Why are religious people religious?

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I mean that there are perfectly intelligent people that believe in a deity of some form, they might not even grow up in particularly religious homes but they end up desiring a religion. There must be an explanatory reason for such a thing.

Why do so many non-religeous people claim to hate evangelism yet go on about religeon non-stop?

You already stated that, I said that the answer didn't explain everything because the argument is not taken seriously, especially not by people of intelligence as there are a few flaws in it, such as the existence of multiple religions.

If you are referring to me, then (as I stated at the start of the thread) I am doing this to try and work out how people are religious.
From what people have said, I now accept that I have a problem with seeing things from another person's point of view, and I am at least trying to fix that. Jesus f*****g Christ, I have recognised that I have a problem and I am trying to do something about it.

you didnt get the point the 2nd time either
i am not going through it again

well as dostoevsky noted in The Devils, some peoples atheism verges on religion.
Wasn't it Kirilov who committed suicide because he was too happy. It's a long time since i read it, i can't remember.

Let's see.

Pascal's wager is flawed.

Whether or not it is logical or illogical: if we assume that there is some underlying rationality to human action as I think we all are, then there are reasons and finding those reasons is something that we need to do. Ii didn't think that an iteration of the rationalist perspective on the world was necessary.

It is a tough question. Yeah, no duh, but Sopho wants to know so saying it is "tough" doesn't help much.

you said it kid

Why religous people are religous?
I think the reason is more a psychological and emotional thing rather than logical.

A few people seek for something to believe in or something to give their life a meaning, we know that humans are very aware of their existence and they question themselves, like where we come from or where are we going, what happens after we die, and stuff like that, that is the difference between humans and animals. They don't have this kind of understanding about questioning their existance, therefore they are not religious and they don't believe in God.

Another thing, history tells us that mankind had to set rules in every society, rules to give all the population the norm on how they have to behave in a civilazed world, how to coexist with each other, what is acceptable, what is unacceptable, what is considered good and what is considered bad, so Religion was the best option, you act good you are rewarded by a superior force and you are bad you are punished by a superior force, that was enough motivation for that society for how to behave.

Well today is different, we human beings in 2007 are not suppouse to be motivated by fear created on religion like it was thousands of years ago, but religions still exist. Religion is a motivation for people to keep living and having a meaning in their lives in under-developed countries, like the middle east for example.

faith is a part of our psychological evolution. it's kinda like how we had an apendix for eating raw meats and processing foods. equally, faith is becoming a psychological vestigial function that serves more today as a detriment than as a benefit in many areas of people's lives.


psychology is very logical. at least when you combine it with neuroscience. when you go for coke-heads like freud and jung....yeah, it's kinda wrong and not entirely logical.

That make sense because the brain of early man (or pre-man) was likely intelligent enough to know there was fundamental missing understanding of the nature of the universe but with no real way to gain that knowledge even in 100,000 years he instead developed processes that labeled the unknown as "supernatural".

I would like to think that aspergers is evolutions way at getting to a logic based understanding of the universe. And limited data does suggest a high percent of US bases aspies are atheist which is very rare for the US population. But that data seems to be diluted by the fact lot of aspies are obsessively religious or accepting of supernatural events.

yes but that's also due to the person's surrounding nature. if you grew up in like...northern florida...of course you're gonna be all kinds of crazy religious. i had moderate religious influence on my life and i went with atheism because the information was presented and i was able to separate myself from the box and look outside.

it's indoctrination and ones ability to step out of it. thankfully, i'm able to cumulatively learn and apply what i already know to what new things i learn.

well, there sure are people who are just born into a religious setting and never go out to ask questions.

intelligent people who go religious on their own will probably do so because of their ideas towards meaning of life.
asking for meaning is a very human thing (we insert "meaning"-connections whereever we can - from science to superstition, its all about presuming connection to order the things we encounter in the world), so people also ask about the meaning of their life. answers can be most diverse, spanning the entire spectrum from assuming objective meaning given to the universe by a metaphysical entity to bare-bones nihilism.
how these answers come to be in the individual case depends on what one is able to accept and what one is content with, how one interprets indices around them (the fact that they are actually being, the way they perceive nature, etcetera...) and a lot of other factors. for most people, it just seems "the most right-feeling alternative" - a pure gut decision so to say.

anyway, lately, a lot of scientists turn towards schopenhauerism as they research the workings of nature day in day out, find the most fascinating things and want to know WHY this happens. schopenhauer comes in handy as he doesnt get very spiritual wishy-washy, but makes metaphysical assumptions that are easy to accept for a natural scientist and supply him with a motive why nature does all these amazing feats.

for me, the idea of god or any objective meaning is strange, too, and i just cant make myself believe it - but its the same way for religious people. in the end, the likes of us dont have any more proof for our position than "it feels like the right thing to assume". (okay, we can say that we dont perceive any god or meaning or whatever, which is a pretty strong observation, but then, we cant tell WHY things happen either.)

just relying on science to tell us that there is no hint of a meaning doesnt work, however. one then needs a more thorough grasp of what science methodically is and what scientific statements therefore are.

Pharasees and Sadducces where self righteous religious leaders who where the biggest thorns in Christ's side ever since he started his ministry. They went by their own traditions and their own egos than to accept who they very well knew was the Christ. I don't follow religion, I follow Christ, my faith is in him, not man made traditions and rules. I've annoyed alot of parents when I insisted their children bring their own bibles into my classroom when I taught sunday school. Why did I insist on that???? I never wanted the children to believe anything just because I said so. Why did the parents think I was being silly for this???? Well that, I will never understand....F.Y.I I was the only one in my family who went to church, and I got alot of hassles for that. And from what I see, in this world....there are far more hypocrits in people without faith then those who have faith. For me, I just got tired of it all, and needed something far more real then what the world had to offer me.

How?