Religions provide a system for monitoring, coding, protecting, and transmitting information that has proven invaluable in human history, including knowledge of what is essential for life and flourishing. They also serve a variety of important social functions, such as providing a context within which sanctions and rewards, approval and disapproval, inspiration and ideation are held in common.
The concept of religion is so broad and tangled that it is sometimes difficult to sort out what makes up the class of practices it comprises. However, the way this class is defined matters, for it determines how we will treat its members and whether we will discover patterns that enable us to explain their origin and behavior.
At the core of religion is the belief that a mysterious and supernatural Being or Beings control human lives and destiny for their weal or woe. This profound sense of dependence on the Divine engenders faith and hope. Faith is the conviction that man can bring himself into friendly and beneficent communion with his benevolent protector, while hope is the expectation that such an end will be attained.
The practice of religion improves health, learning, economic well-being, self-control, and empathy. These benefits are not the result of miracles, but rather of different methods of coping with life’s stresses that religions offer. However, recent advances in research on religious and spiritual behaviors show that religions can be beneficial or harmful, depending on how they are directed. Religions that are God-oriented and based on beliefs that transcend the individual tend to be beneficial; religions that are directed toward other ends such as status, self justification, or sociability are generally harmful.