When humans first contemplated the beginning of time they didn’t have the knowledge that we have today. These texts were gathered and became the Bible (an example) and now countless people follow it for an unknown reason. That’s like following the directions of creating a fire to cook food when we have stoves and microwaves that will do it in a fraction of the time. It’s nice to make fires for camping etc. although for a daily basis a stove or microwave is the obvious and more efficient answer.
We don’t live on Neptune, a planet that is way too far from our star the sun, to have thriving life. We live on Earth which is the perfect distance from the sun and not too close or it would be too hot and not too far away or it would be too cold.
If you take some mold in a heated place, after awhile you will create maggots, living and moving things.
Life on Earth just happened because of precise positioning. Why does anyone need more than that? Why can’t people just enjoy the time we are given and try to have projects that make one feel accomplished? Why waste so much time in a church or “praying” when nobody was even living when Earth was created?
I feel like many people that are religious are selfish and they desperately want an afterlife like they deserve it. If there was a higher power then this power would be happy enough with the person enjoying their life. The life that was created by this higher power.
It’s like making a Youtube video that someone spends a long time on. Which is actually the case with me. I’m happy if you just enjoy the video and I don’t need you to create massive buildings in my honor and waste half your life complimenting me over and over.
People follow the various religions for all kinds of reasons. One is that they find it hard to believe that this is all there is. Belonging to a like minded group is another powerful factor.
Some might say that this is [insert deity of your choice] work.
They are not being created - they are just moving in.
See above
You may feel that - others might agree or disagree
Religion still exists because a) it’s easier than science, and b) it addresses issues science cannot, such as morality. And c), it’s science: religion is part of our evolution. Some researchers contend that apes practice religion.
To use your campfire versus microwave analogy, I think most people would find it more spiritually uplifting to sit around a campfire than around a microwave, however much more efficient the latter is. That’s one aspect of religion that people value - for all the knowledge that science accrues, religion provides some comfort to people who might otherwise be troubled by this mysterious feeling of consciousness.
I was roped into a Jewish-American Passover celebration recently and came away with the feeling that carrying on the age-old tradition and getting the kids involved (thus drawing the wider family together and reinforcing their religious identity) was more important than the existence of God per se.
There’s something to be said for a set of moral guidelines being imposed by an inarguable divine power - especially when people can be so daft as to not find these rules self-evident for the running of a civilized society.
There’s also a shed-load of money tied up globally in organized religion, which won’t be relinquished any time soon.
And many other reasons.
I say this as a thorough atheist who would prefer the world’s population to get over the old myths, but I appreciate that won’t happen without a rational, yet compelling/heart-warming alternative.
I’ve long viewed organized religion as the social reflection of an individual situation. We have, too many times, used religion as our excuse for nasty things; but we have, as many times or more, used it as a way to create social or architectural structure, transmit wisdom which was known to work (even if the why needed to involve fairies in the sky) or justhavefun.
The meaninglessness you describe is exactly what motivates many people to believe in religion. It gives meaning and purpose to what would otherwise be a cruel and meaningless existence. I suspect many people are also indoctrinated at a young age so that membership in the cult becomes a part of their identity.
Or another way of looking at it: If there is no God, then there is no purpose to life beyond doing what makes us happy and gives our lives meaning. If participation in religion makes them happy, then what difference does it make one way or the other?
I’ve been watching my nephew – who still poops all over himself, because that’s how young he is – get taught religious beliefs as if they were mundane facts.
He’s been given this instruction by folks who were taught religious beliefs as if they were mundane facts – a process which, to the best of my knowledge, began when said folks were likewise still pooping all over themselves.
The people who instructed said folks presumably received that same instruction back when they were still so young and educable as to be pooping all over themselves.
There’s a poop-all-the-way-down explanation, is what I’m saying.
I think this is a big factor, i.e. religion is largely hereditary. If this were not so, then there would not be such a strong correlation between a person’s religion and that of their parents. People have religion carved into their brains by their parents throughout their childhood, before they are old enough o think for themselves, and those beliefs are extremely difficult for most people to let go of once they get older.
Same reason they came into being in the first place. A greedy for-profit priesthood.
Children become “religious” because they are taught to be, by agents of “The Church”, which is human beings who divvy up a handsome tithe.
Religion was created by Shamans, who discovered that it was easier then killing mammoths and they liked the hours, the lavish gifts, and the sacrificed maidens…
This is false. If you introduce flies, after a while you get maggots. See: abiogenesis.
On the topic at hand, religion is mostly still around due to communal reasons in the west. People want to feel part of something greater than themselves. As to Deism, this stems from the simple question: what came first? This perplexity, what was before the big bang, how do things exist in just the perfect way for consciousness to exist (not just on Earth mind you.) Plenty of people, including my SO, believe the forces at play can be called God for lack of a better word… This is simply not a popular opinion at the time and as such many people just go with Christianity.
Personally, I think an inherent fear of the unknown is what brought religion to be and I used to disdain people who believed in “God.” I just substitute the laws of nature for a personal being, a la Baruch Spinoza, and I am at peace with such a rationality.
I’ve been working on a project for Youtube designing a world over several maps using a game editor. I have over a thousand units placed now and in a way I’m a creator of life for this world. All the parts of my maps have a direct purpose for life and I’m not designing massive areas with no detail and are lethal to humans/life.
My point is that this is the case with other planets that are ridiculous in scale and cannot sustain life, so what is the point of them? Why would a higher power spend time creating these planets or the asteroids that would eventually create them, if they would form a planet that wasn’t the right distance from a star? If the space is there then why not allow humans to live there? What is solved without having anyone live there?
That accounts for the creation of churches, not religion. The priesthood exploited the fear of death and the myths the masses comforted themselves with. Religion would still exist without churches.
When people first organized into groups to cooperate as a community, religion was like law - it governed the way you lived your life and how to behave toward others. And if you behaved that way your whole life long, you would be rewarded at the end of it. Gods and devils, heaven and hell were added so people would think they were always being watched, and their behavior decided reward or punishment.
Today people still want that reward, regardless of data, facts, etc.
Landscape, until something else. Part of the machinery which keeps Earth in the sweet spot for its current life forms.
Why not?
Why do you think humans are the only life form around? Why assume that there is no life in any of those planets, or that, same as there are other Earth-like planets we might be able to live on, there are no species out there which would be perfectly capable of living in Jupiter or Venus?
And, hey, if they must have a homocentric purpose, why not as a challenge? There are no humans there now but there may be at some point. Antartica didn’t have human beings a few decades ago and still isn’t what you’d call hospitable, but it’s inhabited.
Note that this isn’t even any part of my religious beliefs, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to come up with responses.
In The West, over time, we’re seeing people depart from organized religion, but still maintaining some religious beliefs. This is happening faster in Europe than in the US, but it is happening in the US despite the amount of “noise” made by those still part of organized religion. Religion is part of every culture and so obviously serves some purpose. It’s hard to say for sure what that purpose is in a modern, industrialized country like the US, but it’s probably that many people find it unsettling to think that life does not have a purpose or that when we die, that’s it. Science simply does not answer the “why” questions, and so religion or philosophy fills that void.