Religion, why? | |
Peer pressure. I'd like to go more in-depth than that, but that's really what it boils down to. If one's social group accepts something as undeniable fact, it's very hard to break away from that. | |
Beats me. Then again morderate religious people do no harm to the world and nothing bad happens. The kind of deism where the god: doesnt have obscure stupid demands - dont wear purple glasses on wednesday Is alright by me. Its fine. Let these people live side by side with me no issue. Anything else irks me in amounts depending on how many of the list they check. Moderate religion doesnt adhere to dogma or stupid rules. Its just a belief of god. The rules are extras. Annoying extras. The more on the list you tick the worse the religion gets. | |
The more I think about this the more it makes sense, Religion as a whole basically work the way cults do, alot of feedback from other members and very little input from the rest of the world. As an example does only 20% of the population of the scandinavian countries belive in god as opposed 80% of the US. | |
Why do you think baptism happens so early? If you get them in when they're young they are more likely to remain religious. Usually they receive pressure from the family unit, and just believe religion because it is the first idea about the universe and world as a whole that they are exposed to. Then of course there are those people that like feeling that there is greater good in the universe, or people who enjoy/need the support they get from their church. Despite being an atheist, I don't actually view religion on its own to be a bad thing. There are actually many good things churches do. Charity for instance. Helping those who can't help themselves is in no way a bad thing. Also, supporting homeless people, or troubled children or donating to hospitals or helping drug addicts or criminals turn their lives around, none of that is bad. However, the ORGANIZATION of religion causes some big problems. For instance, the whole anti-gay, anti-women, anti-sex, preaching freedom of religion then trying to force their ways on others, etc. does not sit well with me, and according to the rising number of non-religious people in the world that opinion is far from unique. Also, despite being a charitable organization, the church really needs some heavier taxes put on it. For instance, a local church was just built that cost FIVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS. That's enough to give quite a few homeless people a place to live, or provide medical care or food. | |
"Religions are deeply etched in human nature and cannot be dismissed as a product of ignorance, indoctrination or stupidity. Until secularists recognize that, they are fighting a losing battle." - New Scientist Special Edition People participate in religions for any number of reasons, some of which may (though need not always) include believing in the religion. Trying to lump all religious people into the same group is pure fallacy. | |
Anymore, religious meetings are used as a social get-together. Beyond that, you'd have to ask a sociologist. | |
First I wanna clear something up a cult is not believeing a holy book. A cult is following someone or an idea without the ability to think outside the thought of what that doctrine or person says. That does not mean agree with but means they can reason of thier own free will. The universe does not revolve around the earth. The world is not 6000 years old. Humanity does not descend from some guy named Adam and his upper left rib. And as for your last part I complete agree that all of the wars and presecusion have been completely unforgivable. But who did those crimes... men seeking power for themselves Christians were so peaceful that the Romans saw it as a national security threat that they tortured these people in the worst ways because they refused to fight or worship their gods. It was until they joined up with the political system did christians begin to becaome the monsters they hated. That was the problem when people stop wanting to learn about what they believe and either follow blindly or twist things to fit thier own agenda do things go bad. | |
Because Christianity is the only religion and all adherents are always fundamentalists who take the Bible literally... Most of these 'claims' are not religious, they were also believed by secular scholars. In addition religion has helped science in some fields. Priests were often involved in a variety of sciences including astronomy, climatology, ecology and psychology. Hell, the Church actually supported the possibility of alien life in the Middle-ages and initially supported Galileo (until he slagged off the Pope). Its not a clear cut dichotomy with Religion on one side and Science on the other. Their relationship is more involved and less antagonistic than is often supposed. | |
Probably because they're convinced by whatever arguments their faith has for itself. I've heard quite a few; The Qur'an contains scientific truths that it would be impossible for people in that time and place to discover, therefore Islam is true...a mass revelation at Sinai is an event that is impossible to fabricate, therefore Judaism is true...the historians documenting the existence and miracles of Krishna are completely reliable in all other areas and would have no reason to lie, therefore Hinduism is true...though obviously they're more complicated than that. | |
I think that having something to believe in which is unquestionable; something which you can always refer to, whether morally right or wrong in your opinion, makes people's lives a hell of a lot easier. Doubt is difficult. I'm an atheist (and growing more determinedly atheist by the day) and having only myself and society around me as a measure for morality is sometimes difficult, and takes many hours of going back and forth until I get an answer I feel I can live with. Religious people can turn to a book/prayer/holy leader and get an answer in a second, and then absolve themselves of any blame. I can see the attraction of that. Ultimately though I think it comes from social upbringing and peer pressure. I live in Southern Italy and am constantly amazed by the strength of many people's belief in Catholicism. I envy them their certainty, but am glad I choose to judge my actions against my own inner morality, not a set of rules which have been altered and changed over hundreds of years by a succession of old men with a god complex... | |
I think you imagine the religious as having far more inner peace / enlightenment than we actually do. Our lives can be just as fraught with doubt and uncertainty as yours, unless that's just me. | |
I'll accept that! My flatmate is a prime sufferer of 'Catholic guilt', so I see on a daily basis how religious people can be plagued by doubt. I'll amend my statement to the extremely devout/extremists, as I genuinely think that they can use religion to absolve themselves of any blame/guilt for absolutely anything, the most worrying concept I've ever come across. However, I do (on an extremely simplistic level) see religion as a kind of middle-man for people's morals. It gives you an extra reference point, and also a community, you can judge yourself by, and I think that is the attraction for a lot of people. | |
Because people are more concerned with what makes them feel good than having good evidence for their beliefs. It's really as simple as that. Not everyone wants to be an empiricist or rationalist. I'm not sure they need to be, really. | |
Some people just don't get it I guess. Like it or not fellas there is absolutely no reason to believe that we will ever see a time where there is no religion or some equivalent. Its part of the human experience, there is no more why to it than that. | |
I don't think you mean middleman. Middle man sounds like people hand off their morality to religion and expect it to take it the rest of the way. It's more like handing morality to religion just for a second opinion. | |
Well, as they say, the only difference between a cult and a religion is popularity. | |
I learned this is Psychology but I can't remember all the answers exactly. For some it's a sense of comfort in death, for some it's seeking to do the right thing, for some it's a sense of community. I believe the forth reason is habit or feeling your expected to. Any of those makes sense to me, not everyone has the same reasons. My Dad often talks about feeling a spiritual presence, something that makes him positive of existence despite rationality. It's a sense of doing it because it feels right. | |
To avoid a long pointless argument, can we turn this thread into discussing which pony should join the Avengers in the new Prometheus movie that rewrites the ending to ME3? ... Or, if I must answer, if you aren't religious, you probably won't understand, if you are, you probably won't understand why more people aren't. | |
Because what you think of and how you see the world isn't how everyone else thinks of and sees the world? I really can't think of a better reason. Everybody is different. That is why everybody believes in different things, eats different foods, likes different movies, and wears different clothes. | |
I wouldn't call it peer pressure, exactly, but upbringing. If you're raised with particular notions, be they political, religious, scientific or otherwise ideological, you will find it much easier to accept them (i.e. not everybody does, but most do). Parents are not just authority figures but nurturing ones, people we trust. We put a lot of value in what they teach us, which was frankly a great evolutionary advantage. I see religion as kind of piggybacking on that. | |
Clearly the moon one. | |
Correlation vs causation...the human brain doesn't need to distinguish between the two to survive in evolutionary terms. Therefore if a tribe does a rain dance & it rains one day, they will associate their dancing with appeasing some sort of God or something if repeated often enough. Pretty basic example but there's plenty of evidence in cognitive science that implies religion is more than just a transient part of humanity, and that it has some biological origin. | |
Hmm... Supposedly, it's natural - we want a satisfying explanation to things, and don't care how correct we are. It's also harder to change if everyone else has the same opinion, and you were raised with it. I've recently written an essay on the topic, and for the most part, it's a choice that our opinion goes higher than fact - we want to believe things to be happy. A lot of the time, it's much easier to accept millenia old rules than come up with your own. | |
people are afraid of the unknown and use olde books to explain it. | |
Here's a little secret: humans really aren't as rational as we like to think. It's not that easy to shake off a religion, or a superstition, or even a "fact" you heard in high school science that has long since been disproven. It was something of an evolutionary advantage to think tribally, believe what you were told, react without thinking, not change your mind, see patterns that aren't there, etc. And that was before such out-there quesitons as "what happens to me after I die?" were answered with soothing bedtime stories to wash away the fear. Atheism as anything approaching a social movement isn't much more than a century old in the industrialized west, and even now, to borrow an argument from anti-atheists, you get some people who flick the "faith" switch in their head from "what I was raised as" to "atheism as religion" (e.g., objectivism). And like any groups, the fundamentalist idiots are the loud ones, so when people of faith are trying to be rational and speak with atheist they get people going "raaaagh sheeple raaaagh stupid mindless rabble raaaagh why can't they be superior like me?". Social mores take a long time to change, even in the face of the most patient rationality. Consider slavery. "We believe these truths to be self-evident", and yet something any "civilized" person would see as self-evident today--that slavery is one of those things that is inherently evil--was legally enshrined in American law for almost a century after the country was founded. And even then, a war had to be fought, and the slavery persisted, just going by another name, for almost a hundred years more. I knew a guy at a previous job who thought black holes were a myth. He seemed to be a reasonable guy otherwise. But nope, no black holes, 'cause why? Just 'cause he--a guy working in a call center whose long-term goal was to go to work at a higher-paying call center--didn't think it sounded plausible. As Esotera noted, it's been proven by SCIENCE! that the human brain is wired for faith, not reason. | |
Many of the most intelligent, well educated, and/or wisest individuals on this planet, both now and throughout history, were/are quite devoted to a religion. While religion in general and a large chunk of religious individuals have major flaws, don't ever make the mistake of assuming that faith is only found through ignorance. There are dozens of reasons religion still exists, but I'll focus on one for now. Current research in biology and anthropology strongly suggest that there is a genetic predisposition for it. Religion provides a catalyst that helps bind small communities together, for much the same reason it can tear larger ones apart. When one's life and livelihood entirely depend on communal effort, such as the conditions our ancestors evolved in, sharing a common view about the nature of the world helps immensely. P.S. If I were a little more vindictive and didn't care about the inevitable political backlash, I'd see the above as an opportunity. Start talking about researching and finding a "cure" for the "god gene", if only to laugh at the horrified looks. | |
It still exists because people are raised to believe it + religion is the "easy way out". | |
More or less this; many people don't want to face up to the fact that we're on our own in a very scary universe. Therefor they warm themselves by the mistruths of religion. | |
What do you mean by that? Because just about every faith I know of demands significantly more of a person than any atheistic ideology. | |
Uh, a certain religion is a big part of someone's culture? Or maybe they were raised in a religious family? Or maybe a certain religion just made sense to a person? It isn't that hard. | |
Its easier to take the teachings of one book and believe them without question than explore science or challenge your own morals and views by reading books from Nietzsche, Kant, or *insert random philosophers name here*. | |
Perhaps not in demand, but that's not the only source of challenge or ease. To illustrate my point - I get massively pissed when certain religionists make out that atheism is essentially hedonism. For one thing, it's not, necessarily. For two, and to use the Christian God as an example, I'd argue that having a deity on hand 24/7/365 to talk to about your problems and maybe get supernatural help if you're lucky + super awesomeo mucho bonus immortality prize in the land of gumdrops at the end of it is a much bigger carrot on a stick than something with maybe less restrictions in this life and only the cold embrace of the grave to look forward to. The demands may be slightly higher, but the alleged payoff for Christianity is orders of magnitude higher than what atheism claims its payoff is. And while there aren't codified demands in atheism, one still has to accept that the natural world has consequences for particular behaviour. One can decide to disobey the notion of not murdering people if desired - not that a rule about not murdering people ever stopped the religious from doing so either, mind - but one will still face strong social consequences if one does. Edit: Also, Christianity is frequently taken as a source of moral and social absolutes. Atheism doesn't promise that. So that's another area where if one compares the two the religion gives the easier ride. There is also much more of a tendency for religions to push for uniform social behaviour, while atheism is essentially no gods + whatever else the heck you want. There is more variation within atheism, thus less social pressure. So while a religion may have higher demands, the assistance from peer pressure (essentially) may be greater. | |
Take your worst fears. The better I can find out what you fear, and convince you that only I can save you from them, then the longer I'll be served and protected. It doesn't matter what anyone says anyway. | |
Here is a excellent example. Old and proven time over. This especially applies to religious communities. They do not want to rock the boat as stated. | |
I've thought about this for the last couple of days now and just can't seem to wrap my head around it. why does religion still exist and what makes someone consider any holy book as fact? You are basically asking someone to belive something without any evidense except the fact that many others belive in it in your general area (which is how cults work) and some holy book (which could have been written by anyone).
Throughout the ages religion has been proven wrong by sience. The universe does not revolve around the earth, the world is not 6000 years old, humanity does not descend from some guy named Adam and his upper left rib.
Again and again has commoners been exploited for money (purgatory, anyone?), people have been beaten and killed, wars have been fought, all because of religion, and for what? Answears to questions we already know the answear to? To avoid the realization that the universe is cold, hard, infinite and randome? Because they are scared of death?
Can someone please help me understand why anyone still belive in this?