Ask Lemmy

Religion has two purposes.

1. Coping mechanism for those who can't fathom death

2. How to not be a dick for those who don't have empathy

In either case a mental health structure for the damaged

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.

I mean, in this day and age why isn't [insert what I know to be true] accepted by [everyone who I perceive to be wrong]. Hegel leads to another Russian smart man who argues a bunch of it might be due to this idea of perezhivanie; how we make sense of what is happening (particularly dramatic events) through our cognition, our emotions and filtered through our needs.

How we make sense of stuff leads to how we behave/believe. This is impacted by our social environment, how we are brought up, our experiences, and our reasoning of those experiences.

It's why it is argued that information alone will never change someone's mind about something, it needs to be attached to an emotion and an experience to unpack.

For me, religion at its essence is about the fear of death.

Many people cannot process the idea that one day, they will just...end.

Religion is there to give a comforting notion that their existence will continue.

Not really to answer your questions. But a book came out a year ago and it covers the philosophy of simulation theory.

That is it explains the theory that our reality may be a simulation inside of a computer, and then re-establishes all major philosophical ideas from this premise. Ironically enough, a lot of philosophical ideas it arrives at are very similar to those proposed by religious philosophers.

The book is called Reality +. Good read if you like philosophy and think simulation theory is interesting.

Tradition and support in major life events. A lot of people who only go to churches for weddings, baptisms and funerals.

Why do you think it is the year 2024? (Same answer as your question.)

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.

People as a whole can be swayed to be believe anything. If there can be flat earthers, religion is way easier.

Feelings are a powerful force. It makes people feel good, why would they stop?

Especially among the uneducated, peer pressure and fear of the unknown.

I think part of it has to do with how we cope with death. Almost all religions are centered around what happens when we die. Whether it's reincarnation or an afterlife, most believe that there's something beyond. I think that to a certain extent we're predisposed to have this mindset.

There are lots of reasons. Some people want answers for questions that we don't have scientific answers for yet, or that science can't possibly answer.

Some people want to use a framework to justify their behavior.

Some people are scared or disgusted by the implications of our knowledge, and they want it to be something different.

Some people want to manipulate others.

There are many religions because there are many reason why they exist.

It's a lot easier to deal with a God that may or may not exist.. than deal with humans.

Fear of death.

That's it.

The fact that there is nothing after you die is terrifying.

I'm a suicidal atheist (the two aren't connected) and sometimes I think the only thing keeping me alive is the fear of non existence.

Despite increasing knowledge, there is still a lot we don't know. People will always use religion to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Especially the questions, "why is there something rather than nothing?" And "what do you experience when you die", which imo are unknowable (although we've got pretty good evidence for the latter answer being "nothing")

I think more people practice religion than actually believe it. If it improves their lives to live within a set of rules, to have a community, etc. There's plenty we don't know and most people have some sort of "belief" about the unknown, I don't think most people actively believe all the dogma even if they follow the steps.

Because religion fulfills people's emotional needs.

Because learning takes effort.

Why not? It makes sense to me, it carried me through some very difficult times and is a good way to think about how I interact with the world and my moral framework.

People want to belong to something bigger than them. This includes a magical cloudy sky kingdom where you must wear white shrouds, and your whole family is there and not talking about embarrassingly antiquated political views

People need to believe in something. Otherwise life feels meaningless to many.

If you're really interested in an answer and not only trying to dunk on religious people: I'd suggest reading a few philosophical critics of religion. Like Feuerbach and Marx.

Religion always fulfilled a certain function to people. Way back, it was used to answer questions which have been properly answered by science (where does the sun/thunder and lightning come from, etc.). But that's not the whole picture of religion's function in society.

People still have an urge to answer questions science can't/won't answer (what is right and wrong? *why are we here? how should we treat each other?). Religion fulfills the function answering a subset of these questions.

Maybe in a couple hundred years more. Indoctrination is very hard to shake from people.

I've been looking into a tradition for the last few years that died out nearly 1,500 years ago that has me wondering the opposite.

How in the present day with the clear trajectory of science and technology we are currently working on do we not realize this ancient and relatively well known text isn't some mystical mumbo jumbo but is straight up dishing on the nature of our reality?

I think there's a stubbornness of thought that exists among most humans regarding what they think they know about life which blinds both the religious and non-religious.

Anchoring bias is remarkably resilient.