You hit the nail on the head. A lot of people are just scared by the chaos and meaninglessness of life and death. It is terrifying to know that everyone you know and love is going to die and be forgotten, eventually, including yourself. Everything that has meaning to you has an expiration date, and a lot of people have trouble accepting that. So they hold on to illogical fairy tales of eternal life in paradise to deal with the existential dread.
This is such a complicated question because it gets into the origins of religion and belief systems in general, but also power and class struggles, economics, social psychology and propaganda, and more.
Lots of people haven’t been properly educated Lots of people have been indoctrinated Lots of people have a reason to exploit the beliefs of others Lots of people value comfort and community above scientific accuracy or consistency
I have to imagine you’re not an American, because yeah, millions of Americans legitimately want to ignore science completely. They’re pretty loud about it too.
Adding to this comment: Science is fundamentally agnostic. You can even go so far as to say that the existence of God or a higher power is the one question which is forever doomed to be unanswerable by science and logic, almost by definition of God.
Of course, specific parts of the mythos of specific religions can and have been contradicted by science. But the main question of whether or not a higher power exists remains and will forever remain unanswerable.
It’s funny how it works one way and not the other. If we had even a hint of positive evidence for God you would never stop hearing about it. But since we don’t we are told that we have to pretend this is outside our knowledge. Heads I win, tails you lose.
They are irreconcilable. People who try to merge the two are using double-think also known as cognitive dissonance. I know, I did it for years.
Religions make claims and the evidence more often than not doesnt support the claims being true. You are free to try to square the circle, but you will fail. And the extent of your failure will be the effort you put in.
Just to poke at Buddhism. Sidrattha made claims about the geography of the world, those are not true and we have lots of good data backing up a round world. He made claims about rebirth and the soul which logically contradict each other.
Good idea, maybe using some sort of widely-available service in a section where “ask” is part of the name. Might not reach every demographic equally but it’s easier and less expensive than hiring an army to conduct door-to-door surveys.
When I was a kid I could not understand how that line was meant to be peaceful. Even listening to the rest of the song, it was still unsettling. I was raised Catholic so the song just starts with like “imagine the worst case scenario”. As an atheist now, it’s more hopeful to me. Like imagine what the world could be like if we weren’t just biding time until we were dead. If we all just knew this was the one chance one opportunity mom’s spaghetti.
I mean… the first thesis statement in capitalism is “there is a scarcity of resources” and that dominates our lives. Yet, not when we think of life itself.
This is more relevant than most people realise. There is seemingly an increase in religion the older you get. As you said, fear of death and the comfort of something still to come.
It’s not about what an individual could know, it’s about what they do know and how structured is a person’s thinking.
So just because out there somewhere there are tons of explanations for tons of things doesn’t mean people actually know them (lots if not most is quite obscure or requires understanding of a lot of other things first before you can trully understand those things) plus people have to think in very structure ways to spot gaps or flaws in what they thing they know and go look for better info.
And this is just the Logic level problem.
The Emotional level stuff is way more important. Religion:
provides easy non-scary explanations for tons of things which can be terrifying to accept as just random (Massive Earthquake, killing hundreds of thousands: “It’s the will of Deity” is a calming explanation which implies “someDeity” has control)
provides hope for one’s and one’s loved one’s future (Granny died: “She’s gone to Heaven!”)
makes the World seem so much simpler and hence understandeable for anybody by explaining away all complexity (All those lights in the night-sky: “There was a fight between the SunGod and the MoonGod during which his rays pierced the black veil that surrounds us”).
for those born into it, it’s just familiar and “the way people think”.
And last but not least, Religion is a ready made tribe, generally mutually supporting, so it satisfies people’s lowest tribalist instincts and provides concrete benefits from being part of a social circle from which you can get help.
This also explains why supposedly Religious people are selective in what they believe from their religion (notice how almost none of Christians take to hearth the whole point of Christ casting out the Money Lenders from the Temple), why they don’t actually know all that much detail about their own Religion (if they don’t think in a way that helps them spot what they do not know, that gets reflected on not looking for more info both outside and inside religion) and why it’s so easy to manipulate people with religion (if the complexity of the world is explained as “blady, blady, blah, Deity”, those trusted to understand the Deity can make sure pretty much all complex things get reasoned as “Deity wills it so because my bullshit reason” - plus remember, religious types are the non-structured non-skeptic thinkers).
Eh…it’s easier than that. You know what you’re told growing up.
Kids who are abused think that’s normal. Kids who are abused with religion also think that’s normal.
Kind of like how your dad’s fav sports team is your fav too cuz reasons. If your dad was Muslim you probably will be too.
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.
I think that there is a place in the human brain that is responsible for ‘spirituality’. Attempts at stimulating it can produce deep religious thoughts en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
Maybe it evolved as a buffer to store random ideas we couldn’t comprehend. Maybe as a social creator we need a section of our brain to produce spiritual ideas, to help with social cohesion?
IMHO, an easier explanation is that complexity, chaos and the unknown are scary, very very scary.
Things are a lot less scary and a lot more simple if all complexity is explained away by Deity, nothing important is random but rather controlled by said Deity and the unknown is replaced by some fable around Deity.
A mother losing her child in an Earthquake is easier to handle at an emotional level if “It was the will of God and that child went to Heaven” (which is pretty much what the typical Catholic Priest will say) than having to face it being merelly random bad luck and that young person she loved so much being gone forever. (It’s not by chance that for example Mormons during the period when they’re supposed to go out and preach their religion around the World will look at obituaries to find people to try to convert).
I heard somewhere that spirituality is the easing of suffering. Maybe that was from Mark Manson (Subtle Art, YT channel, etc.).
Something in that statement works for me. I’m not superstitious nor do I hold beliefs in the supernatural. But I do undertake efforts to ease suffering - whether that’s meditation, readings, or reflection.
I think many have a spiritual need. Anxiety, depression, grief, changing moods, and more reveal that need. There’s an emotional (“spiritual”) suffering that we hope or need to salve.
Then I think we overshoot the mark.
It’s easy to want concrete perspectives when the world is dark, unjust, or foreboding. Attempting to meet those need with concrete answers helps feed the rise of religion.
I can’t fault the feeling of needing certainty, but I’d hope we can find ways to ease suffering without the use of delusion or lies.
Having said all of the above, I’m an Atheist. I think in rejecting religion, we have, also, overshot the mark.
People need each other. We need the things and rituals that help us find or move closer to peace. We are emotional, feeling, social animals and we’ve wrapped ourselves in new certainties and - sometimes - self-righteousness.
We need people. We need respect. We need love. We deserve human rights. We, also, need to learn how to transcend some of our injuries so we can navigate more effectively. That can be family, community, or national politics.
I’m not talking about losing boundaries. I’m talking about using them differently. Yesterday was MLK Jr day. He set boundaries, but he didn’t do it in hate or overt shame and anger.
He just did the work that needed to be done with the clearest eyes he could. I hope we, the materialists, can find a realistic perspective that doesn’t over-celebrate reason, and forgets the rest of our experience.
Reason tells us we feel. We hurt. We hurt others. We need something (reality-based) that reminds us to tend to ourselves and our communities.
We need balance.
I’ve wandered some in my response. It helped me to type, maybe it helps someone else, too. Either way, I liked your comment and it spurred thought.
Asking a bunch of non-religious people is nothing but a circle jerk.
People believe in religion for a variety of reasons. I believe in what I believe in because I’ve had personal experiences, and because it gives me a way to be better than I am.
It’s literally their arguments in a nutshell. It’s either Faith or My book says. They can’t have anything else otherwise they’d have produced it over the past 2000 years.
It’s the same people believing in Ghosts. You’re not going to find some Ghost believer Einstein that’ll blow your mind with his reasoning on why he believes in ghosts…
I’m not religious and you’re constantly misrepresenting or simply reducing the reasons why people have faith. That way it’s easier for you to attack them. That’s what a strawman is.
Religion is an alive feature of humanity and what was consensus in e.g. christian faith 400 years ago has been replaced within the church and the faith of the individual believers. Religion isn’t about “proof of existence” anymore, since it stopped being about answering questions that have been answered by science in the meantime.
Contemporary religion is about philosophy and ethics. Claiming that religion can’t answer questions it’s not trying to answer doesn’t proove that religion is moot.
It’s like someone asking why some people like coffee and you can’t understand why people like coffee, because if you can’t survive on coffee alone. The whole premise is outdated.
I guess you’re thinking about american evangelical lunatics and substitute all of spirituality with them. Christianity (and radical islamism) is some weird, imperialist perversion of faith. Forcing other people to boin your religion, or else is not the only mode, spirituality is expressed in the world.
When you’re speaking in such a condescending manner of religious people when you actually mean evangelical lunatics just makes you seem arrogant and keeps you from actually learning anything about your fellow human beings.
I’m not religious and you’re constantly misrepresenting or simply reducing the reasons why people have faith. That way it’s easier for you to attack them. That’s what a strawman is.
Religion is an alive feature of humanity and what was consensus in e.g. christian faith 400 years ago has been replaced within the church and the faith of the individual believers. Religion isn’t about “proof of existence” anymore, since it stopped being about answering questions that have been answered by science in the meantime.
Contemporary religion is about philosophy and ethics. Claiming that religion can’t answer questions it’s not trying to answer doesn’t proove that religion is moot.
It’s like someone asking why some people like coffee and you can’t understand why people like coffee, because if you can’t survive on coffee alone. The whole premise is outdated.
I guess you’re thinking about american evangelical lunatics and substitute all of spirituality with them. Christianity (and radical islamism) is some weird, imperialist perversion of faith. Forcing other people to boin your religion, or else is not the only mode, spirituality is expressed in the world.
When you’re speaking in such a condescending manner of religious people when you actually mean evangelical lunatics just makes you seem arrogant and keeps you from actually learning anything about your fellow human beings.
That’s a very long post, to say “I have no proof…”
I’m not religious and you’re constantly misrepresenting or simply reducing the reasons why people have faith. That way it’s easier for you to attack them. That’s what a strawman is.
I reiterate. If what I’m claiming their reasons are is wrong, give me the reasoning that they are using that I am missing. Stop telling me I’m wrong and show that I am wrong by providing a reason to believe in God that’s not faith or the Bible says.
Religion is an alive feature of humanity and what was consensus in e.g. christian faith 400 years ago has been replaced within the church and the faith of the individual believers. Religion isn’t about “proof of existence” anymore, since it stopped being about answering questions that have been answered by science in the meantime.
This is irrelevant to the discussion and also just your personal opinion.
Contemporary religion is about philosophy and ethics. Claiming that religion can’t answer questions it’s not trying to answer doesn’t proove that religion is moot.
Yea, pretty sure the majority of religious people are going to disagree with you. Religious believers believe in a God and a supernatural realm. What you are saying is simply wrong for the majority of religious followers.
It’s like someone asking why some people like coffee and you can’t understand why people like coffee, because if you can’t survive on coffee alone. The whole premise is outdated.
Horrific analogy. Coffee is real and we can both touch and taste it. Also, coffee doesn’t command us to stone gays or see women as second class citizens. Just horrific analogy.
I guess you’re thinking about american evangelical lunatics and substitute all of spirituality with them. Christianity (and radical islamism) is some weird, imperialist perversion of faith. Forcing other people to boin your religion, or else is not the only mode, spirituality is expressed in the world.
I’m not talking about any religion in particular. They all share the same tenants that I’m attacking here. Belief without good reason.
When you’re speaking in such a condescending manner of religious people when you actually mean evangelical lunatics just makes you seem arrogant and keeps you from actually learning anything about your fellow human beings.
For some reason you feel that me speaking the truth and demanding evidence for religious belief is condescending. When you claim to have all the answers via your imaginary friend and you seek to impose your views on others, I’m going to call you out on it.
This will be my last reply unless your next reply actually provides evidence, as demanded at the beginning of this thread. Otherwise have a great day.
That’s a very long post, to say “I have no proof…”
Yeah. I rejected your command and didnt aim to proof anything.
This is irrelevant to the discussion and also just your personal opinion.
Umm… No, it’s neither? I was explaining how you’re asking the wrong question which religion doesn’t aim to answer.
by providing a reason to believe in God that’s not faith or the Bible says.
I can’t. It’s faith. Faith is the reason to believe in a god. Never claimed anything different.
What you are saying is simply wrong for the majority of religious followers.
You’re just pulling stuff out of your ass that you can’t possibly have any data to. I’ve had productive discussions with people who studied theology.
Horrific analogy. Coffee is real and we can both touch and taste it. Also, coffee doesn’t command us to stone gays or see women as second class citizens. Just horrific analogy.
Yeah, didn’t think that you’d get it, tbh. I was trying to explain that you’re making a cathegorical error by demanding proof of a god. Separate your domains of inquire, my dude.
I’m not talking about any religion in particular. They all share the same tenants that I’m attacking here. Belief without good reason.
Bullshit. You’re dunking on abrahamic religions (“stone gays”) and use these to extrapolate to any religion. You have no idea about paganism, buddhism, sikh, shintoism, etc.
For some reason you feel that me speaking the truth and demanding evidence for religious belief is condescending.
What is the “truth” you’re supposedly speaking? That there is no scientific proof that something supernatural exists? Wow. What a well of wisdom you are. Did you know that you can be a secular buddhist?
When you claim to have all the answers via your imaginary friend and you seek to impose your views on others, I’m going to call you out on it.
You’re confusing christianity (and maybe islam) with every other religion again. Judaism doesn’t have missionaries. Neither do hundreds of other religions.
This will be my last reply unless your next reply actually provides evidence, as demanded at the beginning of this thread. Otherwise have a great day.
I’m not religious and you’re constantly misrepresenting or simply reducing the reasons why people have faith. That way it’s easier for you to attack them. That’s what a strawman is.
Religion is an alive feature of humanity and what was consensus in e.g. christian faith 400 years ago has been replaced within the church and the faith of the individual believers. Religion isn’t about “proof of existence” anymore, since it stopped being about answering questions that have been answered by science in the meantime.
Contemporary religion is about philosophy and ethics. Claiming that religion can’t answer questions it’s not trying to answer doesn’t proove that religion is moot.
It’s like someone asking why some people like coffee and you can’t understand why people like coffee, because if you can’t survive on coffee alone. The whole premise is outdated.
I guess you’re thinking about american evangelical lunatics and substitute all of spirituality with them. Christianity (and radical islamism) is some weird, imperialist perversion of faith. Forcing other people to boin your religion, or else is not the only mode, spirituality is expressed in the world.
When you’re speaking in such a condescending manner of religious people when you actually mean evangelical lunatics just makes you seem arrogant and keeps you from actually learning anything about your fellow human beings.
Having welcomed into my home and talked to quite a number of people preaching door to door (and having even participated in an organised discussion between Physics Degree pupils and a preacher of some Baptist church) I can confirm it’s invariably a logic chain that is either circular or ends up in some supposedly “truth” about which there can be no questioning (aka an axiom) the most basic one being “it says so in the Bible”.
Either that or it’s some poor old ladies who really can’t string much of a logic chain of though (it’s pretty much direct to “it says so in this book”).
And it’s all perfectly acceptable in one’s Personal Sphere. It’s just not an actual argument to justify anything outside the Theological and Personal Spheres, such as, for example, having the Law impose one’s Morality on others or having one’s country managed in one way rather than a different way.
For me Religion is absolutelly fine as long as it stops at the boundary of the religious person’s life and choices, and does not go into shaping other people’s life and choices: believers can feel free to try and convert others so that they shape their own life and choices the same way, just not to force their own morality on others.
You are confusing reasons with proof. Most believe because they choose to. Because believing in God gives them meaning and purpose, and a drive to be better, to do better. And because they have had personal experiences that lead them towards belief.
The proof for them is in the effects that faith has had on them. “By their fruits” and all that. Not far different to the “proofs” of dark matter.
Though it’s very ironic that you stereotype people of faith, and think I’m the one who needs to meet more of them.
Alright, so I was right you have nothing other than “faith”.
I am asking you to provide any evidence for God that I can independently verify.
Faith or how things make you feel are irrelevant. There are people who believe in Goku and like how it makes them feel when they are shooting Kamehamehas… That doesn’t make it real.
You jumped into this conversation train unprepared. I’ve been arguing, reading, discussing and debating religion for decades. I’ve seen it all. God has been shrinking for the past 2000 years.
I’m not even going to touch your dark matter comment because you are also incredibly ignorant on that subject given that you have referenced it in this context.
I never tried to prove God to you. Trying to prove the existence of God is a foolish undertaking. I, quite frankly, don’t care what you believe. I’ve only tried to point out to you that people have plenty of reasons to believe in God that science can’t provide.
You making ignorant ad hominem attacks doesn’t make your bigotry any less transparent. It’s only a comment on you that you’ve ostensibly spent so much time discussing things that are close to people’s hearts without developing a shred of empathy or understanding.
You don’t get to force me into the discussion you want to have by trying to bully me. Your opinion isn’t going to bait me. I’m comfortable with having made the point I wanted to make.
Fair enough, so you also are unable to provide any reason. You seem to think that getting angry and insulting me will somehow magically count as having made a point on the original topic.
No worries, I didn’t expect you to be able to provide anything, because better people than you have tried and failed over the last 2 millenia.
It’s a source of comfort. People want to be in control. If they can’t be in control, they at least want to feel like someone or something is in control. That there is some organizing force or principle to the universe. Religion, astrology, conspiracism etc all flow from that impulse.
Religion is founded on belief, and belief allows people to feel certainty about things they’re ultimately uncertain about. As long is there is something that someone doesn’t fully understand, religion and god are a solution to bridge the gap.
When you are that person, the leap to a god is fairly logical and easy to them, since at a base level, it’s born out of a desire for someone to be in charge and in control. You understand some of the world around you. To understand it more fully, you just need a bigger, stronger, smarter version of yourself. That’s why in most religions, a god is not some transcendent, immortal, eternal, all powerful being. They’re just essentially Human+. There are way more religions with gods like Zeus than Allah. Saying that nobody is in charge, and nobody fully understands anything, and that’s all OK makes billions of people uncomfortable. And, screaming at them that they’re wrong and need to be more OK with some existential dread usually just serves to make them more uncomfortable.
human brain just wants patterns and will create it to satisfy itself. religion does not run counter to human knowledge, they’re the same process really.
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.
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?
If you take the most extreme form, they just shelter their children and brainwash them to the point where denial of God’s existence is associated with fear of hell.
For the rest, confirmation bias, especially thanks to the shitty tool like Google search that reinforce it. Or they make their God untouchable by definition through philosophical arguments.
They feel the same way about you not believing considering all the self-evident miracles they see everyday on their feed.
Add comment