Are religious beliefs just a stage through which all sapient species must progress?

Question

Think about; even though we have just taken the very first step into sapience, we can kick the crap out of every other species of life on this planet. We can even kick the crap out of the planet itself! So why bother progressing further? Could this be why so many choose to believe wholeheartedly in imaginary concepts? Is all we need to progress out of this stage a motivator of some kind?

=42: So you admit that we were atheists before we became religious? If you use that argument then you're admitting that the bible is wrong. You sure you want to do that?

Answer 1

why must we choose? for many its a matter of upbringing as you know...but for many it keeps them feeling safe and on the leash

animals have no sense of religion, perhaps being able to have the concept of religion of spirituality is on of the sapient characteristics...and if you want to talk about stages according to stephen hawkins were upon the edge of destroying ourselves anyway so might as well keep our religious concepts, dosnt hurt anything...sure theres the few wars and such but we'll always find reasons for such, and it keeps overpopulation down

and where is it exactly u imagine us "progressing" towards? utopia? such a thing would never exist... not to mention it sounds rather boring as a heaven concept...

as for motivators just it slowly creeps through many a person as many a quotable person has said relative to, the world is changed one person at a time...on a mass scale sounds more like a forceful conversion which is ironically what most religions did.

"Are religious beliefs just a stage through which all sapient species must progress? " hah who dares hold the authority or information to define a process sapients go through...who knows we may even look upon ourselves as gods some day...which isnt far off from many today...which leads to religion=ego...as long as we got one we got the other...as long as were "human" we got ego...and to ******* complicate it more buddhists believe in balancing the ego etc etc but there are still many who barely follow their religion and still consider themselves a member of it...

Answer 2

That's an interesting thought, but we don't really have a way of comparing that to other species that have gone through a similar evolution of consciousness. If, though, we find evidence of a highly evolved race of religious tyrannosaurs that underwent a radical shift of understanding due to growth in knowledge of the workings of the physical world... well, I'll start to give it some more thought.

Answer 3

Don't know about religion but how about a relationship with God? Like any relationship, you discover, experience, enjoy the presence of the Other. Very different from the religious beliefs that you talk about.

Answer 4

I've seen other sapient species grow up and few of them go through what humans are going through (at least at such a slow pace).

Answer 5

Maybe the atheist step was BEFORE the religious step ? Did you ever think of that, huh ? Maybe the brain of an atheist isn't sufficiently evolved enough to accept religious concepts ? (you started it).

Edit - Actually no, I was making a light hearted statement that is the obvious flipside of your argument. Unlike you, I have an open mind, and will not discount any possibility for something yet to be proven, either way. I was brought up to be a New Testament kind of guy, so your counter-argument makes no sense to me.

Answer 6

Nope.
But your opinion would have fit in well with early 20th century Russian and German intellectuals. Unfortunately, they failed to achieve the rational utopia that they advocated.

Answer 7

Sigmund Freud thought of religion as the adolescence of society .

Answer 8

It's not a stage.
It's a sense of direction & purpose.
Maybe if you tried it out, you can see how life can be changed.
It just has to be truly within you.