Why do people believe in Religion?
Very interesting subject and most people spend their whole lives worshiping some humans as gods or messengers of a god or religion without understanding the underlying psychology.
The trait of believing external agency controls the world is passed across generations,
This phenomenon we see more in countries or societies where poverty or lack of scientific education or uncertain future are acting in tandem to promote this behavior and this behavior is passed on to subsequent generations.
Example situations are like those below
A poverty-stricken individual or family or community desperately struggles to fulfill their daily needs or suffers from an unknown disease and starts believing a man/woman disguised as having abilities to make their wishes fulfilled or diseases cured.
A community that is suffering from insecurity with respect to food or security starts believing a man/woman who starts giving assurances and bold predictions for success, in the hope of positive outcomes, and people start worshiping this human being or some kind of external agency.
A con man/woman starts making statements saying god came to his dreams and revealed some truths, and starts preaching those truths and adds his own set of moral and pseudo-science education to it and in-secure people start believing in these and spread them to other people, this is the most common tactic employed at the start of their ascendence to do God-dom, what people mostly misunderstand here is, why god chose only this guy to reveal the truth, not anybody else or nor to the community itself, if God really wants to reveal the truth to the community, he should have told everybody.
Above all makes sense when people are suffering from poverty and lack of education or an uncertain future.
What about educated and wealthy people suffering from these con-man tricks or believing in a religion or a human god?
The trait of believing external agency controls the world is passed across generations,
Fear of an uncertain future makes you believe in god, Faced with uncontrollable situations When socially isolated Or for the reasons of social acceptance (living in a community that follows a certain religion and if this person does not practice it, he/she will become isolated)
A belief or faith as long as it is not hurting your well-being and not hurting the community and promotes social living is good, and this is one of the reasons.
People tend to have an inclination towards self-enhancement or self-development and thus want to latch on to something which can provide that, however without an assumption you cannot proceed further and hence you will start on that path.
To summarize in one line “There are no atheists in foxholes”
Image Courtesy
Fährtenleser, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
