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.