Religion is a collection of
cultural systems,
beliefs, and
world views that establishes symbols that relate humanity to
spirituality and, sometimes to moral values. While religion is hard to define, one standard model of religion, used in
religious studies courses, was proposed by
Clifford Geertz, who simply called it a "cultural system." A critique of Geertz's model by
Talal Asad categorized religion as "an
anthropological category." Many religions have
narratives,
symbols,
traditions, and
sacred histories that are intended to give
meaning to life or to explain the
origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive
morality,
ethics,
religious laws, or a preferred
lifestyle from their ideas about the
cosmos and
human nature. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.