Religion is an old form of it is what is, hope, direction, tradition, and community.
Can't explain a thing or understand it God's will or only God knows. Can't do anything to help a person because they are in surgery pray or talk to God to wish for good outcomes.
Don't feel loved or know what to do or wanted. God loves you, will show you the way, and wants you.
Most traditions and communities in the west were founded on a religion so you have hundreds of people to connect with at a church and maybe millions world wide that will help. Those raised on books of wisdom or what is right and wrong still tend to keep the values even after they move away from the religion but realize they can have values without divine beings
Lastly control. Just like businesses it is easier to control people under a religion so if you can get people indebted, traditionalized, and ostracized otherwise. You can control people easily. Lots of people don't know what to do and why trust another human being but if a human being says wisely God said this it is easier to accept and gain a direction
Because the lowest common denominator is much MUCH lower than you think it is.
This means it's easy to indoctrinate and easy to maintain that for a massive number of people.
Scientific illiteracy is extremely high, and actual "6th grade reading comprehension" is the highest level of literacy for > 50% of a country like the U.S. and ~20% are low literacy or actually illiterate.
This means that half of everyone in the U.S. can read and understand what they read at or below a 6th grade level. This isn't "reading big words", it's "tell us about what you read", "what is the relationship between x & y" type questions.
This comment for example, up to this point only, would be difficult to understand & comprehend for > 50% of people in the U.S. (it demands an 11th grade reading comprehension). And may be misread, misunderstood, or not understood at all.
People are driven to religions to cults and alt conspiracy theories when they don't understand how the world works around them. They latch onto extremely simple often misleading or incorrect ideas of how the world works because they can understand it and it "makes sense" within their sphere of ignorance (we all have one, this isn't meant to be a disparaging term).
This means that the problem is that humans are just not smart enough to escape religion yet. It's the simplest answer, and it appears to be correct.
I'm not religious at all. But in responding to your question OP: we don't have to understand why people believe. Religion just isn't for us, and that's fine. Other people find it has value, and that's fine too. The fact that religion has lasted this long with this many people is proof in itself that there's some value people get out of it. We don't have to get it to understand that.
All the comments here that explain religion solely as dumb or irrational are just as closed minded as the people they're criticising.
Indoctrination at a young age.
Because belief is intrinsic to humanity even if we don't believe in religion.
I believe in a lot of human concepts, including kindness, altruism, democracy and humanism. They are all still effectively made up human ideas.
I also believe when I sit down that the chair below me really exists but I cannot truly trust my own senses 100% either. So effectively I "believe" what my sensory organs and brain interpretation tell me, but the reality is the brain and its interpretations can be wrong.
Look at the USA, the founders of the nation are often treated with a reverence akin to that of religious figures.
People have all kinds of delusions. People worship all kinds of weird things. Religion is just one of many.
Finally, someone like Ayn Rand shows that a human can have pretty reprehensible and hypocritical beliefs even if they are an atheist. She promoted bullshit "great men" theories of humanity and argued that selfishness could be used for good.
She also died penniless and on government benefits while spending her whole life preaching against things like government benefits.
People are deeply irrational even without religion.
Gods are literally just a psychological comfort blanket to explain the unexplainable. Most religious people don’t put that much thought into what they believe, challenging concepts are just tucked nicely away in the “Gods will” box and they move on. I think everyone copes with those brain shattering concepts in their own creative way or risk getting buried alive in anxiety.
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).
Here are a few reasons people believe:
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Meaning and Purpose: Religion can offer a framework for understanding the universe and our place in it. It can provide answers to big questions about life, death, and morality.
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Community and Belonging: Religious communities can provide social support, a sense of belonging, and shared values. This can be especially important during difficult times.
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Comfort and Hope: Religion can offer comfort in times of grief or hardship. It can also provide hope for the afterlife or a better future.
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Tradition and Identity: Religion can be a core part of a person's cultural heritage or family identity. People may feel a connection to their ancestors or cultural background through their faith.
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Ethics and Morality: Many religions provide a moral code that guides people's behavior. This can be helpful in making decisions about right and wrong.
I don't believe, but I can see why people stick with it and don't look beyond it. You can get all these things without religion, its just not something that's taught/passed down in the same way as religion is. Additionally, deconstructing is very difficult. You're raised to believe something to be real and you're expected to just drop it and step out of Plato's cave? You'd look like a madman to any friends/family who aren't willing and ready to step out and look around.
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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.
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 being told and believing stories, and often they are the ones telling the story right to themselves.
Serious answer:
I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe in a religion because I've found it to be personally beneficial.
I was a pastor for many years and saw much of the best and worst religion had to offer. I haven't stepped foot inside a church since COVID broke out and don't know that I ever will again.
My personal beliefs are still a significant part of my life, but I understand why someone would ask the question that spawned this discussion.
Indoctrination.
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.
In 2024 life is hard and you can't do anything about it in most cases. Religion gives you an excuse for why it must be so, so that you can keep grinding away.
This is a pretty broad question, it really depends on what you mean by "believe in religion":
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Believe that a particular holy book is literal, historical truth.
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Believe in the moral teachings of a particular holy book and follow its practices.
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Believe in the existence of a universal higher consciousness (God)
1 is a vocal minority, and the reasons have been sufficiently explained elsewhere in this thread.
2 is much more common, and can derive from a number of reasons. Cultural identity generally determines which holy book (and interpretation thereof) you follow, but the attraction to moral framework is deeper than cultural identity. Having a set of guidelines to inform moral behavior, and a method of alignment and focus (prayer) is very valuable.
3 is a metaphysical consideration, and pops up even in 2024 because consciousness is still a mysterious phenomenon. Every explanation leads to roughly the same conclusion: if consciousness is an emergent property of complex interconnected systems, then it stands to reason that the most complex interconnected system (the universe) is more likely than not to be conscious; if consciousness is some external force that complex systems can "tune into" like a radio, then it stands to reason that "consciousness" permeates the universe; if consciousness is something else which defies scientific description, then it stands to reason that there exists some agency to dictate the rules.
Those are, broadly, the rational explanations of consciousness of which I'm aware, and they all imply a universal consciousness of one variety or another. If you can think of another I'd love to consider it.
If you meant something else by "believe in religion", let me know.
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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.
Ignoring the inherit assumption that religion is de facto an issue or backwards, and ignoring the fallacy that "progress" is co-liniar with the passage of time, logic is not in of itself a perfect humanistic process of thought, rather it has been developed by humans over the millennia.
There is great comfort in the process of growing into and exploring one's faith. Growing up in a theologically liberal Christian church, I was invited to find ways to meld the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man is such a way that I find purpose and vocation within my life. Religion also offers a place for community among people committed to a mission, be it good or bad. These communities preserve and honor cultural traditions, again, the good and the bad. These are just a few reasons I think people are now, and will remain well into the future, religious.
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.
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.
Like it or not, people who went to prayer house or religious gatherings socialise more than people who stay indoor and only interact with limited amount of people. Assuming there's no fishy business going on with that particular chapter, they tend to be happier considering the fact human are social animal and the feeling of loneliness due to lack of human to human interaction is the build-in alarm system to warn us against solitude. It's this reason religion is so success because it's enforce togetherness and make you feels like you're part of something.
If we're going into a utopian world where human doesn't need to work anymore and social security is guaranteed, religious will be something even bigger than today.
Edit: forgot to mentioned, am atheist and give no shit to skyman, but somehow on the internet atheist can't have opinion that's not shitting on people with faith.
The social aspect might be underappreciated. My guess is people are mainly introduced by family and friends and it becomes a big part of their identity. It becomes difficult to separate the individual elements.
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.
Man believes in stories. Such as religion, or money, or companies.
Ref. Yuval Noah Harari.
I'm an effort to get you an answer that isn't dismissive:
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Youth indoctrination, social conformity, and cultural isolation. If your parents, friends, and most of your community tells you something is true, you are unlikely to challenge it for a variety of reasons including trust (most of what they've taught you works for your daily life), tribal identity, etc
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People naturally fear death, and one coping strategy for the existential fear of death is to convince yourself that the death of your body is not the end of your existence. Science does not provide a pathway to this coping strategy so people will accept or create belief systems that quell that fear, even in the face of contradictory evidence. Relieving the pressure of that fear is a strong motivator.
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Release of responsibility. When there is no higher power to dictate moral absolutes, we are left feeling responsible for the complex decisions around what is or isn't the appropriate course of action. And that shit is complicated and often anxiety inducing. Many people find comfort in offloading that work to a third party.
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This is likely not the best place to get answers for this question.
I think there's something that always seems to get left out of these conversations and that's that "when I practice my religion, I feel something that I don't feel otherwise" is frequently a true statement for the religious.
I've often heard self-described atheists say that, often when conversing/debating with religious folks about why they believe, the conversation comes to a point where the religious person will say "I've just had a personal experience" and the atheist, unable to relate to that, really has no way to advance the conversation beyond that.
Were I opposite some fundamentalist Christian or something in such a situation, my response would be "yeah, me too! That's totally normal."
I think the beligerantly nonreligious either can't relate to religious experiences or don't want to admit to having had them for fear of embarassment or maybe rhetorical concessions. And the religious typically haven't had such experiences outside the context of their religious practices, or if they have they still attribute it to their religious beliefs, and so take it as proof of their beliefs.
And these religious experiences are very real and very normal. Probably some people are more prone to such experiences than others. But despite how the religious tend to interpret them they have little to no relationship to one's beliefs. One can have experiences of anatta ("no-self" in Theravada Buddhism) or satori (sudden, typically-temporary, enlightenment in Japanese Zen Buddhism) or recollection (a term from Christian mysticism) or kavana (Jewish mysticism) or whatever without accepting any particular belief system. There are secularized mindfulness and meditation practices that can increase one's chances and frequency of experiencing these states.
But, unfortunately, the history of these experiences has been one of large religious organizations claiming and mostly exercising a monopoly on such experiences.
These experiences feel very deep and profound and can be a very positive (or negative!) thing, even affecting the overall course of one's life. And they can be kindof addictive in a good way.
All that to say that I think any conversation about why people believe in religions today is incomplete without taking into account that for many people, their religion is their means of connection with some extremely profound and beautiful experiences. Though people only accept beliefs along with those experiences because they don't know these experiences aren't actually exclusive to any one religion or any set of beliefs. And those experiences are 100% real and tangible to them. (Whether they correspond to anything real in consensus reality is a whole other conversation, but the experiences themselves are a normal human phenomenon like orgasm or schadenfreude.)
Just some followup thoughts:
- Like I alluded to earlier, meditation can be dangerous. Do your research first and know the risks.
- There are a ton of good books on these topics. "Stealing Fire" by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal is a good place to start if you're interested in the science of it or The Science of Enlightenment if you want to get a little deeper into the practice.
- If you want to know my personal beliefs, my beliefs are that beliefs don't matter. Personal experience does. "But do you believe god exists?" Honestly it'd take me a good hour or more to give a proper answer to that question. Let's go with "neither yes nor no" for the short version.
- Every culture has these experiences. Humans likely have had them since humans have existed.
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 honestly think it’s a coping mechanism that is hard wired into us.
Most if not all ancient civilizations independently had some sort of belief in a higher power.
It’s a way to deal with the death of a loved one and your own mortality.
So what you're saying is that here in 2024 we've got it all figured out?
*Note that: 2024, everything figured out.
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -Shakespeare
There's physics. And there's metaphysics. One does not come to Faith the same way one produces a hypothesis.
Because they keep having experiences they can’t or have no interest in explaining.
I think that for most people it's nothing more than a social club. I have always been skeptical ever since hearing absurd stories about arks and being eaten by whales, but every once in a while (especially after sobering up) I went into various churches to see if I might have been missing out on something. Invariably I just found a social club of people just looking for excuses to feel better about themselves. Anything good that happens is a direct blessing from a doting god; anything bad is always the devil....personal responsibility is never part of the answer. Many are just uneducated and dont know how to think; they accept whatever Grandpa says as truth without any consideration, and this extends to pastors. I am atheist; my wife is a devout believer...but more and more she sees something horrible happen and can't deny it when I point out that religion did that. She still has her higher power but is starting to see the brainrot and brainwashing in her friends and family and can't understand why they do what they do while calling themselves 'christians'. It's not faith; it's just social self-service.
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.It’s useful to do so. It gives a person meaning and purpose in life.
Humans are tribalistic, like leaders who are assertive and charismatic, like simple answers, are easily swayed by emotions, fall victim to logical fallacies, and a plethora of other things that all work just fine if you're operating on a tribal level as we did for most of human history, or rather prehistory. Now that we are in a different phase of technological growth, which has brought with it massive social change, getting rid of all of that superstitious nonsense is very difficult because of aforementioned characteristics. What were beneficial as it tribal species, and arguably even after that, is now a liability. Or at least more of a hindrance to progress.
Because it's been the way it always has been, because people also hate change, are lazy, and tended to prefer both avoiding cognitive dissidents and minimizing effort to achieve desired results, getting rid of religion is a nightmare hassle. Even when the evidence is right there in front of them, people don't care. At least not enough of them. They'd rather listen to their authority figure, or do what all their friends are doing. Which if you're doing what all your friends are doing it just turns into a circle jerk. But since they're in that circle jerk, they tend to just stay in it, and because the people in it are their friends or family, they defend it because it's their tribe. We're kind of hardwired that way.
TLDR, people are dumb monkeys.
I listened to a great podcast on the subject last week which was super helpful, https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/what-does-it-feel-like-to-believe.
For me, I just do. It's just who I am and what I feel. I don't really talk about it outside of my church friends, but I just believe. I don't think the Bible is terribly accurate and regard it much as I do Arabian Nights, a book of fantastic stories based loosely on events. I also think it has much to offer in teaching you how to treat others and live your life as a good person, and that's what I take away from it. I find Jesus honestly a touch creepy, but I never stop believing in a higher power of sorts.
Also I honestly have made the best friends I've ever made in my church life. Horrible homophobic Christians aside, there's some really excellent people who genuinely love you and do good things to meet there.
I think it's comfort. That can be if different things for different people and it can be many things at once.
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Spiritual comfort that your god loves you.
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Emotional comfort that you can do no wrong.
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Community comfort that you and the people like you are the chosen people.
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Life/death comfort for what happens after death.
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Intellectual comfort to know all the answers.
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Vindictive comfort to hate the people you want to.
It can just keep going.
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Religion dissolves uncertainty. Why does….? Because the sky man said so. How does….? Because the sky man made it that way. What should I do with my life and how should I live it? Here’s a book written by the sky man and it has all the answers. No more thinking… I suppose it’s probably of great comfort to many.
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!
I'd say it's partly to find some comfort with life's many uncertainties, and one of several ways to achieve a sense of purpose when struggling for some.
Because they did in 2023
I believe in religion. It definitely exists. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism etc. They all exist. Guaranteed.
How can you not believe in them?
We've proved the popular religions wrong definitively, but the truth's turned out to be unbearably horrifying for most people.
Dear (my) god, you folks are irrational. If someone acts a certain way, judge them for it! But judging anyone with faith just because you don't believe in that!? I can't prove God exists any more than you can prove they don't. If a religious person acts kind, fair, and rational, you shouldn't have anything against them, should you? But this post isn't about American right-wingers, or extremist Islamic Muslims, is it? It's about anyone who has any faith at all, just because you don't believe the same thing. Caring Christians literally building homes for people internationally, Sikhs feeding anyone, no matter their beliefs...
I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but that's literally small-minded.
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.
I can think of four possible reasons:-
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It works on my system - We are shaped by our experiences. To someone who had their life turned around by a religious order (or a religious individual), it would make sense to follow their teachings.
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Opium of the masses - Life is filled with suffering. It is nice to imagine that there is someone looking out for you. An afterlife free of suffering is even better.
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Just following orders - If you want to do something, but don't think your community will support you, it is easier if you say 'god told me to do it'. It might also make it easier to justify the action to yourself.
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Church of England - You don't care much either way, but it's too much of a hassle to leave. Plus meeting your friends and neighbours every week is fun.
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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.
When you're brainwashed from birth, it's difficult to recognize you've been brainwashed.
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 we're more akin to LLMs than we might be comfortable to admit. Or at least parts of us, subsystems of our psyches... Brains are belief engines more than they are objective parsers of reality.
Because they have enough evidence to satisfy them that they should, if they're rational; because they were taught to and never questioned it through self-examination, if they're not.
Note that evidence is not the same as proof; other users have pointed out examples of evidence such as 'testimony from trusted authorities such as parents' and 'personal spiritual experiences' and since those answers were very detailed I won't repeat them here.
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.
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.
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
lifedeath.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.
Never ever underestimate the amazing dumbness level of humankind.
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.
People can have a rich spiritual life and not believe in religion.
For me its a combination of learning it since childhood and experiencing minor things that i can't explain differently.
For example once i had a thought in my mind that i should go home that evening when i see the clouds. Later at the bbq i remembered that and looked into the sky and saw some clouds in the distance and just knew that these were the clouds. But it didn't looked like it should rain, and the weather forecast was also clear. So i stayed. Later when i went to the train, a huge number of people from a heavy metal concert that just finished came, and enough people wanted to take the last train that day that some didn't make it inside. If i had gone home when i saw the clouds, i wouldn't have been in that overcrowded train.
Also for me my faith looks consistent internally and with other stuff that i see.
It's still not too late for you.
Because it can't truly be proven that there either is or isn't a god / gods.
You can laugh at people for believing in a god, but at the same time I'm willing to bet you can't prove that there there isn't one.
In my mind, atheism makes just as much sense as religion - they are both total assumptions based on incomplete data. Agnosticism is the only sensible way.
