(January 6, 2016 at 11:15 am)jcvamp Wrote: What's your opinion on why people are religious?
I think it's purely emotional. I think people can't cope with the idea of not knowing how the world works, so they cling to some kind of explanation that they can make sense of. They fear death, and can't cope with the idea of not existing in some form. The prospect that their life has no greater meaning is depressing.
I think that's why logic doesn't work. Logic doesn't give a religious person the same comfort that their religion gives them. Their religion is like a warm comforter that tells them they will live on after death. It tells them that there's a higher power who think they're special and has a plan for them.
What do you think?
It is not an "opinion" as to why people are religious. There is a literal real scientific reason as to why humans gap fill. Biological life has evolved to pattern seek, unfortunately, at the same time, because life also had to make quick decisions in fight or flight, it also caused life to make bad guesses.
The antelope on the African plane does not always have time to slow down and assess if the tall swaying grass is mere wind, or a lion stalking it. God belief is literally like walking into a spotless clean glass door. My cat has a ritual where he wipes his paws on the counter before he drinks the water out of his bowl. God belief is no different than convincing the kid in a dark room at a Halloween party that the covered bowl of olives are eyeballs.
Humans were ignorant and scared so when nature hurt them, they falsely assumed that that bigger power had human qualities like them. It is why humans created storm gods, and volcano gods, and still today why modern polytheistic and monotheistic religions still persist, it is lack of understanding of evolutionary psychology. It is also why new agers and even si fi wooers create their own gap filling explanations.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins explains why humans make up god claims. Victor Stenger's "New Atheism" explains that all religions have the same arguments for kind motifs and arguments from wisdom, but he says that should tell humans something. His argument is that our species ability to be cruel or compassionate, is not in our labels, but in evolution itself.
The word for god claims is "anthropomorphism". Projecting human qualities on non human things. God claims and religions exist, not because humans need it, but because of our species flawed perceptions. The dinosaurs didn't pray to Buddha. Cockroaches didn't pray to Allah. Bacteria doesn't pray to Vishnu.
There were no organized religions 200,000 years ago, much less 4 billion years ago, much less 14 billion years ago. This planet's core will burn out of energy and our sun will die as well, and we will go extinct and the universe will continue with no record of our species human invented myths.
Unfortunately when you state that reality, believers stupidly accuse you of not valuing life, being fatalistic. Far from the case. You can go to a movie knowing it will end, but you still go. You go to a music concert knowing it will end, but you still go. You go to a sporting event knowing it will end, but you still go. Life for the realist, skeptic, atheist also has it's ups and downs. We'd simply argue that reality has good and bad in it, but we can do better as a species by not clinging to old myths.
