What's your opinion on Liberal Religion?

[emjay]

Right, I think I see what you're saying. Firstly that's the relevant issue for me as a potential Christian but I grant that like you say (or seem to be saying) many Christians would have other reasons for their belief... or have different priorities... but I would still think it would - or should - be a cause of cognitive dissonance; something that would need to be resolved not just suppressed. But I suppose you could just be saying in answer to my question, rather cynically, that it would be little different than other cases of Christianity where you'd think there would be massive amounts of cognitive dissonance, such as a creationist confronting evidence of evolution, but in practice they seem remarkably resistant to it. I have to say, I don't know if that's what you mean or not... you said somewhere else that you're not religious, but you certainly seem to be... ie are you atheist, agnostic, or is 'not religious' just another way of saying 'non-denominational Christian', like Neo?

ETA: I think I further see what you may mean, just in the sense that those sorts of questions might not even be on some people's radar, but I think the same points would still hold in the sense that once there's enough awareness about an issue, it becomes harder to ignore it... even if you were completely ignorant of it beforehand.

Reasons for belief?  I guess, if you're a convert.

Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying here... how it relates to what me and Belacqua were talking about, could you rephrase?

However, around 85% of the world population believe in some kind of god. Why?

First, for most, a specific religion is no more than an accident of birth. One learns and accepts the dominant religion where he/she lives. Religion and our world view are both taught and absorbed without question before the age of seven. They become simply the way things are. As far as I can tell, relatively few people ever seriously question their religious beliefs nor indeed the world view they were taught. Imo, if they did so, there would be vastly more atheists [and far fewer republicans] ..

The other reason is that I think human beings as a species have an urge to the divine. Religion meets some important human needs. Such as comfort in the fear of death, having belief in purpose, order, a sense of community, and control most of all. A sense of belonging to the dominant group can still be a matter of life and death.

 That religion is universal leads me to believe that it has or at least had an evolutionary advantage.  Human behaviour always has purpose. The behaviour may continue long after the purpose has ceased to be. Many folk customs and ritual behaviours seem to have that element.

 As far as I can tell religion always provides a feeling of control  over one's life.  Humans build up a relationship with their gods based on influencing their god. This is done through ritual, ranging from prayer and the mummery of Catholicism to the human sacrifices of the Babylonians and Mesoamerican cultures.  The control may be for say rain or victory over enemies (that's still a biggy)  or to simply pacify the god so he won't destroy them. Religion is always transactional at some level, as far as I can tell.

Also, I'm not sure how the rest of your post relates to what me and Belacqua were talking about?, but it's interesting nonetheless. I would add though that I personally think of religion as the inevitable byproduct of the way our minds work; noticing patterns/regularities in the world, always questioning, and with a tendency to ascribe agency where there is none/anthropomorphize things... so in pre-scientific times/places it's not at all surprising there are so many gods and spirits ascribed to the various regularities of nature, such as the Sun, or that the agency of gods are used to explain unpredictable calamities like storms and famines etc. And where knowledge increases, if it increases, those concepts evolve (I'm especially thinking of the classical philosophy I've been reading of late, thanks to the Aquinas thread, where it's very interesting to see those philosophers straggling the line between polytheism and monotheism, and seeing how their thought evolves on those questions...and it raises interesting questions of how those two ideas relate/depend on/follow each other, if they do). So that's my own take on what it stems from, but granted where I see a bug, the religious most probably see a feature.