Why believe in God?

Originally posted by gcle I'd suggest a religion is something that reassures people, and gives them a sense of community with other believers, defining it by its goal, but again of course science does that too.

Yes, I agree. And this would apply to many other belief systems also e.g. nationalism. This only goes to highlight how difficult it can be to define the unique nature of religious belief.

Originally posted by gcle Originally posted by Constantine To be honest, despite Omar's and my own efforts at looking through the dictionary, neither of us found a truly holistic dictionary definition which captures its key features and nature as people in our world understand religion. This is a significant impediment in exploring the topic. 'People in our world' understand 'religion' in different ways.

Both quotes are very true. (In fact I agree wholeheartedly with everything you two have post in the last day or so)

I've noticed this is very relevant within the Islamic community, to point out two groups for example, there is one that strictly follows rules, and sees religion just a set of rules to follow, and there is one group that follows religion as an ideal, with the rules being a path to the ideal but not the ideal itself.