Asklemmy

We've proved the popular religions wrong definitively, but the truth's turned out to be unbearably horrifying for most people.

It’s useful to do so. It gives a person meaning and purpose in life.

Man believes in stories. Such as religion, or money, or companies.

Ref. Yuval Noah Harari.

Because we are convinced it is true.

Our tendency to perceive agency in ambiguous situations sheds light on the origins of cognitive biases like religion. Our minds, shaped by eons of natural selection, are finely tuned to err on the side of caution. Think of a group of ancient hunters traversing the savanna. A rustle in the tall grass could be merely the wind, or it could be a lurking predator. Those who instinctively assume the worst and flee are more likely to survive than those who dismiss the sound and remain vulnerable.

Over time, this survival advantage has led to the evolution of cognitive models that favor the perception of agency, even when there is none. We are prone to seeing patterns, faces, and intentions in random events because the cost of mistakenly attributing agency is far less than the cost of failing to detect a real threat. This explains why we might see a face in the clouds or feel a presence in a dark room. Religion is a direct byproduct of this phenomenon.

Furthermore, it's important to keep in mind that every contemporary belief system stems from an uninterrupted chain of development, tracing back to the earliest human societies. This implies that every ideology has enjoyed a measure of success, having endured the test of time. This makes it difficult to definitively assert that one set of beliefs is fundamentally "more correct" than another, as truth is often subjective and dependent on context. After all, the effectiveness of a belief system in enabling a culture to thrive and grow is perhaps the most relevant measure of its "truthfulness."

If somebody grows up in a religious environment, then religion becomes central to their world model. It's not an isolated concept, it's an integral part of the tapestry of their mind. Our brains, like all physical systems, operate within the constraints of energy efficiency. Assimilating a new idea requires mental effort, as it necessitates restructuring our existing cognitive framework to accommodate the newcomer. This, in turn, translates to expending energy to rebalance the connections within the neural networks of our brain. If a novel concept clashes significantly with our established beliefs, the energetic cost of integration can be substantial. Radical ideas that demand a significant restructuring of our mental models, such as challenging deeply held religious beliefs or political ideologies, may be discarded, deemed "too expensive" from an energetic standpoint.

This principle helps explain why it's often so difficult to change the views of others, regardless of the soundness of your argument. The strength of the argument alone may not be enough to overcome the inherent inertia of our entrenched belief systems.

When you're brainwashed from birth, it's difficult to recognize you've been brainwashed.

I think it's comfort. That can be if different things for different people and it can be many things at once.

• Spiritual comfort that your god loves you.

• Emotional comfort that you can do no wrong.

• Community comfort that you and the people like you are the chosen people.

• Life/death comfort for what happens after death.

• Intellectual comfort to know all the answers.

• Vindictive comfort to hate the people you want to.

It can just keep going.

I mean... In my life I've gone from a (naive child that took my parents words for fact) theist, to agnostic atheist, all the way to whatever the fuck I am now. It's all a matter of perspective.

You go deep enough into metaphysics you can trip yourself the fuck out.

If anyone wants to humor me, check out this seemingly innocuous video about a comic book villain. Let's debate some metaphysics!

Because they did in 2023

I guess a part is that science seems to meticulously avoid the question "why do we live", in a non-technical way, in a way that actually gives people a sense of meaning.

That and mental inertia, i.e. some things change very slowly.

Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It's like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn't have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it's necessary to spread your belief to others, are 'somehow' more spread out than religions who don't convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It's funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

Because they're convinced it's true. Given that billions of people in the world ( I strongly expect it's the majority) would claim to be religious - perhaps the better question is: "why does anyone not believe in religion?"