ence is the attempt to understand the natural world. Religion is often taken as an explanation of that world as well, but it is not concerned with the physical reality or operation of that world as much as it is with the underlying question of what makes the world as it is, the question of whether or not there is a prime mover and what that mover might be.
Religion has been defined as a human seeking for and responding to what is experienced as holy. This raises the issue of what is meant by the holy. It is easy to find synonyms for the holy--transcendence, sacred, and ultimate. The holy is usually personified as a being with personal name and personal attributes, and the name and attributes differ from one religion to another. The holy can be conceived of as an impersonal process, state of being, liberating ruth, or power. The holy is nonordinary. The holy has its rational side and its nonrational side. The ultimate as unconditioned and uncreated provides an explanation for the world as conditioned and created, and the ultimate as a final value makes ethical judgments something more than individual or group preferences. The holy is therefore associated with the good. The holy is not exclusively ethical or rational and is something more than the good and the true. The nonrational can be called the numinous, and the numinous involves an experience of a reality that is both an ineffable mystery and an awesome, majestic power. The holy is a mystery. It is something more, something wholly other, radically different from the ordinary and the familiar. It is incomparable and incomprehensible. It transcends everything finite and humanly conceivable. Aspects of the holy are hidden and unknowable, impenetrable mystery that cannot be pierced.
The nonordinary is also a majestic power, an awesome and overpowering energy. The holy is not stationary but is rather a process, a state of being, and a liberating truth. The hol...