What causes religion?

[Shamraz_Khan]

Re: What causes religion?

^^^Atheism can’t be a religion b/c its missing to vital ingredients 1) the concept of God/deity and 2) doctrine(s) (beliefs, rituals & practices, etc). Thus not believing does not equal believing. Btw, secular humanism is not same atheism per se.

Council for Secular Humanism

What Is Secular Humanism?

Secular Humanism is a term which has come into use in the last thirty years to describe a world view with the following elements and principles:

A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

[AlexB]

Re: What causes religion?

Short answer - human nature.
Long answer - too long for the forum.
Semi-long answer - most of the religions boil down to one simple notion - obey and follow the Almighty, Master, Alpha-male and It will protect you from bad things and you'll get candy afterwords. This is a mentality characteristic of social animals with a vertical (master/subordinate) social structure. Shortly, it is a human nature. Reference: see other animals with a similar social structure. Start with chimpanzee.

[hareem01]

Re: What causes religion?

Islam says that too, AlexB. Islam says it's natural to believe in God.

[Med911]

Re: What causes religion?

@psyah

Absolutely agree with diwana ... You only need to look at history to see that there is empirical evidence that God sent down religion - through revelation ... these new ideas of "people developing religion from scratch" is baseless historically ... History teaches us that revealed religion came first.

Revelation often in the form of scripture is often dismissed as historical evidence ... and I find this an annoying thing ... almost a conspiracy perhaps ...

So who revealed the Greek, Norse and Egyptian religions?

Biblical evidence isnt always ignored. Occasionally it can be atleast slightly accurate. Every myth has a grain of truth after all.

[psyah]

Re: What causes religion?

So who revealed the Greek, Norse and Egyptian religions?

Biblical evidence isnt always ignored. Occasionally it can be atleast slightly accurate. Every myth has a grain of truth after all.

No ... I think the question should be asked in another way ... this is the question ...

"Is there evidence that Greek, Norse and Egyptian religions have developed through time gradually changing?"

Now my premise for asking the question this way is that we in Islam claim that there were:

a) 124,000 prophets sent to all nations to deliver the news of Allah, the angels, the concept of worship, the concept of hell and heaven, etc ...
b) That people changed religion to suit their needs or through the years people forgot about religion and introduced myth into what they already knew.
c) The concept of Allah (SWT) existed in pagan Arabia in the early 7th century CE, because their ancestors were from Ibrahim (AS) and Ismail (AS) whose religion was Islam ... and by inference I suggest the same must be the case with other faiths too.

The common aspect in all these religions is some sort of concept of a "Creation story" - that how is it that we have what we have ... ??? The idea of a Supreme God ... is an indicator that gradually people introduced peers and supporters to the Supreme God. The gave the God and all the lesser ones human characteristics and human flaws ... and so on ...

What aspect do we need to look for in order to see signs of a developing religion - well we need to look for evidence that the faiths were simple and became more complex in time ... If there is evidence for this then we have our basis ...

[diwana]

Re: What causes religion?

@Shamraz_Khan

^^^Atheism can’t be a religion b/c its missing to vital ingredients 1) the concept of God/deity and 2) doctrine(s) (beliefs, rituals & practices, etc). Thus not believing does not equal believing. Btw, secular humanism is not same atheism per se.

Council for Secular Humanism

The definition of relgion does not require presence of deity or God. I expect you to know that.

And what you wrote about secular humanism as “conviction”, to be realistic it does fall under religious definition too.

A lot of ‘scientific’ ideas also based on assumptions, theory and ‘most likely’ reasons based on the current knowledge and understandings of human being. Not absolute and not absolutely as facts.

Secular humanism is just another form of ‘religion’ as you presented.

@AlexB

Short answer - human nature.
Long answer - too long for the forum.
Semi-long answer - most of the religions boil down to one simple notion - obey and follow the Almighty, Master, Alpha-male and It will protect you from bad things and you’ll get candy afterwords. This is a mentality characteristic of social animals with a vertical (master/subordinate) social structure. Shortly, it is a human nature. Reference: see other animals with a similar social structure. Start with chimpanzee.

Many living creatures have this phenomenon/need of assigning someone at a higher level than others. This higher level may be assigned to the creation from SAME species. Such as queen bee.

Obeying any almighty however is not needed in a religion by definition.

Religion simply means following a set of rules and very religiously so, (pun intended) which encompasses many areas of social life.

Human also ‘need’ a set of rules to follow, hence the reason for a religion.

[Bigboi]

Re: What causes religion?

Why do people talk w/o Knowledge? Especially if they have time for the World, but not for a Book? How many of you went through a deep study of Religion? All what you do is plain gossip w/o any base.