"Religion: Human beings' relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, spiritual, or divine."1
People are born into families that have a certain religion or traditions. Some follow the footsteps of their parents, others seek their own way, but everyone from atheists to religious, are seeking the truth. People seek the path that leads to salvation. For some death is the end, for others is just the beginning.
The word religion is often used as a synonym for faith or belief, but the religion has a set of rituals and behaviors organized, it is different from the faith, which can be carried out in various ways, not only in the traditional form taught by religion.
In practice the religion can include various activities: festivals, sacrifices, fasting, marriage services, funeral services, meditation, dance, music, prayers, and various ceremonies.
To many thinkers religion would disappear over the years, the words of Marx (1818-1883) that religion is the opium of people is very known, but both he, and other major sociologists and the father of psychoanalysis Freud (1856-1939), were convinced that religion would disappear with the development of modern science and rationality, a stance that was already in thought, for example by Lucretius, in the first century BC.
But that did not occur, the religion continues to be lived, and lived fervently also there are also people who seek spirituality but without being part of some religion.
Spirituality refers especially to a personal matter: a response to fundamental aspects of life, relationship with the sacred, which may (or may not) lead to the development of religious rituals and the formation of communities.
Contrary to what famous sociologists say, religion and spirituality are very much present in both, East and West, but in many ways.
The development of religion, took different forms in different cultures. Some religions call over to the side of belief and faith, and others more to the side of practice. Some believe that the various activities can elevate man to the highest level of faith, and others believe that the individual spiritual experience may be what matters most, some religions seek to join the two extremes.
However only the internal cultivation of human beings is not seen as a religion, the religion itself is not just an individual phenomenon but a social phenomenon.
In philosophy and religion, essentialism is a theory which concludes that certain properties of a group do not depend on the social context, and there are universal rules for all without exception of space or time.
The other modern theory, social constructivism implies the opposite, that everything can vary according to the social context of each society.2
Some experts have divided religions in three types: world religions (which are the main religions, few in numbers but with many supporters), indigenous religions (specific smaller religious groups in every society) and new religious movements (beliefs newly developed) .
Although different, the religions have in common many similar things, issues like good and evil, the creation of the world, where we came from and where we are going to, and also the worship of a superior being. Moreover religion comes with a set of rules and norms that believers should fallow.
On another hand, there are groups of people who dont believe in a Supreme Being (atheists), and others who have doubts (agnostic), and others even believe in a Supreme being but doubt that the Supreme being revealed any message to us (Deism).
The religions that assert the existence of a deity can be classified into two types: polytheistic (belief in multiple gods or deities) and monotheism (belief in one God, a Supreme Being).
No one can hear all voices, or see all things, but the world is a rotating ball that has faith, after hundreds of years, monotheistic faith almost dominated the world, where most people even with different religions and dogmas say a same phrase: La ilaha Ila Allah. (there is no god but God).
References:
1-Encyclopædia Britannica (online, 2006)
2-Poerksen, Bernhard (2004), The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivism.
-http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-69922008000200008
-http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_defn.htm
-Friedrich Max Muller, Introduction to the science of Religion
-http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi%C3%A3o
-Pascal Boyer, The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought