Why do people believe in God?

[Pinball1970]

You posted “This many people? For this long? Without evidence?”


I answered with the flat earthers. Yes despite 2000 years of logical scientific endeavour there are still some people that think the earth is flat.

Peoples can be wrong for a very long time despite being corrected.

 

[Write4U]

An active volcano is a result of seismic activity, unstable larva lakes and other geological features but to ancient man? Mother earth is angry, the mountain god is angry.

And it started even before man split off from the common ancestor. This can be seen today in our cousins the chimps. There seems to be clear evidence of some kind of worship.

Mysterious chimpanzee behaviour could be 'sacred rituals' and show that chimps believe in god
The ritual has similarities with the building of shrines or cairns, a human ritual that has been happening for thousands of years and across civilisations
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...show-that-chimps-believe-in-god-a6911301.html

Note that the trees used are hollow and echo in response to being hit by the rocks.
It is the echo that must intrigue the chimps. Where does it come from? Tree gods?

 

[exchemist]

That is better.

Yes, we are intelligent pattern seeking mammals and we anthropomorphise objects and events.

An active volcano is a result of seismic activity, unstable larva lakes and other geological features but to ancient man? Mother earth is angry, the mountain god is angry.

This is getting somewhere as an explanation, but in my view still risks the Dawkins Fallacy, that of thinking the purpose of religion is to account for the natural world. That, if true, would put all religion at odds with science, which it isn't. (The myth of opposition between science and religion was invented at the end of the c.19th by an American called Dixon White. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Warfare_of_Science_with_Theology_in_Christendom)

The purpose of religion, surely, is to provide a guide to the individual in living his or her life: a sense of purpose, a reason to behave altruistically, a reason to control one's animal appetites, a way of handling psychologically traumatic events, such as the loss of loved ones, of handling success and failure, a way of accepting fate, and so on.

It may well be a product of human psychology but there's lot more to it than primitive rationalisations of natural disasters.

 

[Pinball1970]

This is getting somewhere as an explanation, but in my view still risks the Dawkins Fallacy, that of thinking the purpose of religion is to account for the natural world. That, if true, would put all religion at odds with science, which it isn't. (The myth of opposition between science and religion was invented at the end of the c.19th by an American called Dixon White. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Warfare_of_Science_with_Theology_in_Christendom)

The purpose of religion, surely, is to provide a guide to the individual in living his or her life: a sense of purpose, a reason to behave altruistically, a reason to control one's animal appetites, a way of handling psychologically traumatic events, such as the loss of loved ones, of handling success and failure, a way of accepting fate, and so on.

It may well be a product of human psychology but there's lot more to it than primitive rationalisations of natural disasters.

I gave just one example but I think it is a big one.
Social animals evolved to behave co-operatively way before they worshipped the sun.
Being a selfish loner is not an Evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) John Maynard Smith, Trivers, Hamilton all did treatments on this in the 1960s/70s.
An excellent book on altruism, kin selection and evolution and behaviour in social animals is the Selfish Gene Dawkins 1976. Covers all that research.
In short, religion certainly aided cohesion in ancient tribes but the social and biological evolution was going on well before this.

 

[C C]

[...] The purpose of religion, surely, is to provide a guide to the individual in living his or her life: a sense of purpose, a reason to behave altruistically, a reason to control one's animal appetites, [...]

That's arguably amenable to some of the etymology of the term. (footnote at bottom)

[...] a way of handling psychologically traumatic events, such as the loss of loved ones, of handling success and failure, a way of accepting fate, and so on.

Life was certainly a lot more miserable in the earliest days of humankind, and many offspring were required because so many children died. Back then, the struggle might have seemed pointless to most survivors without the augmented reality that imaginative beliefs provided. Whereas today, sci-tech and capitalism have created such a haven and array of amusements that it's easier to abandon transmundane hope and purpose.

It may well be a product of human psychology but there's lot more to it than primitive rationalisations of natural disasters.

The how and why of evolutionary development of our belief capacities may always consist of "just so" inferences that we accept more because they sound so right, rather than non-speculative evidence that can be held in the hand.

How did belief [in general] evolve?
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/religion-origins/

Evolutionary origin of religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religion

- - - footnote (etymology, origins) - - -

Religio: In classic antiquity, it meant conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation, or duty towards anything and was used mostly in secular or mundane contexts. In religious contexts, it also meant the feelings of "awe and anxiety" caused by gods and spirits that would help Romans "live successfully".

[...] In general, religio referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God. Religio was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions such as hesitation, caution, anxiety, fear; feelings of being bound, restricted, inhibited; which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context.

- - - - - - - - -

The concept of religion (SEP): The concept religion did not originally refer to a social genus or cultural type. It was adapted from the Latin term religio, a term roughly equivalent to “scrupulousness”.

Religio also approximates “conscientiousness”, “devotedness”, or “felt obligation”, since religio was an effect of taboos, promises, curses, or transgressions, even when these were unrelated to the gods.

In western antiquity, and likely in many or most cultures, there was a recognition that some people worshipped different gods with commitments that were incompatible with each other and that these people constituted social groups that could be rivals. In that context, one sometimes sees the use of nobis religio to mean “our way of worship”.

Nevertheless, religio had a range of senses and so Augustine could consider but reject it as the right abstract term for “how one worships God” because the Latin term (like the Latin terms for “cult” and “service”) was used for the observance of duties in both one’s divine and one’s human relationships.

[...] The history of the concept religion above shows how its senses have shifted over time. A concept used for scrupulous devotion was retooled to refer to a particular type of social practice. But the question—what type?—is now convoluted...

- - - - - - - - -

Roots of Religion: The etymology of “religion” is indeed disputed. This is not, of course, the case when it comes to English, which clearly inherited the word from Latin religio. Rather it applies to Latin itself, in which it is not clear what the component parts of the noun religio are or mean. The ancient Romans disagreed about this. Cicero, for example, thought that religio derived from the verb relegere in its sense of “to re-read or go over a text,” religion being a body of custom and law that demands study and transmission.

On the other hand, the Christian writer Lactantius, writing in the early fourth century, opted for religare, a verb meaning “to fasten or bind.” “We are,” he said in his book “Divinae Institutiones,” “tied to God and bound to him [religati] by the bond of piety, and it is from this, and not, as Cicero holds, from careful study [relegendo], that religion has received its name.” Lactantius’s greater contemporary, Augustine, preferred this etymology to Cicero’s while suggesting yet another possibility: re-eligere, “to choose again,” religion being the recovery of the link with God that sin has sundered.

It may be that Lactantius and Augustine rejected Cicero’s etymology because it made religio seem too close to such Jewish terms as torah, mishnah and talmud, all Hebrew words having to do with teaching and studying. Since unlike the practice of Judaism, the Christian religion, as they saw it, was a matter of binding faith and commitment rather than of accumulated knowledge, the religare etymology may have appealed to them for the opposite reason than that proposed by Rappaport: as a way of distancing Christianity from Jewish concepts rather than of adopting them.​

_

 

[exchemist]

That's arguably amenable to some of the etymology of the term. (footnote at bottom)



Life was certainly a lot more miserable in the earliest days of humankind, and many offspring were required because so many children died. Back then, the struggle might have seemed pointless to most survivors without the augmented reality that imaginative beliefs provided. Whereas today, sci-tech and capitalism have created such a haven and array of amusements that it's easier to abandon transmundane hope and purpose.



The how and why of evolutionary development of our belief capacities may always consist of "just so" inferences that we accept more because they sound so right, rather than non-speculative evidence that can be held in the hand.

How did belief [in general] evolve?
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/religion-origins/

Evolutionary origin of religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religion

- - - footnote (etymology, origins) - - -

Religio: In classic antiquity, it meant conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation, or duty towards anything and was used mostly in secular or mundane contexts. In religious contexts, it also meant the feelings of "awe and anxiety" caused by gods and spirits that would help Romans "live successfully".

[...] In general, religio referred to broad social obligations towards anything including family, neighbors, rulers, and even towards God. Religio was most often used by the ancient Romans not in the context of a relation towards gods, but as a range of general emotions such as hesitation, caution, anxiety, fear; feelings of being bound, restricted, inhibited; which arose from heightened attention in any mundane context.

- - - - - - - - -

The concept of religion (SEP): The concept religion did not originally refer to a social genus or cultural type. It was adapted from the Latin term religio, a term roughly equivalent to “scrupulousness”.

Religio also approximates “conscientiousness”, “devotedness”, or “felt obligation”, since religio was an effect of taboos, promises, curses, or transgressions, even when these were unrelated to the gods.

In western antiquity, and likely in many or most cultures, there was a recognition that some people worshipped different gods with commitments that were incompatible with each other and that these people constituted social groups that could be rivals. In that context, one sometimes sees the use of nobis religio to mean “our way of worship”.

Nevertheless, religio had a range of senses and so Augustine could consider but reject it as the right abstract term for “how one worships God” because the Latin term (like the Latin terms for “cult” and “service”) was used for the observance of duties in both one’s divine and one’s human relationships.

[...] The history of the concept religion above shows how its senses have shifted over time. A concept used for scrupulous devotion was retooled to refer to a particular type of social practice. But the question—what type?—is now convoluted...

- - - - - - - - -

Roots of Religion: The etymology of “religion” is indeed disputed. This is not, of course, the case when it comes to English, which clearly inherited the word from Latin religio. Rather it applies to Latin itself, in which it is not clear what the component parts of the noun religio are or mean. The ancient Romans disagreed about this. Cicero, for example, thought that religio derived from the verb relegere in its sense of “to re-read or go over a text,” religion being a body of custom and law that demands study and transmission.

On the other hand, the Christian writer Lactantius, writing in the early fourth century, opted for religare, a verb meaning “to fasten or bind.” “We are,” he said in his book “Divinae Institutiones,” “tied to God and bound to him [religati] by the bond of piety, and it is from this, and not, as Cicero holds, from careful study [relegendo], that religion has received its name.” Lactantius’s greater contemporary, Augustine, preferred this etymology to Cicero’s while suggesting yet another possibility: re-eligere, “to choose again,” religion being the recovery of the link with God that sin has sundered.

It may be that Lactantius and Augustine rejected Cicero’s etymology because it made religio seem too close to such Jewish terms as torah, mishnah and talmud, all Hebrew words having to do with teaching and studying. Since unlike the practice of Judaism, the Christian religion, as they saw it, was a matter of binding faith and commitment rather than of accumulated knowledge, the religare etymology may have appealed to them for the opposite reason than that proposed by Rappaport: as a way of distancing Christianity from Jewish concepts rather than of adopting them.​

_

Yes I think I recall my son, who is reading ancient history, telling me the Roman attitude to their religion was quite different from the modern Abrahamic one. It was more to do with social obligation and tradition and ritual as a way of bonding. They did not necessarily believe literally in the reality of these entities, in the we might now assume.

The older forms of Christianity e.g. Catholic, Orthodox, retain elements of this.

 

[Sarkus]

It may well be a product of human psychology but there's lot more to it than primitive rationalisations of natural disasters.

I think this may be the difference between "belief in god", and "religion". The idea that belief in god ultimately stemming from pattern recognition, disasters, explanations of the natural world etc, and religion being the "guide book" along the lines you were suggesting, with (or in some cases without) belief in god at the core.

 

[Write4U]

It may well be a product of human psychology but there's lot more to it than primitive rationalisations of natural disasters

But does it need a god? That is the question, no?

 

[exchemist]

I think this may be the difference between "belief in god", and "religion". The idea that belief in god ultimately stemming from pattern recognition, disasters, explanations of the natural world etc, and religion being the "guide book" along the lines you were suggesting, with (or in some cases without) belief in god at the core.

You make a fair point about the distinction between religion and gods, or god. But I would still contend that the role of gods or a god is not primarily as an explanation for natural events. The Greek and Roman gods, for instance, are responsible for abstractions such as wisdom, war or love. And the single god of the Abrahamic religions is a being that takes care of his people as individuals and makes rules or teachings for their guidance in their personal life.

 

[Write4U]

I think this may be the difference between "belief in god", and "religion". The idea that belief in god ultimately stemming from pattern recognition, disasters, explanations of the natural world etc, and religion being the "guide book" along the lines you were suggesting, with (or in some cases without) belief in god at the core.

Oh, I like that!

"with god" describes the why (meaning), and is a product of thought.
"without god" describes the how (method), and is a product of physics.

Take the meaning away, the method remains.

 

[Sarkus]

You make a fair point about the distinction between religion and gods, or god. But I would still contend that the role of gods or a god is not primarily as an explanation for natural events. The Greek and Roman gods, for instance, are responsible for abstractions such as wisdom, war or love. And the single god of the Abrahamic religions is a being that takes care of his people as individuals and makes rules or teachings for their guidance in their personal life.

Of course. The Roman pantheon, and the Greek before that, were long after the "gods to explain natural events" explanation took root, though. If you look at them, though, they do contain explanations for the creation of the universe, the world, the underworld, time, aspects of the world (like oceans etc) and pretty much everything else. You can find all of them in there representing the early understanding of how things came to be and why things are. The gods were their explanation for such things. In the Roman pantheon, volcanoes were caused by Vulcan, for example.
Sure, you then get gods of beauty, wisdom, love, war, etc, i.e. the abstracts, but they are also natural things that they sought to explain. Why is someone wiser than others? Oh, they've obviously been blessed by Athena, etc. Abstractions need explanations. They're more nuanced and complex than the physical (e.g. volcanoes, storms, droughts, etc) but I imagine they reflect the wider understanding of the human condition within the natural world. But within all of it does seem to be the idea that the deity explains the phenomenon, whether the phenomenon is physical or abstract. Then add bells and whistles, and bake in the oven at gas mark 4 for 30 minutes, and you get the "guide" that some priest slaps on to the deity. That's the Greek/Roman pantheon, anyway. These never evolved to monotheism but were instead simply discarded in favour of the Abrahamic One God when Christianity rolled through what is now Europe.

On that front, the Abrahamic monotheism was borne out of the Israelites worshipping Yahweh exclusively, although prior to this, as part of the Canaanite religions, Yahweh was initially one god out of a number that were worshipped, again each with various attributes as per the Greek/Roman. The idea of a single God that takes care of people is then just an evolution of this, I presume. Maybe they just had better marketing than those who stuck with polytheism.

But, sure, gods were and are more than just explanations, although I do think it's likely that's where it all started. That and animism.

 

[Sarkus]

"with god" describes the why (meaning), and is a product of thought.
"without god" describes the how (method), and is a product of physics.

Um. No. I was referring more to the likes of Buddhism, which doesn't really have deities yet is still a religion. Nothing really to do with a distinction between why and how, with thought and physics.
Not sure how you could even get to that from what I wrote. But never mind.

 

[Seattle]

"Why do people believe in God?"

Is this really worthy of discussion? Why do believe watch "The Price is Right"? No one cares? There isn't just one answer.

People believe in God because of their culture, certain aspects of human nature, etc. Your other comments about how can one know the unknowable are unanswerable as well. Many people say they don't "know" and that's why they must take it on "faith".

It's a circular argument but it's not a winnable one. You're not bring up any new information that we don't already have. Most people in this thread aren't religious in the first place.

There is just nothing new or interesting in this discussion, is there? It seems to just be another lead-in to something about Max Tegmark's mathematical universe, right?

 

[Write4U]

"Why do people believe in God?"
........
There is just nothing new or interesting in this discussion, is there? It seems to just be another lead-in to something about Max Tegmark's mathematical universe, right?

Why the gratuitous comment? Does it make you feel big?
There may be some knowledge on this forum, but some of the posters can stand a few lessons in civility.

 

[Write4U]

Not sure how you could even get to that from what I wrote. But never mind.

I am trying to be less verbose.
I thought it was rather concise and self-explanatory...

 

[Sarkus]

I am trying to be less verbose.

Sure, but you can't leave out the part where it needs to makes sense.

I thought it was rather concise and self-explanatory...

Think again, I guess.

 

[Write4U]

Sure, but you can't leave out the part where it needs to makes sense.
Think again, I guess.

OK, all religions and philosophies are products of the "mind". Science is the product of the study of "facts".

Better?

 

[Sarkus]

OK, all religions and philosophies are products of the "mind". Science is the product of the study of "facts".

Not particularly pithy. And still has no bearing to what you quoted of mine.

 

[exchemist]

Of course. The Roman pantheon, and the Greek before that, were long after the "gods to explain natural events" explanation took root, though. If you look at them, though, they do contain explanations for the creation of the universe, the world, the underworld, time, aspects of the world (like oceans etc) and pretty much everything else. You can find all of them in there representing the early understanding of how things came to be and why things are. The gods were their explanation for such things. In the Roman pantheon, volcanoes were caused by Vulcan, for example.
Sure, you then get gods of beauty, wisdom, love, war, etc, i.e. the abstracts, but they are also natural things that they sought to explain. Why is someone wiser than others? Oh, they've obviously been blessed by Athena, etc. Abstractions need explanations. They're more nuanced and complex than the physical (e.g. volcanoes, storms, droughts, etc) but I imagine they reflect the wider understanding of the human condition within the natural world. But within all of it does seem to be the idea that the deity explains the phenomenon, whether the phenomenon is physical or abstract. Then add bells and whistles, and bake in the oven at gas mark 4 for 30 minutes, and you get the "guide" that some priest slaps on to the deity. That's the Greek/Roman pantheon, anyway. These never evolved to monotheism but were instead simply discarded in favour of the Abrahamic One God when Christianity rolled through what is now Europe.

On that front, the Abrahamic monotheism was borne out of the Israelites worshipping Yahweh exclusively, although prior to this, as part of the Canaanite religions, Yahweh was initially one god out of a number that were worshipped, again each with various attributes as per the Greek/Roman. The idea of a single God that takes care of people is then just an evolution of this, I presume. Maybe they just had better marketing than those who stuck with polytheism.

But, sure, gods were and are more than just explanations, although I do think it's likely that's where it all started. That and animism.

I'm sure you are right that gods often originated in animism, which is indeed about the natural world, and you make a good argument that the Graeco-Roman gods were sort of intermediate between that more primitive idea and the present day conception.

The common thread, perhaps is the desire for humans to gain agency over their lives, whether directly or vicariously via invoking, sacrificing to, or praying to gods.

 

[Write4U]

Not particularly pithy. And still has no bearing to what you quoted of mine.

W4U said: "with god" describes the why (meaning), and is a product of thought.
"without god" describes the how (method), and is a product of physics.

Take the meaning away, the method remains.

Pithy or not, is it wrong?