Religion is an old form of it is what is, hope, direction, tradition, and community.
Can’t explain a thing or understand it God’s will or only God knows. Can’t do anything to help a person because they are in surgery pray or talk to God to wish for good outcomes.
Don’t feel loved or know what to do or wanted. God loves you, will show you the way, and wants you.
Most traditions and communities in the west were founded on a religion so you have hundreds of people to connect with at a church and maybe millions world wide that will help. Those raised on books of wisdom or what is right and wrong still tend to keep the values even after they move away from the religion but realize they can have values without divine beings
Lastly control. Just like businesses it is easier to control people under a religion so if you can get people indebted, traditionalized, and ostracized otherwise. You can control people easily. Lots of people don’t know what to do and why trust another human being but if a human being says wisely God said this it is easier to accept and gain a direction
I’m not religious at all. But in responding to your question OP: we don’t have to understand why people believe. Religion just isn’t for us, and that’s fine. Other people find it has value, and that’s fine too. The fact that religion has lasted this long with this many people is proof in itself that there’s some value people get out of it. We don’t have to get it to understand that.
All the comments here that explain religion solely as dumb or irrational are just as closed minded as the people they’re criticising.
Hard disagree. Religion has a measurable impact on people voting against the rights of minorities, and it deserves every bit of scrutiny it has coming its way.
It’s not like Bigfoot or flat earth. This shit is having serious consequences for others, physically and mentally.
Religion itself? Or man using religious dogma to justify the uglier natures of their internal belief systems and cherry-picking religious quotes to shoehorn their false righteousness into moral discussion? Religion is a powerful tool and it can be used to drum up donations for an orphanage, or leveraged and wielded by people who aren’t seeking to enlighten themselves at all apart from learning how to use religion to control people.
Both. Texts like the Bible tell you how to conduct slavery, endorses violence against men who have gay sex, and in no uncertain terms (and in many different ways) tells you women are worth a fraction of men and shouldn’t be trusted to preach.
Yet there are things that aren’t endorsed in the Bible are far too commonly preached by Christians. Like being against trans people, opposing abortion rights (in fact the Bible tells you how to induce an abortion and that you should do it if your wife cheats on you)… and like you said, some drum up donations for the express purpose of leveraging control over others, or to buy private jets, in spite of the life Jesus led and in spite of his teachings.
I agree with you. Using religion to manipulate people for political reasons is not really a religion problem. If you eradicate religion, there are many other levers to pull. In fact, manipulating religious groups these days also requires using these other weaknesses against people and then convincing them to ignore the conflict with their religious teachings.
Ahh yes, agreed. Like prosperity Jesus wanting you to be wealthy despite saying in the Bible “it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Or a year round favorite: “Love thy neighbor” (unless they’re people we don’t like, such as LGBT, immigrants, liberals etc. )
Let’s say we agree.
Do you find this post more scientific or more religious?
Because I will agree with you if we can agree that the position being taken here is driven by treating science as a religion ( one they poorly understand ).
The question itself isn’t scientific or religious. And nobody in this thread is conducting science, but the majority of us here definitely trust the scientific method over faith.
That’s not to say we take scientific claims as gospel like theists do with theistic claims. Science is about updating our understanding as new evidence is presented. Religion is about being handed the truth.
On point, additionally religion has also effectively associated itself with spirituality. It’s also associated itself with caring for others, volunteering, community, togetherness and acceptance. Additionally it’s a great place to network and organize communities. Even if belief has faded, tradition is usually important with that group of people.
It’s only recently in the past century or so that serious spirituality in our culture has been able to detach itself from religion, sometimes forming new ones
It’s also a great path to getting people to do what you want. I was already an atheist when my father and I had a philosophical discussion regarding religion when I was an adolescent. He brought up this point early in the discussion. I only need to look around at all the bullshit laws getting passed that religious zealots vote for against their own interest to confirm that this is true.
The Southern Baptist Church just had their annual conference and decided that their position on Invitro Fertilization is against the procedure. How does that help anyone? It doesn’t.
It is just as easy to point to the ideas of the extreme members of the “new atheist” movement as evidence that they are a dangerous cult.
Using the Southern Baptist Church as your example of religion is not a very good argument. Implying that atheists are somehow more rational as a group is not really a great argument either.
By the way, I am an atheist. I do no consider my beliefs to be unassailable scientific conclusions though. I recognize that many of my beliefs and preferences lack the robust rational foundation I would like them to. I doubt I am the pinnacle of morality or ethics ( more than doubt - but I am not looking to trash my own reputation here ).
Voting against your own interests or scapegoating others for what you see as damage against yourself or even just plain old hate do not require religion. Humans have lots of ways at arriving at those and being manipulated into them.
Because they did in 2023
Fear of the unknowable
Nothing is unknowable. It’s just unknowable for now.
Fear of the unforknowable.
i highly doubt we will ever answer the biggest questions about life and the universe
Yep. The issue is the answers found
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No one understands what your first sentence says because it’s an empty platitude.
The fact that religion is “fundamental” to you really helps you out? Care to actually elaborate with specific examples because that’s literally an empty phrase.
I find that most people use religion to absolve themselves of responsibility and make themselves feel superior to “lessers” (aka non believers).
I mean… In my life I’ve gone from a (naive child that took my parents words for fact) theist, to agnostic atheist, all the way to whatever the fuck I am now. It’s all a matter of perspective.
You go deep enough into metaphysics you can trip yourself the fuck out.
If anyone wants to humor me, check out this seemingly innocuous video about a comic book villain. Let’s debate some metaphysics!
Because we’re more akin to LLMs than we might be comfortable to admit. Or at least parts of us, subsystems of our psyches… Brains are belief engines more than they are objective parsers of reality.
I think it’s comfort. That can be if different things for different people and it can be many things at once.
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Spiritual comfort that your god loves you.
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Emotional comfort that you can do no wrong.
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Community comfort that you and the people like you are the chosen people.
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Life/death comfort for what happens after death.
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Intellectual comfort to know all the answers.
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Vindictive comfort to hate the people you want to.
It can just keep going.
Also, confort for having a higher being supposedly take care of you like your parents did when you were a child. Anything to soothe the loss of infancy.
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Why isn’t it possible for a creator to exist?
it’s fun. It’s problem when it’s forced. Then it’s not fun anymore. I think a creator offers more possible meaning then the rest.
Serious answer:
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe in a religion because I’ve found it to be personally beneficial.
I was a pastor for many years and saw much of the best and worst religion had to offer. I haven’t stepped foot inside a church since COVID broke out and don’t know that I ever will again.
My personal beliefs are still a significant part of my life, but I understand why someone would ask the question that spawned this discussion.
Yas queen. COVID’s not over! And even so, God and your soul aren’t important enough to risk contacting the common cold lol
I think that does answer the question - for a lot of people, the reason they’re religious is because they find it personally beneficial for one reason or another.
I guess I’m putting emphasis on the word “believe” and you seem to be seeing religion as a way to find comfort. This is why I feel you are not actually answering the question that OP posed. Perhaps I’m taking the question too literally.
Adding more to this. The question is why do you believe in religion, not why you are religious. To me, there’s a difference between the two of these.
Think of your closest friend or family member. Do you “believe in” them?
There is a significant difference, but, in my limited experience, many people are religious, but don’t actually believe, but they think they do believe. When the rubber hits the road you find it what a person actually thinks is true.
The social aspect might be underappreciated. My guess is people are mainly introduced by family and friends and it becomes a big part of their identity. It becomes difficult to separate the individual elements.
I am not even remotely religious. But I take science pretty seriously.
Please tell me, scientifically, why you are so sure that people of faith are wrong?
There is some decent science that prayer does not work. I am not aware of anything offers anything at all testable concerning God.
And if we are simply pushing our preferences on others, I think a more important question is what makes people that claim to be evidence driven to adopt such strong opinions on things ( without evidence ) that they feel comfortable publicly slamming the preferences and values of others ( again with no evidence at all ).
As a science fan, you can say that absence of evidence means you do not have to believe. Correct. You cannot say that an absence of evidence proves your guess correct such that you can treat people who believe otherwise as stupid. Incorrect.
And “they have to show me the evidence” is a moronic stance. As a fan of the scientific method, evidence is YOUR burden of proof. For people that adhere to a religion, their standard is FAITH. So, they are holding up their end and you are dropping the ball. So what gives you the right to be the abuser?
So, I guess my answer to “why do people believe in religion would be”, “well, people still have faith and tradition and science has not produced any evidence that credibly calls that into question”.
Why are people not arriving at this conclusion on their own in 2024? Why have we failed so badly to explain the scientific method that people can still make wild pronouncements like this one.
I don’t like religion because it makes people easy to manipulate. People that treat science like a religion exhibit the same problems. I am not a fan of that.
I am certain that Russel’s teapot is not orbiting Jupiter.
If you want to hypothesize about the existence of some kind of demiurge then that’s one thing, but religions are about some really and weirdly specific gods with very specific rules and systems and laws without a shred of evidence for anything.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
That teapot is orbiting somewhere. I have no idea if my universe is the one.
Saying that you “know” there is no God is an extraordinary claim. Do you demand extraordinary evidence from people that make that claim? Or do you only demand it from people following a philosophy that requires them to believe independent of evidence?
Honestly, this is about as smart as religious people demanding miracles before they will believe in Science.
I do not demand evidence that Ruasel’s teapot is not orbiting Jupiter. It’s clearly not and anyone who thinks it is is a quack.
Please tell me, scientifically, why you are so sure that people of faith are wrong?
Because they all offer competing and mutually exclusive hypotheses.
Christianity tells us that the one true path to salvation is by accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour.
Hinduism tells us that our next life will take place in this world, based on our actions in this life.
Islam tells us that Mohammed is the one true prophet.
Buddhism says that there are no prophets, enlightenment only comes from within.
They make contradictory claims, so by definition they can’t all be right, and they typically claim that they are correct and the other explanations are false, so even if one religion is correct, the rest (comprising of the majority of the faithful) must be wrong.
It’s a good coping mechanism.
It’s really a shitty coping mechanism.
Oh what, those pesky moral agents who created you in their image? and to think they’re just monkeys from the muck!!
For the same reasons they always have.
The year has little to do with it. The only things we’ve really undeniably progressed in over the past century are scientific knowledge and the level of technology. Existential philosophy hasn’t exactly made breakthroughs recently, to my knowledge.
Each person still needs to find their own answer to the fundamental questions of “why am I here” and “wtf is death and how do I deal with it”.
Our mechanical, scientific understanding of reality provides fairly depressing answers to these questions. Religion? Sunshine and roses.
Also, on a more practical factor: childhood indoctrination and cultural inertia. Most people are raised in religion and they find it “good enough”, so religion continues.
The year has little to do with it
The irony. Why exactly does the entire world accept the current year as being 2024? What are we 2024 years away from?
For the same sort of reasons there are (generally) 12 months in a year and there are 7 days on a calendar, and for the same reason that “John” is a name, and why London is placed where it is, and etc?
Because some dudes decided some stuff, and some other dudes decided some stuff influenced like that, and so on. And some stuff got changed, and some stuff was inconvenient to change or there was no real reason to change it.
The year is ironic in the exact context you quoted I guess. But the days of the week and many months were named for other mythologies.
What I was actually saying is that the same reasons for belief apply whether it’s 2000 BCE or 4000 CE. Humans remain human, and religion fills an inherent need.
There’s other religions than Christianity - large ones - that do not consider the birth of Christ as particularly meaningful. The fact that we’re using it as a point of reference is meaningful - the Christian religion has been very influential - but it is hardly some grand irony you seem to imply.
I find it more depressing that there is a God that decides what is good and what isn’t and gives us “free will” just so He can torture us for eternity if we dont do what He wants… kinda fucked up ngl
Fortunately I don’t need any more reasons to live than enjoying my day to day, being with the people I love, doing my little projects etc.
Oh, continuing down that line of thinking leads to far worse then “kinda fucked up.” If the judeo christian deity exists and is accurately described by their books than it is a total monster not worthy of praise or devotion…
What I understand about the judeo christian god is that they are believed to have created everything that has ever been or will ever be. They have total knowledge of everything past present and future, and they “knew me” prior to them creating me, knew what kind of person I would be, and knew without doubt that I wouldn’t believe in or worship them… so they created me with full knowledge that I’ll spend eternity being tortured in hell. What kind of benevolent deity brings a creature into existence just so they can be tortured? If that’s not full blown fucked up, then I don’t know what is.
You’ve basically touched on one of the core logical issues at play in Abrahamic religions (and others). God is omnipotent and omniscient, or people have free will. It can’t be both.
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This isn’t about responsibility, it’s about preventing suffering. If you could prevent a genocidal leader from being born, which you knew would save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, why wouldn’t you? Because it’s that person’s “responsibility” that all of those innocent people died after all?
So is God powerless to stop people from committing evil?
Here is the answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VoX-IkHVTE
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Here is a nice visualisation of the logical paradox:
The alternative is absolutely unfathomable. Like I am an atheist and the fact we exist in any capacity is insane. Where did everything come from? Where will it go? People believe in religion because it’s easier.
When I have an existential crisis over it I sometimes wish I was religious.
I feel the same way when I think about how when ever you get a whole bunch bunch of stuff together in one spot, it frickin warps time and space and that’s why I’m standing and not floating.
