How Religions Formed and the Implications of Their Continued Existence

Religion is an evolved cultural behavior. Those who are very involved with religion do so to satisfy social and psychological needs such as:

1. an answer to the question of death

2. a reason to socialize

3. having an easy answer in the face of ambiguity

4. giving oneself a delusion of grandeur

5. group definition

6. the regulation of society to ensure the proper mating process

7. the projection of one's inner fears, hatreds, joys, hopes, and values

8. an escape from the pressures of reality

All religions/cults share one or more aspects in common. Choosing between religions would be choosing between that the aspects that they use. Although religion is not based entirely on reason it does involve some aspects of rational thought. The ratio of reality to fantasy differs based on said religion.

The one thing that is almost universally common to religions is that they ask their followers to give money.

Humans anthropomorphize "god" because humans have little else to go on. All they have is their own human experiences. So when they create a definition of a deity the ascribe their own traits to it. This is common across all cultures.

Humans project their own psychologies onto their defined deities. For example if their culture is violent they will create a violent "god". If their culture is introspective they will create and introspective "god". The definition of "god" depends on the culture creating it.

"God" is usually defined by widely followed religions as a father type of figure. Largely throughout humanity when something went wrong people would look to this father figure to save them. This is of course an extension of people's childhood experiences.

Now lets look at religion on a scale of irrationality to rationality.

1. The stronger one's faith is in the literal religious dogma the closer they are to the irrationality side of the scale.

2. The less someone relies on literal religious dogma the closer they are to the rationality side of the scale.

Every religion has their share of followers on either side of the scale. The extremists tend to form inner circles and enclaves. Those barely in the faith are on the outer circle, as they still have independent thought.

In the contemporary world what we have is religious collectivists, religious individualists, and the non-religious. Collectivism plus fanaticism leads entire countries to go on irrational wars. Individualist fanaticism leads individuals into creating terrorist acts or self isolation. The non-religious on the other hand are simply trying to live at peace while the religious battle each other over their delusions of grandeur.