Ask Lemmy

Because religion provides comfort, community and a meaning to people's existence that goes beyond "we were born of chance on an insignificant rock somewhere in the universe".

(I'm not religious BTW)

Religion has certain self-reinforcing properties. Kind of like genes that make it more likely to propagate against other forms of information.

• Believing without question is better than questioning
• Not believing will be punished
• Virtue will be rewarded
• Spreading the belief is a virtue
• You should obey your parents

Combine that with young human brains being malleable, and religion tends to continue against all odds.

Have you heard of the fireplace delusion? Burning wood is horrible for our health and the environment, but most of us have fond memories of sitting by a fire. Religion is the same. Holiday traditions with family, organized events marking important life events, it’s hard to break away.

https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-fireplace-delusion

Childhood indoctrination is a big part of it. I have been told by my 8-year old niece that she'd like to save me from drowning in a lake of fire. She was genuinely scared for me. It's literal child abuse followed by Stockholm syndrome.

Existence is meaningless and we just wobble around here for a little while and then we die. There's nothing to it. Everything that happens is just a logical consequence; beauty is nothing but a tiny chemical reaction in your brain. Once you rot it's all worthless.

Science is great at giving explanations, but not so good at providing meaning. For a lot of people, meaning is probably more helpful in order to facilitate a happy life.

Nietzsche writes at length about this stuff, most famously in the anecdote about the madman coming down from the mountain to inform the villagers that God is dead and that we have killed him. Everybody knows the three words "God is dead", but I think it's worth reading at length:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Nietzsche, whose father was a priest, recognizes that "God has become unbelievable", but he does not celebrate it as the progress of science. Rather, we lost something that was fundamentally important to humans, and which science cannot easily replace.

Here one could start talking about the Free Masons, who attempted learning from religious rituals without the added layer of religion. Or one could dig deeper into the works of Nietzsche, and the contrast between Apollonian and Dionysian. It's all fascinating stuff.

In short though, spirituality used to offer people a sense of meaning that is not so easily replaced by science alone. How do we bury our dead now that we know our rituals are pointless?

I've been looking into a tradition for the last few years that died out nearly 1,500 years ago that has me wondering the opposite.

How in the present day with the clear trajectory of science and technology we are currently working on do we not realize this ancient and relatively well known text isn't some mystical mumbo jumbo but is straight up dishing on the nature of our reality?

I think there's a stubbornness of thought that exists among most humans regarding what they think they know about life which blinds both the religious and non-religious.

Anchoring bias is remarkably resilient.

This thread has plenty of anti-religious stances and oversimplified explanations that just mock those that are religious. Despite how exhausting it will be to think about the replies, I feel that some balance is needed for the sake of good content and discussion. I'm terrible at this shit, so take it with a grain of salt. Obligatory "I'm not religious" - I'm not defending those that have twisted religion to be used for personal gain, perversion, or for enacting upon hatred, but to say there's zero benefit to religion and that it shouldn't exist is naive; it is, however, in need of improvement.

Religion provides community, philosophy, and despite what everyone in the comments here are saying, education. You can deny a specific diety all you'd like, but it poses potential answers to questions science has yet to figure out. Did a diety create the universe via The Big Bang? When does life begin? What happens after death? What happens before we're born? Etc.

Church provides support for those struggling. You can argue that praying to a diety may not do anything on its own, but to have a pastor say that someone in the church has been struggling with something and everyone includes that in their prayers - it helps a lot to cope with the passing of someone, addiction, debt, etc. Some churches will do events to help raise money for a cause. Some will pull you aside to help give direction to resolve the struggle in your life. Some host meetings for AA and other similar programs.

Einstein rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science.

Multiple strong atheists including my college Language Arts teacher throughout my life have said that The Bible is one of the greatest books ever written - not for the diety, but for the teaching of morals, the poetry, the individual pastorals, and the story overall. Is it the only source to learn morality? No. Additionally, any source where you learn morality from will also have immoral characteristics, so don't let any strawman arguments prevent you from learning from it.

Nothing and no one is perfect, so use your own judgement to discern the morality from the immoral, and question it. For those interested in pro-religioua debate, books on Apologetics can be an interesting read.