion” and the podcast “Keeping It 101, "What the HeckIs Religion?" address this question. Let's also take a look at how these sources agree ordisagree 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 answerthe question above. So much so that the podcast is quite literally titled “What the Heck IsReligion”. In the podcast, Ilyse says “you've also learned or absorbed the study ofreligion without knowing it. For me, texts are a problem because (hashtag, not allreligions), not all religions have a sacred text. Some religions have many, some religionshave none” (3:09 Keeping It 101, What the Heck Is Religion?). This enlightens theaudience 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 religionis more like “sea creatures” than “fish” - a lot of different things are grouped togetherOliveira 2under the word religion- and that prevents us from making any substantialgeneralizations” (Martin 5). Both the reading and the podcast acknowledge that we don'thave a true understanding of what religion is and how to categorize it. There is noset-in-stone definition so it makes things a bit more complicated when we are “sitting ona plane and asked about religion” (Megan 1:33 Keeping It 101, What the Heck IsReligion?).The podcast and reading also agree that religion and belief are not the same. “Ihave a lot of conversations with journalists and a thing that I have noticed aboutAmerican journalists who write about religion, many of whom are very, very smart andknow a ton about religion, tend to use religion and belief interchangeably. So one of thethings that we want you to think about today, and frankly all day is, is our religion andbelief the same thing. Spoilers. They are not. For some people, they are not foreverybody” (Megan 9:08 Keeping It 101, What the Heck Is Religion?). One can chooseto identify with a religion but have specific beliefs that don't exactly coincide with thatreligion. In Martin's writing, he uses an example from 9/11 where he says that manybelieve that the terrorists were enlightened to commit these terrible acts due to theirbeliefs. “As noted above, not all cultural traditions colloquially called religions focus onbetween the two. "beliefs;' as this theory implies; some Zen practitioners even go so faras to say that beliefs are completely irrelevant (Martin 7). We cannot justify these terroristactions as “beliefs” because many people who follow the Islamic religion do not agreewith their actions and would tell you that what these people did does not correspond withtheir beliefs. Martin also uses the examples of catholicism and the immorality of usingOliveira 3birth control. “Most American Catholics support the use of birth control despite the factthat official Catholic doctrine says it is immoral. The idea that religion is a belief systemthat directs practitioners' behavior collapses quickly under investigation” (Martin 7).Religion cannot be defined as a belief system and belief systems cannot be defined as areligion. They are completely different things that correlate at times. “Beliefs are clearlypart of those cultural institutions we call religions, but the evidence shows that beliefs areoften contradictory, ignored, outright rejected, and so on-in which case the overly simpleclaim that “religion is a belief system'' becomes nonsense” (Martin 8).However, these two sources do differ in ways when it comes to answering thequestion 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 bigquestion. “My mom maintained a kitchen that had two sets of plates, which is commonfor Jews that keep kosher, but we did not keep kosher” (Ilyse 23:34 Keeping It 101, Whatthe Heck Is Religion?). In Ilyse’s moms case religion isn't really something that isfollowed correctly in her everyday life. Religion is simply who she is. She is a jewishwoman 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 herfrom 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 anentire 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 simplyOliveira 4functional. 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 youcan use it to benefit your daily life. Martine also bases a lot of his argument on whatreligion on Freud's point of view. “Sigmund Freud's theory of religion is a perfectexample 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 changingas people evolve, and there is no true answer to what religion is because it worksdifferently for everyone.In all, the question “what the heck is religion” can never be answered. Everyonehas a different take on what religion is and even though at times peoples opinions about itcross over, we each have our own interpretation. Personally I feel like I agree mostly withthe idea that religion and belief can not be considered the same. I personally identify asChristian but I don't necessarily agree with all the beliefs that outsiders think allChristians automatically believe. I think like Craig Martin,