Does a definition of religion exist?

Upon initial reflection on our topic, we realized that every person has a unique definition of the word “religion.”  It is very much a subjective concept.  “Religion” can be interpreted as almost anything.  It might refer to a strict set of guidelines and rules for living, like “religion” in the most traditional sense of the word, e.g. the five major world religions: Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism.  However, there are innumerable “religions” practiced by people worldwide.  In the most abstract sense, the word “religion” can refer to any type of spiritual relationship or experience.  For guidance, we decided to look to the experts:

Merriam-Webster Online:
Definition of religion
1: the state of a religious (a): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (b): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2. a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3. archaic : scrupulous conformity
4. a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion
Note: As might be expected, the Merriam-Webster definition does not put “religion” into the anthropological context we expect to use.  However, the dictionary definition, because of its extremely basic nature, seemed an appropriate place to begin our discussion.  

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the father of psychoanalysis:

"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity."

–Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1939

http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/freud_religion.htm

Note: According to Sigmund Freud, religion is comparable to neurosis, an inner-turmoil that results in anxiety during the early years of childhood. He claims that religion derives its influence from our unconscious desires and is a creation of our bodies’ needs although it does not necessarily remain constant as we mature.

Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion
By:  Pascal Boyer and Brian Bergstrom
“What the term religion denotes is widely disputed in contemporary anthropology and religious studies (Saler 1993), so it may be of help to start with a rough demarcation of the field
of inquiry. Evolutionary models are supposed to explain a whole collection of behaviors and
mental representations that are found in many different human groups, including the following:

1. Mental representations of nonphysical agents, including ghosts, ancestors, spirits, gods, ghouls, witches, etc., and beliefs about the existence and features of these agents;
2. Artifacts associated with those mental representations, such as statues, amulets, or other visual representations or symbols;
3. Ritual practices associated with stipulated nonphysical agents;
4. Moral intuitions as well as explicit moral understandings that people in a particular group connect to nonphysical agency;
5. Specific forms of experience intended to either bring about some proximity to nonphysical agents or communicate with them;
6. Ethnic affiliation and coalitional processes linked to nonphysical agents; and
7. Evolutionary models, such as other explanatory models in anthropology, assume cross-cultural commonalities in each of these domains of thought and behavior.

Does this collection of features constitute a domain of ‘religion’? ...The models described here do not assume that the features listed above are always found together. The only assumption is that evolution provides the context for understanding some or many of the phenomena listed.”
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085201

Daniel Dennett in his book Breaking the Spell tentatively defines religion as a “social system whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought” (Dennett 9).  In this blog, we will use Dennett’s book as a guide for our research and posts.  His obviously circuitous definition provides us with merely a starting place in defining the term, rather than one carved in stone.  

So what is religion?  As we have mentioned, a single definition of “religion” is impossible. As humans, we retain our personal biases based on our own experiences and beliefs. Therefore any definition we develop reflects the version of religion that we best understand.  Definitions like these are too narrow, while at the other end of the spectrum, definitions can also be too broad, leading us to believe that religion can be nearly anything. We have decided to think of religion as an attempt to explain the world around us, as a series of rituals and ideologies aimed at controlling human activities and destiny, in other words religion as a social function, then we can begin to analyze the evolution of religion.  At the same time, we are interested in learning more about the possible biological basis for religion in humans.  Could a genetic link to religion exist within our DNA, or could nature have selected populations who have a form of religion over populations without religion?  Or are we a tabula rasa?

This video demonstrates the five most popular religious institutions to date, and how they spread throughout the world.