What Are the Main Obstacles That Scholars Face in Reaching a Definition of Religion, and How Convincing Have the Solutions Been That Scholars Have Found?

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What are the main obstacles that scholars face in reaching a definition of religion, and how convincing have the solutions been that scholars have found? I am going to identify and consider some of the main barriers that face scholars in their attempt to reach a definition of religion. I will be looking at the obstacles that stand in the way of reaching a satisfactory definition and then consider in what ways these obstacles may be encountered. I will firstly consider the keys ways of how obstacles have stood in the way of people understanding the true meaning of religion. I will then identify some possible solutions that assist to counteract these obstacles. One of the main obstacles that scholars face is a person’s assumption of how they believe something should be. For example when Colonel Henry Steel Olcott travelled to Ceylon ‘he was dismayed by what he thought to be the Sinhalese peoples ‘‘shocking ignorance’ of Buddhism’ (Introducing Religions, 2005, 14). Although the Sinhalese people were practising the teachings and understanding of Buddhism as they understood them, Olcott could not comprehend this. Olcott had his own set of ideas of how Buddhism should be practised and felt a need to ‘restore ‘true’ Buddism’ (Introducing Religions, 2005, 14). He felt that ‘true’ Buddhism should be practised to in a way that would conform to his assumptions. As scholars we need to understand that people’s way of practising religion doesn’t always follow the assumptions we make. We need to stand back and understand what religion means to different people. It is important to identify and understand the way they study it, not assume that because their practices don’t conform to our way of thinking, that other ways are wrong. Another obstacle faced by scholars is preconceptions of how we think religion should be practised to conform to our understanding. A

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