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| Thoughts About Religions |
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| (Inspirational Writings) |
| How is it that we can find religious ideas wherever we go, it seems as far back in the past as we can see. The best place to start to with our spontaneous common sense is answer to the question of origin. Everybody seems to have some institutions about the origin of religion, indeed psychologists and anthropologists who like to study how mental process create religions face the minor occupational hazard of constantly running into people who think they already have a perfectly adequate solutions. They are often quite willing to impart their wisdom and sometimes imply that further work on this question is, if not altogether futile, at least certainly undemanding. Most accounts of the origins of religions emphasize one of the following suggestions: human mind demands explanations, human hearts seek comfort, human society requires order, human intellect is illusion-prone. To express this in more detail, here are some possible scenarios. |
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| - Religion provides explanation: it explains puzzling natural phenomena, explains puzzling experiences, explains origin of tings, explains why there is evil and suffering. |
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| - Religion provides comfort: make morality less unremarkable and allays anxiety. |
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| - Religion provides social order: It holds society together, perpetuates a particular social order, and supports morality. |
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| - Religion is a cognitive illusion, etc. |
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On the other hand the diversity of religion is not just the fact that some people are called or call themselves Buddhist and others Baptist, it goes deeper in how people conceive of supernatural agents and what they think these agents are like or what they can do, and how they can do. These may be one unique God or many different gods or spirits or ancestors, or a combination of these different kinds. Some people have one supreme God but this does not always mean to them that he or she is terribly important. In many places in Africa there are two supreme Gods. One is a very abstract supreme deity and the other is more down to earth. But neither of them is really involved in peoples' everyday affairs, where ancestors, spirits and witches are much more important, for them some gods die, and many spirits are really stupid. (Ref I page 7) Salvation is not always a central preoccupation; official religion is not the whole of religion. In many places including Europe people suspect that there are witches around trying to attach them. In official Islam there is no God but God, but many Moslems are terrified of Jinn and Afreet-Spirits, ghost and witches. In the United States religion is officially a matter of denomination: Christians of various shades, Jesus, Hindus etc., but many people are seriously engaged in interactions with aliens or ghosts. Some people also may have religion without having (a) religion. We have a word for religion. This is convenient label that we use to put together all the ideas, actions, rules and objects that have to do with the existence and properties of super human agents such as God. Not everyone has this explicit concept or the idea that religion stuff is different from the profane or everyday domain. Also some people may have religions without faith (ref. 1 page 9). A familiar scenario assumes that humans in general have certain general intellectual concerns. People want to understand events and processes - that is, to explain, predict and perhaps control them. But our studies have come to the conclusion that: Religious concepts do not always provide reassurance and comfort. Deliverance from morality is no quite the universal Longing we often assume. Religious concepts are indeed connected to human emotional systems, which are connected to life-threatening circumstances. A different angle, our emotional programs are an aspect of our evolutionary heritage which may explain how they affect religious concepts (ref.I page 22). |
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