It is very difficult to accept mortality if you don’t believe in an afterlife. Religion brings comfort, and comfort improves mental health (at the cost of some delusion).
Not really. Altruism is ultimately self-serving whether an afterlife exists or not. People generally don’t want to spend their life being wronged by others or have their life taken altogether, so we have a pretty good incentive to not do those things.
I’m not sure how that relates to what I said. Morality ≠ mortality.
Ooooh I 100% read “morality” lol, my bad
All good. Yeah I think morality is not really something religion helps with.
- Need psychological support in times of distress
- Gullible
- sense of community and shared experience
You’re definitely not gullible right?
Not religious either.
Because I think religion is fundamental to me including the one I have now that really helps me out and gives me a purpose in life too.
I can tell people here hate what I just said, but I also don’t follow the news anymore, obey my parents, and don’t observe politics anywhere.
All I read is the Bible and it is good enough.
No one understands what your first sentence says because it’s an empty platitude.
The fact that religion is “fundamental” to you really helps you out? Care to actually elaborate with specific examples because that’s literally an empty phrase.
I find that most people use religion to absolve themselves of responsibility and make themselves feel superior to “lessers” (aka non believers).
For the same reasons they always have.
The year has little to do with it. The only things we’ve really undeniably progressed in over the past century are scientific knowledge and the level of technology. Existential philosophy hasn’t exactly made breakthroughs recently, to my knowledge.
Each person still needs to find their own answer to the fundamental questions of “why am I here” and “wtf is death and how do I deal with it”.
Our mechanical, scientific understanding of reality provides fairly depressing answers to these questions. Religion? Sunshine and roses.
Also, on a more practical factor: childhood indoctrination and cultural inertia. Most people are raised in religion and they find it “good enough”, so religion continues.
I find it more depressing that there is a God that decides what is good and what isn’t and gives us “free will” just so He can torture us for eternity if we dont do what He wants… kinda fucked up ngl
Fortunately I don’t need any more reasons to live than enjoying my day to day, being with the people I love, doing my little projects etc.
Oh, continuing down that line of thinking leads to far worse then “kinda fucked up.” If the judeo christian deity exists and is accurately described by their books than it is a total monster not worthy of praise or devotion…
What I understand about the judeo christian god is that they are believed to have created everything that has ever been or will ever be. They have total knowledge of everything past present and future, and they “knew me” prior to them creating me, knew what kind of person I would be, and knew without doubt that I wouldn’t believe in or worship them… so they created me with full knowledge that I’ll spend eternity being tortured in hell. What kind of benevolent deity brings a creature into existence just so they can be tortured? If that’s not full blown fucked up, then I don’t know what is.
You’ve basically touched on one of the core logical issues at play in Abrahamic religions (and others). God is omnipotent and omniscient, or people have free will. It can’t be both.
God knowing what you will do does not remove your responsibility of the decision you made.
So is God powerless to stop people from committing evil?
Here is the answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VoX-IkHVTE
That is not an answer, it’s a man avoiding the question entirely.
God existing would absolutely place all responsibility upon God, not on its creation for doing only what it was created and constrained to do by that God. Every “decision” would require that God to allow it, making that God responsible.
This isn’t about responsibility, it’s about preventing suffering. If you could prevent a genocidal leader from being born, which you knew would save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, why wouldn’t you? Because it’s that person’s “responsibility” that all of those innocent people died after all?
Here is a nice visualisation of the logical paradox:
The year has little to do with it
The irony. Why exactly does the entire world accept the current year as being 2024? What are we 2024 years away from?
For the same sort of reasons there are (generally) 12 months in a year and there are 7 days on a calendar, and for the same reason that “John” is a name, and why London is placed where it is, and etc?
Because some dudes decided some stuff, and some other dudes decided some stuff influenced like that, and so on. And some stuff got changed, and some stuff was inconvenient to change or there was no real reason to change it.
The year is ironic in the exact context you quoted I guess. But the days of the week and many months were named for other mythologies.
I am not even remotely religious. But I take science pretty seriously.
Please tell me, scientifically, why you are so sure that people of faith are wrong?
There is some decent science that prayer does not work. I am not aware of anything offers anything at all testable concerning God.
And if we are simply pushing our preferences on others, I think a more important question is what makes people that claim to be evidence driven to adopt such strong opinions on things ( without evidence ) that they feel comfortable publicly slamming the preferences and values of others ( again with no evidence at all ).
As a science fan, you can say that absence of evidence means you do not have to believe. Correct. You cannot say that an absence of evidence proves your guess correct such that you can treat people who believe otherwise as stupid. Incorrect.
And “they have to show me the evidence” is a moronic stance. As a fan of the scientific method, evidence is YOUR burden of proof. For people that adhere to a religion, their standard is FAITH. So, they are holding up their end and you are dropping the ball. So what gives you the right to be the abuser?
So, I guess my answer to “why do people believe in religion would be”, “well, people still have faith and tradition and science has not produced any evidence that credibly calls that into question”.
Why are people not arriving at this conclusion on their own in 2024? Why have we failed so badly to explain the scientific method that people can still make wild pronouncements like this one.
I don’t like religion because it makes people easy to manipulate. People that treat science like a religion exhibit the same problems. I am not a fan of that.
I am certain that Russel’s teapot is not orbiting Jupiter.
If you want to hypothesize about the existence of some kind of demiurge then that’s one thing, but religions are about some really and weirdly specific gods with very specific rules and systems and laws without a shred of evidence for anything.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
That teapot is orbiting somewhere. I have no idea if my universe is the one.
Saying that you “know” there is no God is an extraordinary claim. Do you demand extraordinary evidence from people that make that claim? Or do you only demand it from people following a philosophy that requires them to believe independent of evidence?
Honestly, this is about as smart as religious people demanding miracles before they will believe in Science.
Please tell me, scientifically, why you are so sure that people of faith are wrong?
Because they all offer competing and mutually exclusive hypotheses.
Christianity tells us that the one true path to salvation is by accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour.
Hinduism tells us that our next life will take place in this world, based on our actions in this life.
Islam tells us that Mohammed is the one true prophet.
Buddhism says that there are no prophets, enlightenment only comes from within.
They make contradictory claims, so by definition they can’t all be right, and they typically claim that they are correct and the other explanations are false, so even if one religion is correct, the rest (comprising of the majority of the faithful) must be wrong.
Research shows that we have the innate (ie. without being externally influenced) belief that there is a higher power. So we are socialized/influenced into NOT believing in God.
Atheism and secularism are big now but this only started to be so in the recent hundred years.
Personally I find my religion logically making sense more than what atheistic ideologies bring forth and their misuse of science illiteracy.
The scripture is preserved and I had the chance to learn the original language which allows to assess it firsthand.
It sounds like you are firmly entrenched in your religion. I’m glad you enjoy reading Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, but it turns out people tend to skew in one of two directions: those without a propensity for analytical thought tend to skew religious - for example, the children in the study you cite - and those who think critically reject religion. There’s even a paper on this.
If your religion brings you happiness and peace, more power to you. However, I would encourage you to rethink your ideas on logic and science illiteracy. Consider that it might actually be very difficult in a world & countless communities built around religion for someone to break away from that social norm, analyse religion objectively, and reject an idea that cannot be proven.
“The” Bible has been proven by Christian scholars that it was not preserved, so one should not take it as gospel.
I agree that it is hard to break away from what you have been socialized into, be it theism or atheism, both being a religion and a belief.
I honestly invite you to study the Quran objectively, which I did. I lived alone in a western society for the most part of my life and was obviously not subject to any social coersion. I distanced myself from what I was taught and decided to look at it from an external and critical point of view. And I discovered it to bee flawless.
You might be thinking my judgement was clouded or doubt my intellectual abilities :D all the same reason why I invite you to undergo the same experience of rethinking your ideas and to read the Quran for yourself. Hapiness and peace are byproducts and not the goal. The goal must be the search for the truth wherever that might be, even if we dislike it.
Apologies for my assumption of your holy book of choice. You realise the Qur’an is the “sequel” to the Bible, which was itself derivative of the Torah, which was based on more ancient myths, etc etc. All of them passed down verbally for generations before written, all of them changed to suit the storytellers’ needs, and all of them FAR from flawless. Historical and scientific inaccuracies aside, none of them are even internally consistent. I have difficulty believing you have applied objective, critical thought to any religious text.
They are incomparable.
The Torah is a collection of stories coming from an oral tradition or songs. The earliest manuscripts are the dead see scrolls dating one or two thousand years after Moises, peace be upon him. The Jewish don’t recognise thesemanuscripts attributed to heretics.
The Bible according to scholars is a collection of books from anonymous authors who used the names of disciples as pennames. There is no consensus amongst the different denominations regarding what books are part of “the” Bible. The earliest complete manuscript dates about 400 years after Jesus, peace be upon him, and shows differences with today’s text.
The Qur’an is proven to be preserved, even by western non-muslim orientalists. There are carbon dated manuscripts from the time of Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the book is mass memorised by millions letter by letter with a proven chain tracing back to Muhammad. It is not possible to change the text when millions know it cover to cover by heart. Even the understanding of the meaning is not open to interpretation because there are set rules and relied upon books from the disciples, again with a tracking chain, that tell us how it was explained by the prophet and understood at the time of revelation.
So this was an assessment of the text before delving into what it actually contains.
Now I assume you read the Torah and the Bible, which is why you know about the internal and external contradictions.
This is not the case for Qur’an even when it talks about various things from history to natural phenomena. I really encourage you to go past prejudice and critically study it yourself from reputable sources to actually know what it is and what it says.
The Clear Qur’an is a good English translation. Read it and if you have any question don’t hesitate.
I don’t have to read a religious text to know it’s not true, and though you may have been lucky enough to grow up untainted by society, these books have not. The issue with going to sources so entrenched in studying religious text is that they are already tainted by the need to keep the text alive. Should they cast any doubt at all their livelihood will vanish.
No religion has ever offered verifiable proof of any supernatural claim. Once they do I will pay attention.
I don’t have to read a religious text to know it’s not true
How can you give an opinion or hold a position on something you refuse to assess?
The issue with going to sources so entrenched in studying religious text is that they are already tainted by the need to keep the text alive
Here you are making assumptions about the sources maybe because of Christianity and Judaism. The sources like I said are the contemporary ones and there is no room for reinterpretation in the exegesis to twist it in a way or the other due to conflicts that arised later on.
No religion has ever offered verifiable proof of any supernatural claim
Same can be applied to atheism which is positing that God does not exist. I assume you hold that position. If so you are not consistent in your approach.
Should one not objectively scrutinize the claims of both sides before holding a position?
I’d be willing to bet humans also innately believe the earth is flat (in your day-to-day life it certainly doesn’t look like we’re on a spherical object hurling through space), but that doesn’t make it so.
That part of my reply was to show the that we are indoctrinated OUT of religion. Of course this does not forcibly make it true. Like for the shape of the Earth we must use our intellect and whatever is available to us to arrive to any conclusion.
Alternative ways of explaining the world have been around for like a century and a half, and religious conversion is slow.
Why we did religion in the first place instead of just “I dunno where stuff came from or why” is a much more interesting question IMO.
In my view, there are two components to “religion”.
1 - it typically starts with an attempt to explain why and how things are
2 - it becomes a human administration - this becomes more about politics than “religion”
Most of the problems with religion stem from the second part. I see the politics as the far bigger problem there. So people that want to create political movements around “science” are absolutely no better in my view.
If you read the question being asked in this thread critically, do you find it a scientific question? A political one?
I don’t find it surprising given that the vast majority of people don’t research the claims that other people make. For example, during the GameStop short squeeze, people came to the conclusion that corruption or collusion was at play, when in reality it wasn’t for the most part.
People would rather listen to a guy who says something confidently than a guy who says “I don’t know.” The former gets to spread their word, and the latter gets ignored.
Yeah, we seem to just be gullible on average, when it comes to certain things.
I believe it started with a sense of security. Don’t worry, there’s a reason and someone is in control of this shit show. Feels better than we’re on this crazy freight train called life that is almost completely out of control, no one knows where we’re going, no one knows how we’re going to get there, and we basically have no control over any of it.
Oh someone is in control don’t worry about that!
That’s just the Catholics. We’re talking about all religions.
There’s a degree of just feeling viscerally like the supernatural is around us, too. Not everyone has that, but some people certainly do. Then, yeah, we just want to answers the big questions in a satisfying, even comforting way. Particularly modern monotheism has a deep component of offering a way the world is fair, actually, despite all appearances.
It looks like religion is a thing that started with modern humans, just based on archeological finds, but I don’t know why or if it was adaptive. Some scholars will talk about the beginning of religious finds as a beginning of abstract thought, but it seems to me that even a damn dog can make a creative guess about how the world works, so that’s not it.
but it seems to me that even a damn dog can make a creative guess about how the world works
…it can?
I mean, depending on how profound you need it to be. I had my dog jump into a neighbor’s car once. Clearly, he figured a different one would take him fun places if the usual one did, generalising the concept.
Man believes in stories. Such as religion, or money, or companies.
Ref. Yuval Noah Harari.
It’s like asking why people smoke.
Is it bad for you? Yes.
Is it a burden on society? Yes.
Is it addictive and does it make you feel good? For some, yes.
Humans psyche is a meaning inference recursive engine, semiotically I mean, following Charles Sanders Peirce’s Theory of Signs, it generates meaning and thus needs a story to explain it, or simply to tell itself.
The story doesn’t need to hold sound logic or any objectivity true to reality, it only needs to convey the meaning that it generated so that the mind can believe it more than questioning its validity.
Long story short, humans really likes stories.
Because (Christian) “Faith” is a unique, arguably delusional, cyclical belief system based on feelings. It’s similar to the anti-vaccine mentality of “that’s just your opinion” when it’s not. The biggest difference being that there is no proving or disproving the existence of God.
And Faith is built on this self-referential system of “you gotta have Faith in God because God is real and God is good and strong Faith will help you continue believing in God when you are otherwise challenged, and weak Faith is a sign that you are straying from God and you should strengthen your Faith by believing in God harder because God is real and God is good…”
I used to be more religious and also thought “believe in whatever you want to believe in as long as you don’t be a dick about it,” but that’s really been changing a lot lately.
Christianity has fallen so far and so many self-diagnosed Christians are just the worst type of people that I just couldn’t relate to them anymore and felt the need to distance myself.
There have probably been (speculation because I don’t feel like looking up details right now) more deaths in the name of Christianity and the Christian God than any other religion and that continues to this day.
I contribute modern day deaths from pregnancy complications deprived of needed health care, general lack of other health care for low income families, LGBTQIA2A+ suicides or other deaths, and more to “traditional Christian values”.
Christian Nationalists can go fuck themselves and rot in their own hell they hate so much.
Cause a lot of people care more about feeling comfortable than feeling statistically probable.
Lol wut
Because people grow up in religious environments which result in many of there friends and beliefs being tied to that religion. People only stop believing when they are faced with undeniable evidence (which for most is impossible because religious teachings are unfalsifiable) or more often when there is an emotionally charged conflict between there religion and another part of a persons’s life.
For an example of the latter, I once knew someone who started questioning (and eventually became agnostic) because the church they had always went to had started preaching homophobic messages which was irreconcilable with there closest friend being gay.
I left my church because they wouldn’t just let me attend. They wanted me to commit to actively proseletyzing outside the church, to bring more people in.
It didn’t feel right. I think if a thing is good enough, nobody else needs to nag you to sell it. You just want to tell people about it because it’s been so good for you.
In vsauses video “The Future of Reason” he talks about how logic is a best seen in a group context, (a group consensus). So if a group of people agree on something, that is how it is. You can also put in some “if its not important to change the consensus for the group, don’t change it” as to why belief in groups doesn’t change very fast. Also the social and economic aspect, groups have people, people need people, you can also more easily find skilled people in a group.
(both religious and secular groups). Examples of belief, god cannot be observed directly, but religious people still believe : scientists can’t find dark matter, but they still believe that it exists. The most important reason is that groups in general serve the people that are in them. Religions keep together well because the majority of people believe in the group consensus (e.g. god), and get to contribute and gain the benefits of the group. Universities are a good example aswell, as they provide employment, teach skills, and foster community and independence.Indoctrination at a young age.
