Why Does Religion Exist

[stevecanuck]

Consider the possibility that any positive health correlation with religiosity comes from the general trend of religious people shunning and ostracizing people who don't comply with their religion.

Yes, religions can cause such bigotry. Islam certainly does. Did you know that you and I are like lost cattle and dogs with their tongues lolling out?

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Because a religion can be whatever its inventor wants it to be. The vast majority of religious belief does indeed include an afterlife.

No point to any religion, or any religious practice, if all there is: is death with Nothing after death.
Points of difference:
* Afterlife means: being more alive right 'after' death than before death.
* Resurrection means: a future coming back to live life again in the future. There 'is going to be' a resurrection - Acts 24:15

 

[Nakosis]

Perhaps you, Nakosis, demand supportable claims and wish everyone did. There is a lesson in realizing you have been deceived: for example when sweet and trustworthy parents teach you Santa will come down the chimney. What are they teaching you about themselves? That you are a separate person. What they say is not what you think. If it works, and if you get the message then it is a jarring message.

But public colleges and 'High schools' are not teaching children to demand supportable claims. They are also teaching them to trust the teachers, to trust regurgitated information passed down from on high. It is efficient and easy. Part of it is that students are naturally dependent and trusting. A lot of students do trust the teachers and do trust this. Insidiously they can be taught that everything they believe blindly is based upon supportable claims. Many consider themselves to be very credulous and skeptical only because they know someone who is: a trustworthy authority. "I am skeptical, because I have been taught by skeptical people!" It takes work to question things. It takes time. It is not fun. It is not human.

I do not agree with that statement: "We became educated to the point of demanding supportable claims." I cannot see this.

Yes, public education isn't what it should be.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

See above.

IOW you are fine with making a claim, but for some bizarre reason don't seem to understand that this requires you to clarify when asked.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Because a religion can be whatever its inventor wants it to be.

And this contradicts your original point.

The vast majority of religious belief does indeed include an afterlife.

But not all, which flies in the face of your assertion.

 

[stevecanuck]

And this contradicts your original point.

But not all, which flies in the face of your assertion.

Some pretend 'gotchas' are more boring than others. This is one of them.

I never said 'all'. And even if I did, so what? I've already agreed that not all do - only the vast majority.

So, let's give you 2 extra shield powers and move on. I certainly will.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Interesting enough, the preview provided attacks the view provided in the book.
I find myself disagreeing with some of the adaptive ideologies of religion. Yes, religion was very influential in culture.
Doesn't mean we wouldn't have had a culture without it. Just more that is how humanity went about it.

It does I think answer the question why religion was successful. It created a culture which fed back into itself.

Interesting factoid that you may enjoy: in every single one of the gazillion cultures that have existed in the 200,000 years that modern humans have existed, we know of EXACTLY ONE that didn't have religion, and it was not what would be classified as a civilization.

 

[Ignatius A]

Here are a few reasons you may or may not agree with.

1-Religion is a holdover of superstition from a time with limited scientific knowledge that we have since grow out of so it no longer has any value in our lives.

2-Religion is a tool is a tool that was and can be used to control the masses.

3-Religion contains valuable lessons like fables to aid people in their journey through life.

4-Religion is a profound truth that if understood leads one to a correct understanding of reality/the universe.

5-Other. A different reason for why religion exists which doesn't fit into any of the above. Please explain.

Number 1 is silly. Science will supplant religion when science can create something from material not presently in existence. Until then science is the tool.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Actually there’s quite a body of empirical evidence which supports the Standard Model of cosmology, ascribing the beginning of the universe to an event occurring approximately 13.8 billion years ago. And the mathematical model was derived from Einstein’s field equations, independently by Alexander Friedman and George’s Lemaitre. The term Big Bang may not be universally popular among cosmologists, but it remains the standard model because it is supported by evidence, and because that evidence arrived subsequently to the mathematical modelling, confirming predictions made by the theory.

Science cannot tell us why the Big Bang happened, or what came "before" (an odd term to use, as time came into existence with the Big Bang). There are those who think the singularity was simply the universe that had collapsed in on itself, viewing the universe as having a cycle of expansion and collapse.

My personal view is more in line with yours. I'm simply pointing out that science has no answers to this (yet).

 

[PearlSeeker]

Well something created the elements that created the Big Bang that created the universe that created us.

"Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we can no longer speak with any sort of knowledge or confidence as to how — or even whether — the universe itself began. By the very nature of inflation, it wipes out any information that came before the final few moments: where it ended and gave rise to our hot Big Bang. Inflation could have gone on for an eternity, it could have been preceded by some other nonsingular phase, or it could have been preceded by a phase that did emerge from a singularity. Until the day comes where we discover how to extract more information from the universe than presently seems possible, we have no choice but to face our ignorance. The Big Bang still happened a very long time ago, but it wasn’t the beginning we once supposed it to be."

Surprise: the Big Bang isn't the beginning of the universe anymore

We used to think the Big Bang meant the universe began from a singularity. Nearly 100 years later, we're not so sure.

bigthink.com

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Well something created the elements that created the Big Bang that created the universe that created us.

The elements were not yet in existence when the Big Bang began.

 

[Nakosis]

Number 1 is silly. Science will supplant religion when science can create something from material not presently in existence. Until then science is the tool.

Ok,

A synthetic element is one of 24 known chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor, a particle accelerator, or the explosion of an atomic bomb; thus, they are called "synthetic", "artificial", or "man-made"
Synthetic element - Wikipedia

 

[Nakosis]

Interesting factoid that you may enjoy: in every single one of the gazillion cultures that have existed in the 200,000 years that modern humans have existed, we know of EXACTLY ONE that didn't have religion, and it was not what would be classified as a civilization.

Aha! See, so not universally necessary.

However, perhaps necessary as a tool of civilization to unite the masses. Until something better came along.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Aha! See, so not universally necessary.

But universal ENOUGH that we can guess it is part of our biological hardwiring, a trait selected for by evolution.

 

[Nakosis]

But universal ENOUGH that we can guess it is part of our biological hardwiring, a trait selected for by evolution.

A lot of the "wiring" of the brain happens when we are young. So what happens first? Religion or the wiring of the brain for religion?
I don't know the answer but then the question might be why do atheist exist?

 

[IndigoChild5559]

A lot of the "wiring" of the brain happens when we are young. So what happens first? Religion or the wiring of the brain for religion?
I don't know the answer but then the question might be why do atheist exist?

Yes, our experiences can rewire our brains to a certain extent. But the near universality of this trait would indicate that this is not the case in this instance. Rather it is more along the lines of "Humans are born with lungs."

 

[firedragon]

Maybe religions exist because it's human instinct!

 

[Ignatius A]

Ok,

A synthetic element is one of 24 known chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor, a particle accelerator, or the explosion of an atomic bomb; thus, they are called "synthetic", "artificial", or "man-made"
Synthetic element - Wikipedia

lets try again... "...made by human manipulation of fundamental particles..." are these fundamental particles man made? I said create something from material not presently in existence. it seems sometimes just think they have to post something...anything

 

[Nakosis]

lets try again... "...made by human manipulation of fundamental particles..." are these fundamental particles man made? I said create something from material not presently in existence. it seems sometimes just think they have to post something...anything

Sorry, My bad. I thought there was a comma after material.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Science cannot tell us why the Big Bang happened, or what came "before" (an odd term to use, as time came into existence with the Big Bang). There are those who think the singularity was simply the universe that had collapsed in on itself, viewing the universe as having a cycle of expansion and collapse.

My personal view is more in line with yours. I'm simply pointing out that science has no answers to this (yet).

Well cosmology faces severe limitations when it comes to understanding the universe’s beginnings. Though observable evidence is available, in the form of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, from the point at which the early universe cooled sufficiently to radiate energy. There is, in other words, empirical evidence to support the speculation.

As to what may have preceded the universe, if questions about that even make sense, there is only speculation (though Roger Penrose has done some mathematical modelling).

What most (only most, it’s never all. Scientific enquiry doesn’t work like that) cosmologists are agreed on, is that our universe, the one we inhabit and scientists are exploring, did have a beginning. The competing Steady State model of a universe infinite into the past - the model Einstein tried to resurrect even though his own equations disproved it - is consigned to the history books.

These are interesting times for the Standard Model though. There have always been anomalies with it; no one has yet seen a dark matter particle, not the hypothetical magnetic monopole, for example. The James Webb telescope is already throwing up a few more, so don’t be too surprised if the cosmology and it’s favoured Big Bang model is subject to a revolutionary paradigm shift as radical as that of the Copernican Revolution.

As for science having no answers, well that opens a philosophical conundrum worthy of a thread of it's own; do the laws of science tell us facts about the world? Many scientists would answer no. But it's wrong to say that science has no empirical evidence to support it's theories of the early universe. The CMBR provides the sort of historical record which archeologists studying ancient civilizations dream of finding.