People are incurably religious. Even the most ardent atheist will acknowledge this fact when he charts humanity both historically and geographically. Wherever people dwell, religion springs up like weeds in a garden, impossible to fully eradicate. Atheists such as Freud and Nietzsche faced this fact squarely in the 19th Century and concluded that religion was the product of those who feared things in nature that threatened their lives.
These fearful people would “invent” spiritual beings dwelling in, or with power over, such things as disease, drought, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and so on. They would try to plead with or appease such spirits in order to find protection for themselves. They invented “heaven” and “hell” to act as ultimate reward or punishment for people’s moral and immoral behavior, motivating one another to act in beneficial ways for the good of the community.
Various competing religious systems have led to conflict among people for millennia. This fact has been a boon to advocates of atheism, who usually blame religion for most of the wars and other degradations of mankind that have occurred. And it is certainly true that when a religion obtains enough adherents to become too powerful, it can also become oppressive of individual freedom, as well as a persecutor of weaker religious systems.
The problem with this view of religion in general is, in my opinion, that it defines religion much too narrowly.
Primarily, it assumes a very dim view of what it means to be human in the first place. The psychological need in us to “invent” spirits that can help us control nature is itself a mere surmise by the atheist who seeks to deny any deity’s existence. But when I observe people around me, the motivation I see operating in them is seldom a fear or phobia that some natural disaster might hurt them. Rather, they are motivated by the desire to devote themselves to a great ideal. A hunger for meaning and significance.
The typical man or woman wants to matter…matter to someone or something beyond himself or herself. People are survivors. They are good at dealing with threats to their existence. They hide, they build shelters, they migrate, they congregate, they enter into contracts and covenants, they put up armed defenses. But deep inside, each person wants to be valued as an individual—valued by a valuer that really MATTERS.
Simply put, where is the need to protect oneself from nature coming from? Why the desire to extend one’s life and safety, if not to become significant in some way? If I have no meaning or value, why go on living in the first place? If life itself is nothing more than a blind struggle for survival, then “all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:1).
I am born into a family and a community that expects certain things from me. I am expected to behave properly, learn things, do chores, practice a trade, fit in to prescribed roles and systems, add value to the group. But if that is all I am here for: to meet the expectations of the collective, then what am I, really? Just a cog in a machine?
The human spirit rejects that kind of paltry answer to the question of “why?” And that spirit of unrest is what truly leads to the religious impulse in man. The hunt for ultimate meaning beyond the material world. We know in our hearts that we are made for MORE. And if my place within the collective cannot supply what I know I am made for, Who can?
Can I look to my heroes? Even my “super-heroes”? Somebody with more strength, more smarts, more success, more celebrity, more money, more influence? Some idol carved out of stone, wood, metal or plastic? Some drugged-out guru who got a hallucinogenic vision? Some scientist who comes up with a new formula or computer model or A.I.?
If there’s anybody out there who can unravel the mystery of my significance, here I am. Show me if and how and why I even matter in this world! That is the pure human spirit that motivates the NEED for religious answers.
And there is, thankfully, a BOOK. A human book authored by the CREATOR of humans. A wonderful, flawless, fascinating, profitable, essential book with all the answers we longing humans are craving.
MNA 8/14/2023
