Religion is a WANT, not a Need...

[xkatz]

xKatz- cars are a great convenience, yes... but they are NOT necessary for our continued survival either as an individual or an entire race at all.
We have many luxuries and qualities in today's society that we may consider vital, but that does not necessarily make it so... a drama queen may "need" her coffee and a cigarette in the morning before work, but does she really NEED those amenities to survive? Not in the least!

But the difference between a car and coffee & a cigarette is that a car makes our lives easier and allows people to get farther in life. Most things are not necessary indeed, but they have major benefits. By having these things, we are progressing, which is just as important as survival, since progress helps improve survival.

 

[idea]

why is it that some people feel a need to worship a deity?

-“They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for” -
Victor E. Frankl

He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

Facts from the Korean war:

1. At the beginning of the American’s imprisonment, the Chinese communists screened out all soldiers with leadership qualities and kept them apart from the rest. These included anyone with overt religious faith, anyone who showed poisonous individualism.” When only 5 percent of the Americans had been segregated from the rest, there was no leadership left among the remaining 95 percent.

2. One of every three American prisoners in Korea was guilty of some kind of collaboration with the enemy-was willing to make a deal. This, in spite of the fact that torture was virtually nonexistent; nor were drugs, hypnotism, or magic used by the Communists, according to Army psychiatrists. There seems to have been little about the so-called “brainwashing” that could not have been successfully resisted by any man who had strong personal convictions and who wanted to resist.

3. Among our prisoners there was not one permanent escape from the prison camps. This has never happened before in any war in American history. The reason appears to have been in the will of the men themselves, for there were only six armed guards to every five hundred to six hundred Americans; no guard dogs; no machine-gun towers; no electric fences or searchlights. By contrast, in order to guard the Chinese communists we took prisoner, we were eventually forced to keep three fully armed Airborne regiments, that is, a total of fifteen to eighteen thousand men, away from the front.

4. American prisoners had the highest death rate of any war in our history-including the American Revolution. About 38 percent of the prisoners died. This was not because of starvation or epidemics or any mass executions. Rather, most of the men died from a psychological disease for which the Medical Corpse had no name. The soldiers themselves called it “give-up-it is.” It happened to the boy who was dependent and homesick, the boy who brooded, the boy who had no beliefs on which to cling. He would crawl into a corner by himself, pull a blanket over his head, and turn his face to the wall. He was making the most profound of all human surrenders. Often within forty-eight hours he was dead.

The conclusion of the Army’s study was that these boys had few inner resources that could give them the courage to rise above these obstacles.

- from a speech made by Major William Meyer, Army Medical corps, in san Francisco in 1958. This material has now been declassified by the department of Defense.

so, you can live without religion if things are going easy... but if you have things to overcome? you are going to need something more than just a casual belief...

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for Meaning.

So, what Meaning have you found in your lives? What do you think is worth Living and Dieing for? if you don't have something worth living for then...

When you could live for God, something eternal, lasting, loving, kind... everything else is sort of meaningless / temporary to live for...

 

[ChristineES]

Like any drug, religion can cause euphoric sensations... but that does not make it absolutely necessary. There are plenty of people in the world who live out
their entire lives without any religious beliefs... and most religious peoples' beliefs aren't very strong anyway. (sure, you have your bible
thumpers out there, but alot of people just go to church one day a week and spend the other six days on sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll! lol) so why is it
that some people feel a need to worship a deity? Like Einstein once said, "It should suffice to stand in awe at a beautiful garden without having to
believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it." I guess I just don't understand why people have such a strong aversion to an outlook on life
alone, yet believe in such outlandish and illogical teachings and parables on the blind ignorance of faith.

...I guess the main point of my post is just that it seems disturbing just how much reverence society puts on religion... I mean even in basic combat training
(where you are supposed to be stripped down of all who you are to be built back up into a soldier) they respect religious practices to the point of
allowing Catholics to attend morning chow two hours early on Sundays so that they may attend mass. (trust me, I know cause I used to tick of a couple of Catholics
off when I would get in line for early chow with them, but then not go to mass... plus they eventually figured out that my dog-tags read, "Other" instead of "catholic" lol) They are even allowed access to specially prepared Kosher meals and can even wear a religious trinket around the neck WHILE IN UNIFORM! I mean if that's not outrageous, I don't see how anything I did on Sunday morning while in basic was! lol

It may not be a need for you, but it is a need for others- including me. My faith is a big part of my life. Some people do have a need to go to Church. I was in the Navy for nearly 7 years and no one ever berated someone for wanting to go Church services. And it is not just Christians, Jews, and Muslims who have a need for their faith, but others as well. If you don't want to go to Church services, don't go; if you want others to respect your "non-faith" then maybe you should respect the fact that others do have faith and it is very, very important to them.

 

[Armymike6174]

I was in the Navy for nearly 7 years and no one ever berated someone for wanting to go Church services.

I truly apologize if you felt that I 'berated' you :thud: as that was not my intention AT ALL

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

so, you can live without religion if things are going easy... but if you have things to overcome? you are going to need something more than just a casual belief...

What makes you think that a person who doesn't believe in God necessarily only has "casual belief"? Religion hasn't cornered the market on importance.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for Meaning.

So, what Meaning have you found in your lives? What do you think is worth Living and Dieing for? if you don't have something worth living for then...

When you could live for God, something eternal, lasting, loving, kind... everything else is sort of meaningless / temporary to live for...

What exactly do you mean by "living for God"? How would it be possible for a limited mortal being to live "for God"? What possible help can you be to an all-powerful deity?

There are plenty of good reasons all around us for us to live... and to die, if necessary. Anyone who thinks that God is the only possible reason to live or die needs to look around a bit more, IMO.

 

[ChristineES]

I truly apologize if you felt that I 'berated' you :thud: as that was not my intention AT ALL

Don't worry, you didn't.

 

[Levite]

I understand what you're getting at, Levite... but in your own words, "without judaism, I would feel at sea... frusterated" ...but you would still survive. A life-long NEED is something you MUST have to survive; Air, Food, Water, Radiating Thermal Energy... you get the idea. lol
Religion may SEEM to be a need, but so does Heroin to a junkie... does that mean that hard drugs are a necessity to survive life? Not at all! lol

You should read a very good book called Man's Search For Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a psychiatrist in prewar Germany, who studied with Jung and other early greats; even before the war, he had begun inventing a new branch of psychotherapy which was eventually called "logotherapy," which helps patients see their progress as creating order out of the chaos in their lives.

During the Shoah (Holocaust), Frankl survived the camps, including Auschwitz. He noticed while there that it was not always those who were better treated or better fed or clothed who survived. Often, he saw, those who survived were those who had reasons to survive; and among all survivors, it was these people who survived comparatively "unbroken." Sometimes their 'reason' was religion, sometimes art, sometimes a determination to see family, sometimes other things...sometimes even a thirst for revenge. But he realized that, as much as food or water or shelter, a basic human need is that for meaning.

After the war, he wove this realization into his work in logotherapy, and became one of the founders of the humanistic psychology movement. His work, which is considered groundbreaking and deeply important to humanistic psychology, demonstrates clearly that people need something to give their lives meaning. They require it to survive.

I will be the first to say that this meaning need not be religion. But that doesn't mean it can't be, either. The drive to experience deep meaning, to touch the numinous, to experience something greater than oneself has moved people to tremendous lengths-- as much as any need to survive, and sometimes more so.

 

[Arav]

I understand what you're getting at, Levite... but in your own words, "without judaism, I would feel at sea... frusterated" ...but you would still survive. A life-long NEED is something you MUST have to survive; Air, Food, Water, Radiating Thermal Energy... you get the idea. lol
Religion may SEEM to be a need, but so does Heroin to a junkie... does that mean that hard drugs are a necessity to survive life? Not at all! lol

You seem to be fixated on things that you MUST have, things that you NEED, and are NECESSITIES. Then why do you have a computer, a car, a job, or anything but Food, water, shelter, and the air that you breath?

You are knocking others for their belief in God and saying that they are not needs so they should be dropped when Im sure you have a car, job, a computer and things like that. Im sure when you eat, you choose foods that taste good, not just foods that you need, and on and on.

 

[nonbeliever_92]

Honestly, I don't believe that I'm being too restrictive at all. When describing a need, it is describing something absolutely necessary... If you wanted to relax these limitations, you could say that one "needs" a brightly colored beach-ball to feel happy... or a designer 'needs' a model to display their clothing line... If you adjust the stipulations, you can argue that you "Need" anything you "Want"... but NONE of that is necessary for absolute survival.
So to define "NEED" at its most basic quality is to ONLY refer to it as what you cannot continue on (perish) without.

Man 'needs' to be functional to survive no? If a belief in a higher power lends to someone's ability to function, then doesn't it follow that that belief counts as a necessity?

 

[darkendless]

Need is a strong word. Its like "i think i'm going to fall asleep in class today i {need} a red bull." Truthfully i will be ok without it but i will get it anyway because i've convinced myself i need i. Same with religion really.

 

[idea]

You should read a very good book called Man's Search For Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. ...I will be the first to say that this meaning need not be religion. But that doesn't mean it can't be, either. The drive to experience deep meaning, to touch the numinous, to experience something greater than oneself has moved people to tremendous lengths-- as much as any need to survive, and sometimes more so.

A great book... I quoted from him too - see post #22 above

of all the things out there, relig seems to be give life the most meaning...

you could live for cars (they rust away), houses (they are temporary too), live to cure cancer (they will still die of something, just not cancer), ... you can live for others - humanitarian work, for your family - those are getting closer to having real meaning... God is the only thing that allows it all to be eternal, to last... if you want to experience something greater than oneself, God is the biggest greatest being out there, nothing tops Him.... so yes, other things can provide meaning, you can live for other things, but they all pale in comparison.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

A great book... I quoted from him too - see post #22 above

of all the things out there, relig seems to be give life the most meaning...

you could live for cars (they rust away), houses (they are temporary too), live to cure cancer (they will still die of something, just not cancer), ... you can live for others - humanitarian work, for your family - those are getting closer to having real meaning... God is the only thing that allows it all to be eternal, to last... if you want to experience something greater than oneself, God is the biggest greatest being out there, nothing tops Him.... so yes, other things can provide meaning, you can live for other things, but they all pale in comparison.

If you live for cars, you may end up with a few restored classics... even if they do rust away eventually. If you live for houses, you'll have them... even though they'll eventually disappear as well. If you cure cancer, you will give many people years of valuable life that they would not have otherwise had. If you live for humanitarian work or your family, your deeds will live on in the lives of the people you touch... even if the memory of what you did dies out as civilization finally disappears.

Now... if you give your live to God, what will you have to show for it? How will things be different because of you? Will God be better in any way whatsoever because of your commitment than he would have been otherwise?

You rightly point out that physical things are temporary and therefore can only give temporary meaning to one's life, but it seems to me that God doesn't give any meaning at all. Personally, I'll choose temporary meaning over no meaning.

But in all seriousness, this is something I've never understood: when you say that God gives your life meaning, in what way do you think he does so?

 

[Storm]

If you live for cars, you may end up with a few restored classics... even if they do rust away eventually. If you live for houses, you'll have them... even though they'll eventually disappear as well. If you cure cancer, you will give many people years of valuable life that they would not have otherwise had. If you live for humanitarian work or your family, your deeds will live on in the lives of the people you touch... even if the memory of what you did dies out as civilization finally disappears.

Now... if you give your live to God, what will you have to show for it? How will things be different because of you? Will God be better in any way whatsoever because of your commitment than he would have been otherwise?

You rightly point out that physical things are temporary and therefore can only give temporary meaning to one's life, but it seems to me that God doesn't give any meaning at all. Personally, I'll choose temporary meaning over no meaning.

But in all seriousness, this is something I've never understood: when you say that God gives your life meaning, in what way do you think he does so?

Serenity, enlightenment, compassion, love... nothing of import.

 

[Tathagata]

Serenity, enlightenment, compassion, love... nothing of import.

Except none of these require God. In fact, I'd say these things are more meaningful without God.



.

 

[Storm]

Except none of these require God.

So what? He asked what one might get out of religion, I answered.

In fact, I'd say these things are more meaningful without God.

Of course you would.

 

[fallingblood]

Except none of these require God. In fact, I'd say these things are more meaningful without God.



.

But that would be an opinion.

Those things may not require God for you, but that doesn't mean that is the same for the next person.

 

[Thesavorofpan]

Religion can be a need. For some people it's the only way they can function correctly in society.

 

[EverChanging]

Like any drug, religion can cause euphoric sensations... but that does not make it absolutely necessary. There are plenty of people in the world who live out
their entire lives without any religious beliefs... and most religious peoples' beliefs aren't very strong anyway. (sure, you have your bible
thumpers out there, but alot of people just go to church one day a week and spend the other six days on sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll! lol) so why is it
that some people feel a need to worship a deity? Like Einstein once said, "It should suffice to stand in awe at a beautiful garden without having to
believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it." I guess I just don't understand why people have such a strong aversion to an outlook on life
alone, yet believe in such outlandish and illogical teachings and parabels on the blind ignorance of faith.

First of all, your view of religion is quite narrow. Religious people have a very wide variety of beliefs. Some religious people are atheists, some are theists. I don't believe in supernatural deities (thus the use of the title "atheist,") but a deity is sometimes a metaphor. Some religious people believe in supernatural stories and realities. Others look to stories for meaning without necessarily believing in their literal factuality.

Your definition of the word "need" is too narrow. I don't need shelter under your definition, but it's pretty dam* important if you ask me.

I use religious mythology and theology to give words to human yearnings, expressions, and insights. I also use ritual to give order to my life. I use mantra-like prayers and meditation to stabilize myself. I have extreme mood swings and other symptoms that can make life difficult and use medication to help control those symptoms, but without medication, I might very well be driven to suicide when not in my right mind. That's a need. To go on further, my religiosity has helped me forge bonds with other people who have been influential and important in my life, including for my mental health. (People can also be driven to suicide without affection and love -- thus a need for friends.) The time I give myself for prayer, meditation, reflection, and ritual have a deeply soothing and calming effect on me, often to the point of inducing a very calm and quiet euphoria. It helps with my depression, mood swings, and other symptoms very, very much, and reflecting on this, I've noticed that I was much more unstable without the order, meaning, and serenity my ritualistic behaviors and time for meditation and reflection give me. In helping me cope with these symptoms, in giving me meaning, perspective, and a positive way to deal with anxiety and other problems, in giving me social connections, by inspiring beauty and optimism within me, I have found a way to cope without being driven into despair which had in the past led me very close to suicide.

Now is religion, ritual, prayer, and meditation the only thing in my life that has helped me to cope? No. Is it the only place that I've found beauty, love, optimism, and stability? No. But it is an extremely important contribution to those things because I am inherently religious and always have been, even as a child, before I had been exposed to much religion at all. The first religious ritual I performed was in childhood, an offering of a shell, buried in the earth, when I had never heard of such a thing. It is instinctual to me.

Because religiosity is intrinsic to who I am, even from my early childhood without having been brought up in a religious household and because of the way the rituals, prayers, and meditation I have crafted and utilized have contributed greatly to my stability and thus led me away from suicide-inducing despair, it is, indeed, a need for me, even if it is not a need for everyone.

It has been shown that religiosity is contributed to in least at part by a persons genes. It has also been shown that various types of prayer and meditation can be helpful in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, so I am not the only one.

The articles I've linked may be interesting to you.

...I guess the main point of my post is just that it seems disturbing just how much reverence society puts on religion...

It is disturbing when the barriers between religions and civil government are compromised, as they so often are in the United States and even worse elsewhere.

I mean even in basic combat training
(where you are supposed to be stripped down of all who you are to be built back up into a soldier) they respect religious practices to the point of
allowing catholics to attend morning chow two hours early on sundays so that they may attend mass. (trust me, I know cause I used to tick of a couple of catholics
off when I would get in line for early chow with them, but then not go to mass... plus they eventually figured out that my dog-tags read, "Other" instead of "catholic" lol)

I don't agree that soldiers should have to wear religious labels (especially since "atheist" is not acceptable), but I don't see the problem at all with letting Catholics attend mass.

They are even allowed access to specially prepared Kosher meals and can even wear a religious trinket around the neck WHILE IN UNIFORM! I mean if that's not outrageous, I don't see how anything I did on sunday morning while in basic was! lol

How is it outrageous?

Twin Research Links Genetics and Adult Spirituality - ABC News

Meditation Provides Hope For People With Depression

Effect of rosary prayer and yoga mantras on autonomic cardiovascular rhythms: comparative study -- Bernardi et al. 323 (7327): 1446 -- BMJ

 

[Jeremiah]

A great book... I quoted from him too - see post #22 above

of all the things out there, relig seems to be give life the most meaning...

you could live for cars (they rust away), houses (they are temporary too), live to cure cancer (they will still die of something, just not cancer), ... you can live for others - humanitarian work, for your family - those are getting closer to having real meaning... God is the only thing that allows it all to be eternal, to last... if you want to experience something greater than oneself, God is the biggest greatest being out there, nothing tops Him.... so yes, other things can provide meaning, you can live for other things, but they all pale in comparison.

Your idea of "most meaning" sounds like an out of control ego. It's not good enough unless it is "eternal" or unless it is the "biggest" and the "greatest". I also like how you put this materialistic passion for "god" over family and humanity.

 

[EverChanging]

Your idea of "most meaning" sounds like an out of control ego. It's not good enough unless it is "eternal" or unless it is the "biggest" and the "greatest". I also like how you put this materialistic passion for "god" over family and humanity.

I, too, am unable to understand this fetish with the "biggest" and "greatest" nor am I able to understand how religion should come before family and humanity -- shouldn't that be a part of religion?

When I feel that which is holy, there are no words for it. Biggest? Greatest? Those words are meaningless at best or an outright distortion of it at worst. There is no comparison, greater or smaller. Everything is one. Eternity is now.