Does religion exist?

Yes of course, especially if I am in a course called the study of religion... but maybe not?

Something to ponder...

Notes I took (some is quoted, some not) from Timothy Fitzgerald's "The Ideology of Religious Studies" for a paper:

The concept of religion is an ideological construct as part of a wider historical process of western imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Ideologically loaded distiniction between realm of religion and the realm of non-religion or the secular. By constructing religion and religions, the imagined secular world of objective fact – societies and markets. This modern ideology is far more important because it needs to be legitimated as a part of the real world of nature and rational self-realization that all ‘underdeveloped’ societies are conceived as evolving towards. P8. The world of natural rationality is an ideological construction

– primitive cultures can adopt this natural reality to be considered fully rational by:
a. Adopting this western notion of separation between the religious and secular
b. Place their traditional values in departments of religion, objects of nostalgia
c. Thus clearing cognitive space in their culture for putatively value-free scientific facts, for the natural world of autonomous individuals maximizing their rational self-interest in capitalist markets, democratic institutions, and the values of a civil society. But then this looks like a religion too…. And the term ends up vague

So, I come here to study religion. The first thing I write about is how religion is a ideological constuction of N. Atlantic imperialism. It is something we made up. It is the separation of normal states of culture including symbols, rituals, ideas of a transcendent, politics, economy etc., into a dichotomy of opposites - the sacred and the profane. A dichotomy which may or may not exist in reality.

This is me pondering by the way. I have to add pictures to keep it interesting. Not that my face is really that interesting, but this way you can visualize the scenario of me thinking rather deeply... :)

Oh this is a funny field.
I am having a great time, learning a new vocabulary: