Reading Sapiens changed my mind about this a lot because it always confused me too. It’s more about myths (of which we have a lot like the companies we work for and our countries) that allow us to cooperate, trust each other and work on larger more abstract ideas.
As for why it’s still around today – maybe it’s not as late as you think it is – We just made steam engines 10-15 generations ago
Besides the fear of death that many mentioned already, its also a need to find an answer to how the world works and the need to find purpose in life.
Without these we suffer: Without understanding our environment, we feel our circumstances are out of our control and become anxious. Without purpose we become depressed (there is an excellent book called “from death camp to existentialism” about this subject).
Our brains are asking us for an urgent answer and the best quick answer most people can come with is religion. This is why it exists in every culture in history.
I was born in a very interesting family. Both sides of my family were from very opposing denominations of Christianity.
One of the Church of Christ (not Latter Day Saints), believing that dancing and musical instruments were a sin, took the lords supper (wine and bread) every Sunday and believed that if you were not baptized in their church that you were going to hell.
The other, Baptists, who would regularly invite bands to play at their church, rarely took the lords supper and would not batt an eye if you visited a friend’s church of a different denomination.
They both used the exact same version of the Bible (King James Version). Although, the baptists didn’t care if you used a newer translation to get a better understanding. This great divide in the interpretation of the word of a book drove me away from believing in the traditional Christian sense of a god.
Each denomination teaches their own interpretation. If the word is divine and should be read and understood in the same way everywhere, why should I believe one over the other?
Dude, we have people that think vaccines are giving people disabilities and that the moon landing was fake. There’s no shortage of morons out there. I’d go so far as to say many, if not most religious people are fairly rational, especially by comparison xD
This thread has plenty of anti-religious stances and oversimplified explanations that just mock those that are religious. Despite how exhausting it will be to think about the replies, I feel that some balance is needed for the sake of good content and discussion. I’m terrible at this shit, so take it with a grain of salt. Obligatory “I’m not religious” - I’m not defending those that have twisted religion to be used for personal gain, perversion, or for enacting upon hatred, but to say there’s zero benefit to religion and that it shouldn’t exist is naive; it is, however, in need of improvement.
Religion provides community, philosophy, and despite what everyone in the comments here are saying, education. You can deny a specific diety all you’d like, but it poses potential answers to questions science has yet to figure out. Did a diety create the universe via The Big Bang? When does life begin? What happens after death? What happens before we’re born? Etc.
Church provides support for those struggling. You can argue that praying to a diety may not do anything on its own, but to have a pastor say that someone in the church has been struggling with something and everyone includes that in their prayers - it helps a lot to cope with the passing of someone, addiction, debt, etc. Some churches will do events to help raise money for a cause. Some will pull you aside to help give direction to resolve the struggle in your life. Some host meetings for AA and other similar programs.
Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.
Multiple strong atheists including my college Language Arts teacher throughout my life have said that The Bible is one of the greatest books ever written - not for the diety, but for the teaching of morals, the poetry, the individual pastorals, and the story overall. Is it the only source to learn morality? No. Additionally, any source where you learn morality from will also have immoral characteristics, so don’t let any strawman arguments prevent you from learning from it.
Nothing and no one is perfect, so use your own judgement to discern the morality from the immoral, and question it. For those interested in pro-religioua debate, books on Apologetics can be an interesting read.
Because at the core of every religion is a tiny grain of truth. It’s 50% intentionally fabricated nonsense, 45% poetic license and the personal interpretation of someone long dead, and maybe 5% of it is truly profound and universal
If you look at religions, they have a lot of commonalities. There is an inhuman, unknowable creator, or source. Then there’s some number of superhuman beings who serve or reject the creator, and may interact with humans. They don’t interact with the creator directly though - they’re also not human, but have some exaggerated human qualities
The abyss, the primal chaos, Ginnungagap for the Norse… It’s the nothing that spawned and makes up everything. It’s ever present, but you know it by acting in harmony with it, and destroy yourself by acting against it.
Then there’s the pantheons, servants, great spirits, naga or what have you - they’re assertions for how to live in harmony with it, some kind of greater being that is partially right and partially wrong. They’re value systems, and they make mistakes in most myths, showing the flaws. Sometimes they created the world from the abyss/chaos, sometimes they created humans, sometimes they just stumbled upon us. Or sometimes aliens that created us as a slave race, depending on how you want to see it.
And then there’s the reason for it - in one way or another, it’s to become something greater through our time alive. Often to become strong or pure enough to be able to join the deities, or to be able to exist in the void without burning to nothing.
You do it through engaging in life - mindfully doing anything will teach you truths about the universe, and through various forms of introspective meditation (or prayer) to bring yourself more in harmony with your version of the truth.
That’s all more like spirituality, but then you spend generations adding in some cautionary tales - we do live in a society after all, these are like bedtime stories that mix our history with the values our society prizes.
Often heroes grow spiritually they make distilled rules to guide the society to improve… Generally they’re pretty reasonable (in the context of the original period)
But then sometimes a more temporary spiritual leader decides they don’t like something - clearly it’s unnatural and unaligned with the truth of existence because they really hate it… So obviously it’s the will of the creator, and it gets tacked on to the guiding code.
And several hundred years later, once the religion has gained institutional power in a much larger and more hierarchical society, assholes just add in whatever is convenient. The core message is forgotten, there’s endless stuff tacked on teaching morals or history that can be reinterpreted… Or maybe society just changed, and you have to drop some rules or lose the flock
Tldr: there’s a core message of how to grow spiritually as a person, and a glimpse of something true about the nature of reality (in a very metaphorical, poetic kind of way). The promise of a reason and a goal speaks to everyone… But then they keep going, and bury the original message by teaching all sorts of other junk, often misinterpreted for an agenda centuries ago, in the same tone. Often misinterpreted today for an agenda.
(Side note, all ancient stories are super poetic and metaphorical, even historical ones… They’re probably just more fun and more easily remembered when they’re repeated around the fire for the next generation)
They see reality as too dismal. With faith comes hope. Uncle Roy didn’t die and leave all of his children to suffer. He was called to heaven and God will look after them. You’re not trapped in your dead end job because of lack of aptitude or opportunity or generational life choices, It’s God’s willing if you just pray a little harder and donate a little more to the church everything will come together, and if it doesn’t, The Bible says something about not needing worldly possessions right?
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