Why we need religion
Humankind has been through numerous revelations and crises over the centuries. Some helped to solidify its strength over nature and what it came to call “destiny” and some have shattered its very existence as the smartest and thus, the strongest creature on Earth. No matter how much we tried to deny the facts of life, the truth (whether we liked it or not) has always found a way to get through our sneaky intelligence. The truth behind the shape and location of the Earth, the creation of the universe, the plagues, the origin of species, the rights of men and women, the weapons of mass destruction…All of them represent drops of stones in a calm water, leading to big waves that echo the question “who has the control?” in our heads. Who has the control? If not us who has it? At the end of the day that is the only question that matters. We spent centuries trying to figure it out and we will spend many more to come up with the best possible answer. Yet no matter how many different angles we approach the question from, we have to tie its answer to something or someone supernatural. Something or someone better, stronger and smarter than us. That is the point we let religion into our small and completely private worlds. We need it for all the things that we believe are out of our control, out of our extraordinary strength, confidence and intelligence. It is there when earthquakes shatter our cement, it there when a baby is born and it is there when we have no one else to turn to.
Religion or as I put it “believing in something or someone supernatural” gives the humankind the ability to justify anything that can not be interlinked to its ability. It gives us the greatest comfort and will whether we go up or down in our ventures. That is why although religion can not be explained in today’s scientific terms, from Christianity to Islam, it is one of the most common and pouplar concepts in our daily lives. When times are better than we could have ever expected we turn to religion to justify and insure our fortunes. The same goes for the exact opposite. When times are bad we turn to supernatural strength to keep us going and give us hope. In one of the articles I read on Newsweek today, I came across a great evidence to this hypothesis. In the article titled “Lincoln vs. Darwin” the author reveals that even though Abraham Lincoln was believed to be an atheist, he address a speech based on the will of God during the civil war and assured his supporters that God was in control of what was to come.
Fear, the Foundation of Religion
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
What We Must Do?
We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world — its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.
Bertrand Russell, from “Why I am not a Christian”