Family Resemblance and the Definition of Religion

In this article I attempt to do three things. First, to express my views about the idea of family resemblance relative to the problem of defining religion. Second, to suggest a partial answer to a question posed by Luther Martin and his fellow panelists at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion: if we assign causality to religion, to what are we assigning it? And third, to enter a caveat respecting the replacement of popular analytical categories.