The following essay can be viewed with equal accuracy from various perspectives. Viewed in terms of its take on religion, it argues that whatever else it is, a particular religious tradition is a cognitive system that is open to rational assessment. This should be understood in such a manner that a religious tradition, in its historical embodiment, may be, and often is, a variety of cognitive systems each of which deserves consideration. Looked at regarding its commitment as to what philosophy is, it is both realist and rationalist. We need, at the outset, some notion of what religion is, and to this we now turn.