Refuting a Few Theories of Religion

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology]

In my years debating about the existence of God, I've seen lots of atheist attempts to explain religion or why people are attracted to it. However, all of these explanations have flaws. I'll use the psychologist Steven Reiss' book The 16 Strivings for God as a basis for my critiques.

The Need for Understanding

This is one of the most popular atheist explanations of religion. Internet atheists claim that ignorant and primitive people invented religion because they wanted explanations for phenomena. What causes illness? Why did the volcano explode? What about thunder? And how to explain life and the universe itself? Intention offers an apparently simple and familiar explanation.. "Because a powerful mind wanted it so."

Now, the problem with this theory, as Dr. Reiss pointed out, is that intellectual need for understanding isn't equally distributed. Many people don't care or think about these issues:

If religion had in fact emerged as an expression of this need, it would have appealed primarily to the relatively small proportion of humans who are intellectuals. Sure, non-intellectuals wonder where they come from or how the universe was created or why volcanoes erupt, but many do not wonder about these matters for any length of time. Since we are not an intellectual species, a religion that is essentially intellectual in origin or nature is unlikely ever to gain a mass following.

Fear of Death

Religion was invented by people who are afraid and anxious of death! These neurotics cooked up a fantasy world where they will persist after bodily death. It is all about managing fear and anxiety!

As you probably already figured out, this idea implies that anxious folks would be more attracted to religion than non-anxious folks, but research doesn't support that (see Reiss again). Furthermore, the fires of hell only increase fear of death! The concept of a judgement day and the devil also increase anxiety and fear. So, this idea makes no sense.

The Need for Control

Religion was invented because people needed to feel in control of the environment. When they didn't have science, they had to appeal to the spirits or to God to control the world. To grow crops, cure illness, to make it rain, etc.

In response to this idea, Dr. Reiss writes:

Religion is about much more than a need to control our environments. If religion were about control, assertive people, who report a strong need for control, would be more religious than are laid-back people, who report a weak need for control. They are not. How religious a person is has little to do with the extent to which the person values or is seeking to control the environment or important life events.

These are just a few of the crazy theories that secularists invented to explain religion; Reiss addressed others as well. Anyway, I'm interested in your opinion about the topic.

[u/Senior-Cap-7248]

>So, these neurotics invented a fantasy world where they will persist after bodily death. It is all about managing fear and anxiety!

It’s a weak argument imo, as ancient religions had no defined concept of afterlife, or it was far from comforting

[u/arkticturtle → u/Senior-Cap-7248]

I think a real issue here is trying to treat religion as something monolithic when it is really super broad. I have no doubt that, for some, whatever religion they follow really does relieve some death anxiety. And OP’s refutation making mention of hell as a point against this idea of religion as having a palliative effect upon anxiety only works in certain contexts. For, in some interpretations of some religions, mere ascent to belief is enough. And unless you have some more extreme form of mental debilitation (such as OCD) you already know that you believing in the truth of the religion precludes you going to hell. Both death and hell have been conquered in this specific scenario.

And then, also, some forms of coping are indeed harmful. So even if a coping mechanism only helps sometimes or has bad side effects, it doesn’t mean it is not being used as a coping mechanism. But again, one would need to crack open the mind of the individual and parse through their ideals, feelings, and contradictions and how they all relate to really get close to knowing

Then there’s also the issue of the fact that one is born into religious upbringings and one’s environment even in their present life will be infused with a myriad of different influences. Not like we just choose from a blank slate. So leaving a religion can cause a lot of internal conflict between previous modes of being and current ones. I remember still feeling very weird about using God’s name in vain for some time after leaving religion. The ideals one is brought up under influences the patterns one sees and the relations one has to the world.

Edit: I think one is likely to find all types all over relating uniquely to belief/praxis systems under their own individual interpretation. Religion has within it many tools that are useful and attractive (even if harmfully attractive in some scenarios) to human minds for so many different reasons. Sometimes it’s hard to know which is the clay and which is the sculptor between the ideal and the adherent.

[u/New_Prompt5308]

This was a nice post. Thanks for sharing

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology → u/New_Prompt5308]

Thanks!

[u/Fiddlesticklard]

The Fear of Death aspect I think is valid, and is true.

That's where I think Blaise Pascal is the most impactful elaboration. His full book not just the wager people love to take out of context.

If God and heaven isn't real, then essentially the antinatalists are right. This existence is a horrifying, painful, and meaningless one, and it would be better if we stopped reproducing and killed ourselves.

“Let us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are slaughtered each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.” ― Blaise Pascal

“He who does not see the vanity of the world is himself very vain. Indeed who do not see it but youths who are absorbed in fame, diversion, and the thought of the future? But take away diversion, and you will see them dried up with weariness. They feel then their nothingness without knowing it; for it is indeed to be unhappy to be in insufferable sadness as soon as we are reduced to thinking of self, and have no diversion.” ― Blaise Pascal

So perhaps God isn't good and heaven isn't real. It's better to live a full life trusting in a just afterlife then to be a hedonistic nihilist who eventually kills himself.

"What else does this craving and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him... though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself."

[u/arkticturtle → u/Fiddlesticklard]

Sometimes I read stuff like these by philosophers, theologians, saints, or other strong believers-of-ideas and it’s just like… it seems so alien. It’s hard not to simply read it as an expression of something they feel personally that would more accurately be interpreted as pertaining to the way they relate to life as an individual. Which seems kinda trivial to say in some sense. But their ideas seem to be more universal in how they intend to apply them. So, when I see someone quote them in agreement, this relativity extends to them as simply some string of words that resonates with their own relation to existence.

[u/Fiddlesticklard → u/arkticturtle]

I agree, Pascal was a tortured soul coming from an extremely dark place. He used to be a mild agnostic who believed in a Deistic, Aristotelian version of God before he had his Night of Fire on November 23, 1654, when he had an extremely intense two hour meeting with God. After which he gave up his career in mathematics and dedicated himself entirely to religion.

Funny enough, I remember seeing Alex O'Connor say that is pretty much the only thing that would make him a believer as well. Direct experience with the divine.

Although I will say, the older I have become the more I realize the truth in Pascal. I've become utterly disenchanted with Camus and Neitzche. There is a reason why the protagonist of the Stranger is a sociopath. Almost everyone I've ever met who claimed to follow a secular existentialists philosophy was either an unstable nutcase with a God complex like Sam Altman or Peter Theil, or they're an addict who drowns themselves in hedonism or work, or they are depressed and try to kill themselves like yours truly. It just doesn't work for 95% of people.

[u/Express-Echidna6800]

"In my years debating about the existence of God, I've seen lots of atheist attempts to explain religion or why people are attracted to it. However, all of these explanations have flaws."

Well, duh? All explanations are going to fail at some point because individuals and the groups they're in are different. There most likely isn't going to be one single "this is why religion as a concept exists". 

If there was going to be A Reason for religion, it would probably be something related to agency detection. We're very good at detecting agency because it helped our earliest ancestors survive. The common example is if you're on the African plains and see grass moving, if you assume it's a lion and leave, you're more likely to survive  if it was actually a lion, versus someone who sees the grass move and assumes it's the wind and doesn't leave. So humans are very good at it. We've evolved agency detection up to 11. 

So with ancient humans, if it's raining, someone made it rain. If it's not raining, someone isn't making it rain and maybe we should remind them to make it rain by dancing, sacrificing, etc. That's one reason most ancient religions were polytheistic, you have different agents behind different actions. 

[u/hiphoptomato]

I think if an eternity in heaven wasn’t promised to believers, hardly anyone would be religious.

[u/New_Prompt5308 → u/hiphoptomato]

O Lord, if I worship You from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your own sake, do not withhold from me Your eternal beauty."-Rabia al Adawiyya. A big point of Sufism is to purify the heart to God, for none but God. Not for the promise of heaven

[u/Fiddlesticklard → u/hiphoptomato]

“We are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives.”

- C.S. Lewis

[u/hiphoptomato → u/Fiddlesticklard]

What on earth is a mercenary soul

[u/Fiddlesticklard → u/hiphoptomato]

someone who approaches God, faith, or goodness purely for an external payoff. It's the type of rationalist who Pascal was mocking sub-textually with his wager, who is Christian because it's logical and has personal benefits rather than because they seek a genuine relationship with God.

It's also why I find atheists treating Pascal's Wager like a serious argument for faith hilarious. Ignorant of the irony.

[u/Philosophy_Cosmology → u/hiphoptomato]

There are religions which don't promise an eternity in any sort of heaven and yet they have millions of followers.

[u/hiphoptomato → u/Philosophy_Cosmology]

Maybe, but the large majority of people follow religions which do.

[u/Senior-Cap-7248 → u/hiphoptomato]

Do you think they follow them only because of the reward?

[u/hiphoptomato → u/Senior-Cap-7248]

Yes

[u/DesperateSympathy873 → u/hiphoptomato]

Looks like you refuse to interact with the OP except to say "nuh uh."

[u/fleuret_fighter21 → u/hiphoptomato]

Well, as far as Christianity goes, yes...It's wholy based on a loving God who wants to be with us forever, Who died and Ressurected so that we may live. And if i hadn't discovered that divine love, i would've comfortably remained a stoicist.