are you just doing it for fun?

Question

is religon truely belived, or is it just something so helpful in many peoples lives at one time or another that they never stop using it to guide themselves? is it really there to get believers to live a guided, gaurnteed good life? do people just do it because they are bored? do people just do it because they know nothing else and cannot live without it?

Answer 1

a one word answer....
HOPE

religion gives people something to believe in. Even when it seems like there is nothing else to believe in. Especially when is comes to fate. Many people use God as a fall back when things dont go their way, "God has planned otherwise". Religion is an honest attempt to make sense out of an existence that is vaguely understood at most.

In fact...many existing laws come from a religious moral stand point....gambling, prostitution...there is not reason for these to be illegal other than the fact that they are immoral.

Answer 2

Before we had one god, (monotheism), we had many (polytheism), like the god of the sea: Neptune, or Poseidon, or the goddess of strife: Discordia, or Eris, in the Roman and Greek pantheons, and there were numerous others, like the Babylonian and Egyptian. Before that, there was a belief in magic & spirits. When we evolved from single celled organisms, we didn't have minds at all; when we crawled out of the oceans, we had no language: such belief systems only came about when we developed a complex language, and were capable of asking the question: "Where did we come from?" The shamans, wanting to maintain their high status positions, formulated answers, and, because no one could disprove them, those answers were given to the young ones, and were modified and codified over the generations, as the priests began to understand how this could be used to their benefit.

Answer 3

This is very appropriate for the science category, since people consider religion for the exact same reason they consider science. The basic premise of science is that there are certain absolute characteristics of our physical universe, and that we have the ability to understand much of it. The physical laws of the universe are a matter of absolute, objective fact. Our job is to understand them, not to have opinions on them. A physics theory is either (1) right; (2) wrong; or (3) tentative, where we lack the capability to prove it right or wrong.

The true purpose of religion is to learn about God and what He wants us to know and do. If it turns out that there is no God, then religion will become superfluous. If God is real, then He has the right and authority to define the standards for our behavior, along with the rewards and penalties for our actions and beliefs. If God tells us that murder is wrong, then it is absolutely wrong because God has so decreed. It's not wrong because we think society will work better if we penalize it. God decides my penalties and rewards by His standards, not mine or anyone else's. I pursue religion because I want to be right rather than wrong in this most important area of life. If I promote a scientific theory that turns out to be wrong, I lose some professional reputation and financial reward. I don't lose my eternal destiny.

Answer 4

wow...