Religion is the belief in a personal deity. It involves devotional and worshipful practices, a code of moral conduct, and certain observances. It is also a system of beliefs about the world and its creation, and a set of ideas about God and how humans relate to Him. It includes a concept of heaven, hell, and the afterlife.
In its simplest form, religion is the habit of recognizing one’s dependence on God and voluntarily acknowledging it by acts of homage. It awakens the imagination, stirs the emotions, and entices the will to act in accordance with a recognized ideal of happiness and perfection. The awareness of one’s need for Divine help and the conviction that a friendship with a compassionate protector is possible, engender hope. It enables one to love and serve the Deity for His own sake, although this sentiment is crudely conceived in lower religions, especially in those that do not emphasize the need for salvation from sin.
The word religion is used today to identify a social taxon that includes Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. But it has been argued that this notion of religion does not reflect the reality of these faiths. Rather, they are simply a group of related ideas that share certain features, such as a belief in a supreme personal deity, and that these notions have evolved over time. The emergence of the idea of a family resemblance concept for religion is thus an artifact of a particular cultural history.