Why do some people have religous beliefs?

This seems like it might fit in here...always liked this comment:

  

 

Removed due to PA's deliberated act of deleting threads as alleged featuring negative behaviour posts towards others.

   

 

 

 

Edited by Otto9999 - October 31 2015 at 11:43

dr wu23 wrote: After some thought perhaps the better question would be, why do some people not have religious beliefs since the majority on earth probably do.

Because cultures spread and cover vast regions.

Same reason some people still believe in communism/socialism and other forms of totalitarianism.  Fools desire for some all-knowing central entity to run the world for them.

The main cause for religious beliefs is education and tradition. Most people who believe in certain supernatural holy phenomena, do that because they were told to believe by their parents, priests or whatever. I don't think many Christians know that the cause for most Europeans being christians is that a Roman emperor believed the Christian god would grant him victory over his political enemies.

Sean Trane wrote: you could almost add Hitler to that list, though the Nazi regime didn't declare itself atheist... it kind of avoided the subject, I think ((not sure about this, because they did use some kind of mythology)

The nazi regime wasn't atheist, it tried to create christianity without its jewish heritage. There are various speeches from Hitler in which he claimed he was fulfilling God's will.

  

 

Removed due to PA's deliberated act of deleting threads as alleged featuring negative behaviour posts towards others.

   

 

 

 

Edited by Otto9999 - October 31 2015 at 12:51

Two days, four pages ... when there's already another (recent) thread about faith.

SteveG wrote: Religion, regardless of one's stance and even one's lack of a stance, is a never ending topic for discussion.   This in its self always struck me as significant.

SteveG wrote: Why do some people have religous beliefs?

The question has some implication, as if saying - why don't people stick to what we can see, hear and register with our senses. We don't need to believe in anything until we have seen it. Why believe in extraterrestrials until we have seen one? However, it's extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials don't exist, it is too improbable.

The scientific progress only works with what we have discovered and what is measurable, though.

But you can't

• prove a purpose
• observe a purpose.

So we might as well ask, "why do people need a purpose?" But that calls for the question, "why don't some people need purpose?" . It's the same with the question in this thread. It is a naive question, since there is no explanation to why the question was asked, and there is no argument for not believing - it's only implied.

Edited by wilmon91 - October 27 2015 at 15:05