hexortor, 1 year ago

Im not religious, not in the sense that i follow any particular religion.

But it seems to me, analyzing the history of humanity across multiple cultures, that we humans have fundamentally a “spiritual need”, a need to believe into something that is bigger than us, that lies on a superior level of existence.

Call it buddhism, christianity or whatever, but it seems like we need to believe in something like that.

To an extent, i believe it has to do with us being moral animals and having a natural need for justice. We want to believe that justice exists in this world and a religion and its rules is a way to a just world. Because bad people go to hell, or are victims of karma.

So to answer your question. I think we want the world to be fair, because we are moral animals. And believing in religion is a way to believe in a fair world.

The problem with religions is twofold.

One, that across human history the above core element of all religions has been conflated with other foreign elements that have nothing to do with it, like descriptions about the origin of the universe and humans (which is a question of science, not of religion) and rules about how to live your life which have nothing moral about them (and are probably the temporary result of the existing culture within a society). Like forbidding homosexuality, or the idea that women serve a very limited function in society which is limited to taking care of the home and the children.

Usually people have come to accept this because religion is sold as a “complete package” (particularly enforced with rules that you make a bad religious person if you don’t accept it all and with the people close being incentivized to look down on you for not strictly adhering to the religious teachings). That is also why people believe in religion in general (and not just in its moral teachings which actually make sense) in 2024.

The second problem with religion (and here i’m going on a tangent that doesn’t have much to do with the question at hand) is that it usually makes a validity claim for eternity, i.e. religion asserts that its rules and knowledge are valid forever (literally set in stone). This has done more harm than good to our improving of our set of guiding moral principles.

Sorry if this comment is a bit of a mess.