Religion involves a set of beliefs and practices that a person accepts as a guide to living. People usually think of religious beliefs as about God, but religion also includes other spiritualities such as a belief in nature or an afterlife.
The earliest human religions likely developed as a response to either a biological or cultural need. Biologically, religion is thought to have evolved when humans became self-aware enough to recognize their own mortality. The resulting need to understand what happens after death led human beings to search for a way to avoid death or, failing that, a place to go where they would be happy. Similarly, culturally, religion is thought to have evolved when people began to make sense of their existence by creating spirituality. This included ancestor worship and beliefs in guardian gods and spirits.
Most religious teachings teach moral values that influence the way people treat their neighbors and others. This makes religion a powerful social force in society. But some critics of religion argue that it teaches people to be passive and that it exploits the poor.
Some scholars have suggested that we need a different way of thinking about Religion. They advocate what is called an open polythetic approach to the concept, which recognizes that there are a variety of properties that can accurately describe what a religion is, and that these properties co-appear in particular ways. This model goes beyond the classical three-sided model that distinguishes among phenomena: the true, the beautiful, and the good, by adding a fourth C: community.