Another related and equally important function of every religion is to put forth cosmology. Every religion has its own distinctive view of the cosmos—the nature of the physical universe, including time and space, the world we live in, and man’s place in it. This cosmology forms the philosophical underpinning on which that religion is based and, in effect, becomes its “religious philosophy”. This religious philosophy, in turn, determines the religion’s doctrine and belief systems, provides its uniqueness, and frequently is the single most feature that attracts new members. As India’s noted Hindu scholar Sri Aurobindo stated, “A religion that is not the expression of philosophic truth degenerates into superstition and obscurantism.”

Similarly, preservation of orthodoxy is a common feature of almost every religion, and a religion’s measures to ensure the integrity of its beliefs, practices, traditions and scripture range from the very simple to the legally sophisticated. Revelations 22:18 strongly admonishes against alteration or deletion of Christian religious text. In Catholicism, the entire Jesuit religious order is charged with seeing to the integrity of scripture. And the Christian Science Church, among many others, has employed legal devices such as copyright laws to ensure sacred works are not perverted or improperly used.

Establishment of ethical and moral codes and guidelines governing behavior and “right conduct” figure prominently in virtually all religions, and is expressed in such varied forms as the Ten Commandments in Judaism, and the Golden Rule in Christianity, the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism and the way of the dharma in Hinduism. The late religious scholar and author Mircea Eliade noted that while religion concerns the sacred, it also guides human conduct: “By imitating the divine behavior, man puts and keeps himself close to the gods—that is, in the real and the significant.”