Because there is no downside. I mean, the only thing that atheist think is appealing is that they can reason themselves out of religion. What makes you think that ‘reasoning yourself out of religion’ is attractive, desirable or a worthy goal? It just isn’t. It leads to existential crisis in most if not all cases. And then atheist take pride in surviving that crisis. Which, sure, admirable… But attractive? Of course not.
You can be religious and do anything in the world. Literally. I know that atheist love to focus on dumb fucks and literalists, and on how religions are being abused. But the truth is that religion is deeply personal and peoples relation with religion is completely their own. It’s extremely simple to pick and choose from the myriad of options within religion. Most religious people are not literalists.
And then you get connection with people, see them regularly, participate in rituals, celebration days, rules for engagement with life.
Plus, don’t forget, an extremely old and mystic piece of human history. The attempts of people to live in a world that has a God. Their struggles, their victories. In essence a reflection on the human condition. And you get to be part of that. Atheist are often too fast to explain religion as a sort of ‘failed science’, while it’s absolutely not. And of course if you can’t figure that out you’re going to ask why people want to believe in something like that.
There will never be a rational reason for the human condition. Religion will never ever not be part of humanity. As the only way in which the human condition can be contextualised is in a world that is created, and religions are the keepers of that knowledge.
What makes you think that ‘reasoning yourself out of religion’ is attractive, desirable or a worthy goal?
I think for a lot of atheist converts it becomes hard to keep the alternate reality going, and so reasoning out of it becomes unavoidable. Some people are raised atheist. Personally, I just like to know things even if it sucks.
Most religious people are not literalists.
I suspect that’s not actually true at a global level. In Africa many people are so literalist they’ll believe they’re bulletproof because a spell was cast. Even in the West there’s areas where I’m guessing most churchgoers believe funny things about natural history.
There are billions of religious people in the world. I understand that there are millions of examples of people who are literalist and dumb. Religion has a lot of pitfalls. But most religious people are navigating religion in a personal and open manner, avoiding those pitfalls and using the same examples to do so.
Again, I’m not sure that’s actually true. I suspect literalists may be a small majority.
I get along with religious people of all sorts in real life, to be clear, but I don’t think the progressive, quiet Christian or Muslim is as universal as the average Lemmy user may think it is, based on where they live.
Sure, unless you care about LGBT+ people not being discriminated against and murdered. And unless you care about teaching strong critical thinking to avoid conspiracies including anti-vax. And unless you care about the future of the planet in the face of climate change which is largely ignored by religious people who are more focused on the next life than this one. And unless, and unless, and unless…
There are tons of downsides.
As the only way in which the human condition can be contextualised is in a world that is created, and religions are the keepers of that knowledge.
Yeah no, we can contextualize with rational thought, it’s just that more work needs to be done that has historically been stifled by religion considering they have historically killed people who didn’t go along with them. Religions don’t have some monopoly on knowledge in this field, what they have is some shit they just made up, some of which works, and a lot of which doesn’t. But they have no methodology by which to test which parts work and which don’t so they just push all of them regardless.
That’s a very shortsighted view of religion. People two thousand years ago were extremely religious and lgbtq friendly, etc. Most religious people are vaxxed. I mean the things you attribute ro religion is shortsighted, obviously so.
You’re looking at a small subsection of the world during a small subsection of time. It’s not applicable to religion as a whole and why people are religious. People are obviously not becoming religious in order to be antivax anti lgbtq, etc, etc. The reason is obviously not found there.
And no, we can not contextualize the human condition through rational thought. Humans aren’t just rational, we don’t just act rationally. We have irrational feelings, emotions and thoughts. So it’s literally impossible, in a literal sense. This is basic logic.
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, for real, want to know if there are any religious/spiritual people here commenting because yikes. I think a lot of people also interpreted your question to be about organized religion, and specifically christianity of the US variety. Please seek out other religious thoughts - I’ve found much Jewish thought on religion to be of interest. For myself, I’m not christian and not Jewish.
I’m religious because growing up, I adopted the values of the religion I was taught - values of kindness, openness, and inclusion. It’s as core a part of my being as my ways of cooking or socializing. To not be religious would feel like hiding parts of myself.
The routine of following the practices, as well as religion/spirituality being able to help us face the unknown we still have in our lives. It can provide internal strength and belief in our ability. I also find the routine a way to connect to my family, my culture, and to my day-to-day. My religious time is more a time of internal reflection on my own actions and if they align with my values. Do folks without a routine religious/spiritual practice do the same?
The community aspect some touched on is huge. I read a book, Palaces for the People, where it mentioned that those with strong social connections fare better in times of crisis. While there are institutions that are getting to the same influence of religious institutions, they are still far less impactful.
I guess this is all less a belief and more why do people still engage with religion. But why do we believe, what is the act of believing? I don’t have to believe that the sun will rise every morning, but, I do still believe it will rise every morning. Belief is a whole area of study alone I’m sure.
I’m a spiritually-inclined person. Also think it’s totally legit to be atheist. You’d think that actively wanting diversity of belief would be reasonable, but evidently a lot of people just want uniformity and cultural erasure.
That’s how I feel about eating meat. I mean, it’s great if you want to be a vegan. But there needs to be a diversity of diets, and frequent real cow BBQ is a critical part of our culture.
It seems like you’re equating being religious with everything except accepting theistic claims. You can have everything you’ve mentioned without religion. What OP is asking is why do people accept theistic claims despite there being little to no evidence for them?
I don’t have to believe that the sun will rise every morning, but, I do still believe it will rise every morning
You believe it’ll rise because you have more than thousands of instances of this happening at the same time every day. You didn’t just decide to believe it, you believe it because you found good reasons to believe it.
Try deciding to believe you’re a levitating purple dinosaur. I can’t, can you?
The funny thing is that people believe very specific things about gods, like that there’s only one, or that they’re nice or at least have similar values to us.
Or literally look like a specifically male human. What he does with those two legs when he already exists everywhere, nobody knows. It’s not just the Abrahamic religions either, all the myths of the world have a bit of anthropocentrism to them. That was excusable when we had no better ideas.
My favorite interpretation of that was in Mage: The Ascension. Man being “in God’s image” wasn’t morphological, it was in man’s ability to reshape reality to his whims.
On the subject of fiction, I was thinking about H.P Lovecraft when I wrote this. His whole thing was making a mythology that’s not anthropocentric, and incorporates that character of vast incomprehensibility that our modern science has.
One popular answer is that sometimes people just experience things that they find scientific answers to not be able to answer adequately. We as a species are still far from knowing everything.
The alternative is absolutely unfathomable. Like I am an atheist and the fact we exist in any capacity is insane. Where did everything come from? Where will it go? People believe in religion because it’s easier.
When I have an existential crisis over it I sometimes wish I was religious.
I feel the same way when I think about how when ever you get a whole bunch bunch of stuff together in one spot, it frickin warps time and space and that’s why I’m standing and not floating.
Ah yes, how childish of OP to wonder why the majority of English speaking countries believe in answers to life’s greatest questions with little to no evidence. What a naive little question, that one.
To each their own, but personally that sounds like a bad reason to stop pursuing life’s greatest questions. Plenty of my family has passed away, but that doesn’t make faith seem like a reliable pathway to truth.
I’d love to believe they’re in an eternal paradise, but I’d also love to believe my next paycheck will be $1,000,000. The time to believe I’m a millionaire is when I have evidence for it, not when I’d be heartbroken otherwise.
I like how all these answers involving science fail to realize that the scientific method was used exclusively by many scholars and students who had no historical evidence of giving up their religion.
Empirical evidence is as old as humans, and afaik the modern scientific method has been in use since the Islamic golden age if not older.
The key here is that many of these people did not consider religion an empirical issue but a philosophical and ethical one. Particularly with the monotheistic religions, this would make sense because you can easily argue that it would be impractical to test for the existence of God.
I think a better question would be why do people believe in their respective religion if it contains a glaring contradiction(s).
Religion is primarily a social phenomenon, so as long as people want to belong to a larger group then there will always be people willing to believe whatever non-falsifiable truths they need to in order to belong to one.
Dante’s Inferno went into detail that was not biblical, but there’s enough in the bible that writing it off completely is cherry picking.
“They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
"And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
“And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
I had a friend whose dad was a pastor at a decently sized church. I never believed in religion and he was cool because he would actually listen to what I said rather than plugging his ears and yelling. (you know what I mean). I went to his church one Sunday to humor him and it was Ok. His dad was relating current events to the bible and it wasn’t total horseshit… UNTIL, they passed the plate thing around for donations. “Give your money to GOD” is what was said. I asked my friend what the hell does god need my money for? He made the earth in seven days, he can make his own damn money. My friend said the money goes to the church to put on events for the children and feeding the needy and honestly, good things. I said ok, then tell me to donate my money to the church to support this instead of god.
Many years later he has his own church and when they pass the plate around, he says donate to the church and explains where the money goes. I call it a little victory. Religion is still a load of crap though.
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).
Ignorance and indoctrination. Especially back then people that don’t understand science needed an excuse of why certain things worked that way in the world. Is easier to say that everything happens thanks to a big guy above us.
Right. Now we do smart, n know how we exist cuz science. Big bang long time ago now we here, no sign of design anywhere in this place amirite. Whenever in doubt of our scientific paradigm, try adding either millions of years or millions of miles to the equation to add plausibility
A young-earth creationist? You’re a rare breed. Good to have you here.
On a more important note, responding to inflammatory language with strawmen and condescension isn’t a good look. If YEC is true don’t you think it’d be a lot more effective (and productive) to just give us reasons to believe what you believe?
Since here the answers are split between edgy kids and people repeating a bland, stale narrative about comfort and fear of death, I will try to bring a different perspective.
For context: I grew up in a Catholic country but in a very secular family and in a very secular region. I’ve had an edgy atheist phase that lasted between 8yo and probably around 30yo.
I studied a STEM discipline and have always been surrounded by mostly atheist or agnostic people.
I was afraid of death up until I was 27/28yo, but the cope was gnostic transhumanism, not Abrahamitic religions. At some point I took acid, my gf at the time told me I was going to die, I cried my eyes out for a few minutes and then I was fine and I’m still fine. I had a near-death experience in the hospital that further consolidated the idea that I’m going to die, and it’s chill: if you’re sick, you have a bunch of people looking after you, everybody gives you attention, you spend all your day chilling in bed on drugs. Dream life death.
I was still agnostic at that point. I started approaching spirituality later on, not much because of an emotional need, but because further studies both in STEM disciplines and Philosophy highlighted the limit of reason to explain and understand the world. Reason is a tool among others, with its limits. Limits that can be reasoned about using reason itself. You cannot investigate or explain what lies outside though, let alone change it, something for which you need different tools: faith, spirituality, trust. I got closer to what Erik Davis calls “Cyborg Spiritualism”, but it doesn’t mean much since it’s not an organized movement, but more of a shared intuition and meaning-making process to which, in the last 60 years, more and more people arrived. Especially people dealing with disciplines like system theory, cybernetics, system design, and information theory, but also people disillusioned with the New Age movement or other Western Gnostic practices. Mixed in it there’s plenty of animism.
Atheists believe that all religions are about speaking to God, and hoping for an answer, while many religions are about listening to God because they are already talking to us all the time.
It isn’t really about edginess. People tend to continue believing in whatever religious preference (or none) they have unless something convinces them otherwise in whatever direction.
To an atheist’s point of view, it legitimately doesn’t make sense why someone would be religious when what they see is nonsense. It is a genuine confusion and not necessarily meant to be rude.
This isn’t just an atheist thing that happens, religious people can often not understand why someone would ever choose anything other than their religion. It doesn’t make sense to them either.
I suppose it’s better than following a standard of evidence that enables homophobes/transphobes, and opens the door to preachers feeding their politics to you.