ABSTRACT
The core of religion is religious experience. Religion, then, so goes the objection, has not always had to do with the transcendent. Men have often worshipped merely natural objects—the sun or the moon, trees, mountains, rivers, animals. Religion has suffered much from loose use of language, and in no case is this more evident than in the use of the word ‘religion’ itself. Questions about the importance of religion or of the relation of religion to other activities are also confused by an undiscriminating use of the term ‘religious’. Philosophical discussions may likewise be confused by the importation into certain logical or epistemological questions of religious associations of the term ‘transcendence’ which have no relevance to the point at issue.
