It's an issue that's been debated on this forum here and there, but I'm not sure if we've ever really addressed this question and had an honest, dedicated discussion about it. From a psychological point of view, it's pretty obvious that, at least in modern times, religion is a way for many individuals to "answer the big questions"... such as:
-Why are we here?
-Did something or someone create us? If not, how are we here?
-Why is there something, rather than nothing?
-Does my life, specifically, have an individual purpose? (slightly different version of the first question)
...so on and so forth. In fact, there plenty of specific Bible verses, if we're speaking in concerns to Christianity, that seem to address at least some of these questions. In fact, entire books have been written about these attempts by Christianity to answer lifes big questions. Not to mention, using the DuckDuckGo search engine (a superior alternative to google, in my opinion), a simple search of "lifes big questions" reveals a multitude of Christian-themed websites with articles centered around the concept of how god and the Bible can help people answer those exact questions.
While this is hardly reason enough to make the sweeping generalization that religion is an attempt to understand the world by any person who considers themselves religious, it's certainly reason enough to believe that religion, for very many people, is an attempt to understand the world.
We see interesting examples of this in ancient Egyptian mythology, with the beliefs being held that Ra, the sun deity, literally sailed across the sky during the day, which was, clearly, an attempt by ancient Egyptian peoples, to make sense of the sun "rising" in the morning, and "setting" at night.
These are only a few ideas here, and I'm just thinking out loud; I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts. Do you guys think that religion was some attempt by ancient peoples to understand the world around them, or something else entirely? Or maybe a combination of things? If religion is a way to understand life's big questions, in modern times, and we have some evidence pointing us to the idea that it served a similar purpose in ancient times, we'd have to come up with some very solid reasons to think that the way humans thought about religion has changed drastically in order to argue that religion wasn't, once upon a time, a way to understand the world.
What do you guys think?
-Why are we here?
-Did something or someone create us? If not, how are we here?
-Why is there something, rather than nothing?
-Does my life, specifically, have an individual purpose? (slightly different version of the first question)
...so on and so forth. In fact, there plenty of specific Bible verses, if we're speaking in concerns to Christianity, that seem to address at least some of these questions. In fact, entire books have been written about these attempts by Christianity to answer lifes big questions. Not to mention, using the DuckDuckGo search engine (a superior alternative to google, in my opinion), a simple search of "lifes big questions" reveals a multitude of Christian-themed websites with articles centered around the concept of how god and the Bible can help people answer those exact questions.
While this is hardly reason enough to make the sweeping generalization that religion is an attempt to understand the world by any person who considers themselves religious, it's certainly reason enough to believe that religion, for very many people, is an attempt to understand the world.
We see interesting examples of this in ancient Egyptian mythology, with the beliefs being held that Ra, the sun deity, literally sailed across the sky during the day, which was, clearly, an attempt by ancient Egyptian peoples, to make sense of the sun "rising" in the morning, and "setting" at night.
These are only a few ideas here, and I'm just thinking out loud; I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts. Do you guys think that religion was some attempt by ancient peoples to understand the world around them, or something else entirely? Or maybe a combination of things? If religion is a way to understand life's big questions, in modern times, and we have some evidence pointing us to the idea that it served a similar purpose in ancient times, we'd have to come up with some very solid reasons to think that the way humans thought about religion has changed drastically in order to argue that religion wasn't, once upon a time, a way to understand the world.
What do you guys think?
If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
