Why do religions continue to survive and even thrive in the face of the seemingly overwhelming evidence against them? Even if you don’t believe in a particular religion, or even religion in general, they still have a major effect on your life.
Political elections and many laws are motivated by religious conviction. September 11, 2001 – the single biggest event in recent times was religiously motivated and has change the face of the world. It’s at the root of billions of dollars of additional expenses and has caused a major shift in the focus of many laws and government actions.
Garbage-in, garbage-out
Everything about religion can be explained in terms of mankind’s intelligence. Because we are intelligent and born with so few instincts we therefore have a long learning curve on the road to adulthood.
As a result we are disproportionately influenced by the notions in our environment when we are young. This makes the garbage-in, garbage-out results of early religious indoctrination a major obstacle to independent thinking in children, and therefore to the foundations of secular society at large.
Religions survive and thrive because
- They satisfy one of mankind’s most basic spiritual (intellectual) needs, to understand the universe (reality).
- Precedence: They have been around for thousands of years. They’re tradition and have the weight of history behind them. They are deeply ingrained in mankind’s collective unconscious.
- It relieves us from thinking about our own death by offering the hope of an everlasting life.
- Religion removes uncertainty, provides order, meaning and purpose to one’s life and it lifts the burden of reality.
- It’s well organized, it has sacred texts and an organizational structure to promote its self.
- You can’t prove it wrong.
- Successes (in prayer) count more than failures.
- Religion failures of can be explained away by a counter-force… the devil.
- Christianity, in it’s infancy, was promoted by force as the state religion by the most powerful empire in the world: Rome.
- It kills off it’s opponents. Literally. Think the Spanish inquisition, Salman Rushdie, Galileo, and the various government enforced blasphemy laws.
- Religions are simpler than reality. They can always provide a plausible sounding answer to an uneducated mind and rarely if ever have to say “I don’t know”
Religions survive because they satisfy some of man’s most basic needs. After the basic physical needs of food, water and shelter are met, man begins to turn inward and ask questions about himself.
True or false?
Religions don’t have to be true to survive. They just need to provide plausible enough answers and be indoctrinated into young and uneducated minds to reach a critical mass of believers who will innocently teach it to the next generation.