Professor Leuba collected 48 definitions of religion and added 2 to make it 50. You can define other disciplines with precision but you can’t define religion with precision.
Religion is like a proverbial elephant
The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused. However the meaning of the popular proverb differs in other countries. It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side, leg or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. They begin to argue with themselves on the description.
The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. A Wiseman came and told them; why are you arguing on what you have not seen.
For instance, Karl Marx defined religion based on the political society that produced him. Durkheim defined it based on the sociological condition of his environment.
When you study the definition of religion; you have to know where the definition is coming from. The social condition of the definer.
