Ask Lemmy

People as a whole can be swayed to be believe anything. If there can be flat earthers, religion is way easier.

Tradition and support in major life events. A lot of people who only go to churches for weddings, baptisms and funerals.

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.

There are lots of reasons. Some people want answers for questions that we don't have scientific answers for yet, or that science can't possibly answer.

Some people want to use a framework to justify their behavior.

Some people are scared or disgusted by the implications of our knowledge, and they want it to be something different.

Some people want to manipulate others.

There are many religions because there are many reason why they exist.

I think part of it has to do with how we cope with death. Almost all religions are centered around what happens when we die. Whether it's reincarnation or an afterlife, most believe that there's something beyond. I think that to a certain extent we're predisposed to have this mindset.

Especially among the uneducated, peer pressure and fear of the unknown.

It's not about what an individual could know, it's about what they do know and how structured is a person's thinking.

So just because out there somewhere there are tons of explanations for tons of things doesn't mean people actually know them (lots if not most is quite obscure or requires understanding of a lot of other things first before you can trully understand those things) plus people have to think in very structure ways to spot gaps or flaws in what they thing they know and go look for better info.

And this is just the Logic level problem.

The Emotional level stuff is way more important. Religion:

• provides easy non-scary explanations for tons of things which can be terrifying to accept as just random (Massive Earthquake, killing hundreds of thousands: "It's the will of Deity" is a calming explanation which implies "someDeity" has control)
• provides hope for one's and one's loved one's future (Granny died: "She's gone to Heaven!")
• makes the World seem so much simpler and hence understandeable for anybody by explaining away all complexity (All those lights in the night-sky: "There was a fight between the SunGod and the MoonGod during which his rays pierced the black veil that surrounds us").
• for those born into it, it's just familiar and "the way people think".

And last but not least, Religion is a ready made tribe, generally mutually supporting, so it satisfies people's lowest tribalist instincts and provides concrete benefits from being part of a social circle from which you can get help.

This also explains why supposedly Religious people are selective in what they believe from their religion (notice how almost none of Christians take to hearth the whole point of Christ casting out the Money Lenders from the Temple), why they don't actually know all that much detail about their own Religion (if they don't think in a way that helps them spot what they do not know, that gets reflected on not looking for more info both outside and inside religion) and why it's so easy to manipulate people with religion (if the complexity of the world is explained as "blady, blady, blah, Deity", those trusted to understand the Deity can make sure pretty much all complex things get reasoned as "Deity wills it so because my bullshit reason" - plus remember, religious types are the non-structured non-skeptic thinkers).

It's a lot easier to deal with a God that may or may not exist.. than deal with humans.

Fear of death.

That's it.

The fact that there is nothing after you die is terrifying.

I'm a suicidal atheist (the two aren't connected) and sometimes I think the only thing keeping me alive is the fear of non existence.

Asking a bunch of non-religious people is nothing but a circle jerk.

People believe in religion for a variety of reasons. I believe in what I believe in because I've had personal experiences, and because it gives me a way to be better than I am.

Despite increasing knowledge, there is still a lot we don't know. People will always use religion to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Especially the questions, "why is there something rather than nothing?" And "what do you experience when you die", which imo are unknowable (although we've got pretty good evidence for the latter answer being "nothing")

People want to belong to something bigger than them. This includes a magical cloudy sky kingdom where you must wear white shrouds, and your whole family is there and not talking about embarrassingly antiquated political views

Because learning takes effort.

Intra-generational rituals, community, basic comfort… where are the secular alternatives? Effective altruism? Music concerts? Solar eclipses?

Don’t get me wrong, humanity really comes together sometimes, but consistency is important for people.

I was born in a very interesting family. Both sides of my family were from very opposing denominations of Christianity.

One of the Church of Christ (not Latter Day Saints), believing that dancing and musical instruments were a sin, took the lords supper (wine and bread) every Sunday and believed that if you were not baptized in their church that you were going to hell.

The other, Baptists, who would regularly invite bands to play at their church, rarely took the lords supper and would not batt an eye if you visited a friend’s church of a different denomination.

They both used the exact same version of the Bible (King James Version). Although, the baptists didn’t care if you used a newer translation to get a better understanding. This great divide in the interpretation of the word of a book drove me away from believing in the traditional Christian sense of a god.

Each denomination teaches their own interpretation. If the word is divine and should be read and understood in the same way everywhere, why should I believe one over the other?

If you're really interested in an answer and not only trying to dunk on religious people: I'd suggest reading a few philosophical critics of religion. Like Feuerbach and Marx.

Religion always fulfilled a certain function to people. Way back, it was used to answer questions which have been properly answered by science (where does the sun/thunder and lightning come from, etc.). But that's not the whole picture of religion's function in society.

People still have an urge to answer questions science can't/won't answer (what is right and wrong? *why are we here? how should we treat each other?). Religion fulfills the function answering a subset of these questions.

Because religion fulfills people's emotional needs.

Maybe in a couple hundred years more. Indoctrination is very hard to shake from people.

It's difficult to get people to accept this knowledge