What is religion?

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

Alan W. Watts

Religion is the belief in a higher power.

Well personally i think religion is a teaching. Religion is suppose to teach the followers about good things like love, humbleness, wisdom and all. While some people may have interpret the book of religion incorrectly and it became a widespread.

According to my religion which is christian, or more specifically, we are known as protestants, but protestant isnt a religion, its like a name for a team. We do gatherings to praise the Lord. The word of god has it that we should follow our Lord Jesus, not the religion.

Confusing right? I think religion is a teaching to achieve unity in the community. Some humans are so mind blowing to play god.

Well its best to respect other religion. What i know is that religion should be teaching the good and make us aware of the bad. Thats it.

"Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off.... the experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life."

Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"

It means it's a happy coincidence to have a belief that not only doesn't require objective validation, but actually lauds itself for ignoring objective validation (because it's based on Faith). That's what we call, convenient.

I'm sorry I don't remember the context of this discussion. I just don't understand what belief has to do with experience.

Show your faith in a super power which exist in nature.

Religion is a name. It unites and brings people together to celebrate what they have in common, what they love, in a way that they understand each other and provided each other with that support and love for life.

I like that definition. Bringing people together is an important function of religion, the division of which is an ever-growing problem in our society despite or perhaps because of our electronics.

To make an analogy of theism and atheism consider the question of ghosts.

One person considers the ghost to have a real, objective reality. This is the theist. The atheist simply denies the reality of ghosts. The agnostic is not sure.

The mystic says ghosts are subjective hallucinations and are as real as dreams.

Contrary to popular argument, the substantive difference between atheism and theism is in essence NOT about belief in existence of an entity religionists might call 'God' but whether the concept of 'God' has any functional significance in a person's life. The argument about 'existence' is futile, but the argument about 'functionality' is not. Obviously, that functionality can be explored at an individual or social level.
IMO It is the conflict between psychological functionality of belief at the individual level and its potential dysfunctionality between groups at the social level which which lies at the heart of conflicts based on religion.

Religion is very personal and subjective. But unfortunately, now a days its the biggest point of differentiation.

"How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god."

Alan W. Watts, "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are"

“Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words.

Joseph Campbell

What is religion?

Classification

"We do not 'come into' this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree."

Alan W. Watts, "The Book: on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are."

"The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this was the idea that finally turned that world into something like a wasteland, a land where people were living inauthentic lives, never doing a think they truly wanted to because the supernatural laws required them to live as directed by their clergy. In a wasteland, people are fulfilling purposes that are not properly theirs but have been put upon them as inescapable laws. This is a killer.... The spirit is really the bouquet of life. It is not something breathed into life, it comes out of life. This is one of the glorious things about the mother-goddess religions, where the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity isn't something ruling over and above a fallen nature.... Our story of the fall in the Garden sees nature as corrupt; and that myth corrupts the whole world for us. Because nature is thought of as corrupt, every spontaneous act is sinful and must not be yielded to. You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature."

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Arthur Schopenhauer

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

Anthony Hopkins

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
Albert Einstein