Your personal orientation of religion can also be shaped by one of the three perspectives of religion: functional, belief, and materialist. I would say that I am a mixture of both the functional and the belief perspective. The functional perspective says that religion is useful, and that it is found everywhere because it is useful both for society and for individuals. Religion does things for us, such as helping define ourselves and making the world and life more understandable according to us. From another point of view, the belief perspective says that ultimate reality exists, and it cannot be perceived. Some people accept this “Unseen Reality” because it was told to them or is written down, and others come to their own conclusions. I would
