Why God exists? A Brief Analysis
Everyone has religion. Even if you don't, people around you will certainly have.
According to a 2012 report from Pew Research Centre, there are 84% of the world's population with religion. Therefore globally, 8 out of 10 people are religious (devotion is another matter).
It is apparent that people with no religious affiliation are minorities.
Isn't it weird? You think that after thousands of years of human progress, our knowledge and our understanding challenge the existence of god or deities again and again, in the current scientific era, non-believers should account for the majority, right?
Albert Einstein is widely considered the smartest person in the 20th Century. His contributions to physics were so influential that E=MC2 is the most famous math expression in the world up til now. He is religious.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein
Einstein had the belief that science and religion can coexist. This is pretty much accurate. 84% of people are religious in the 21st Century.
Ask yourself again, what is religion? Why religion exists?
Religion is a collective belief that supernature figures exist. The most popular form is monotheism, the belief that the one and only, all-powerful deity exist.
For some people, there is a god for this, there is a god for that, this is polytheism, the belief that there is a collection of deities with their own duties, working together to help the world function.
Some believe everything inherits a god (animism), and some believe a god lives inside everyone waiting for unlock.
If there is an ideology that claims deities exist, it is a religion.
Why does religion exist?
This is Antlerium PotatoNews, a series focusing on the daily lives of ordinary people, including cultural customs. Today we explore religion: the origin of religion.
Why God exists? Or should we ask, why does religion exist?
To understand the origin of religion, you must know one fact. Religion is invented.
We humans are intelligent creatures. We care about logic, we care about cause and effect, and we care about the way the world functions.
Of course, we can use science to understand the world now, but in the past, we can't. The scientific thinking method was invented in the 11th Century. Education started to be popularised in the 17th Century. Before this period, it is hard for the public to agree with that.
Therefore, people in the past decided to create a non-scientific explanation.
For example, why plant growth with sunlight? With modern knowledge we know it is photosynthesis, but this is not yet discovered in early agricultural evolution.
Ancient people would claim that there is a sun god that controls life. With his mighty power food grows.
Therefore, religion was invented to understand the world. It was the answer to everything.
Up til now, there are still questions about the world that science is yet to answer. One of them is the life origin. Some religious people still believe in creationism. Even if the theory of evolution is confirmed, the origin of the first lifeform is still disputed, and modern creationists would say that the creator created the first lifeform.
Even if some questions are answered, people still hard to accept the fact, they want a comfortable answer. Believing in religion can help.
For example, the end of our lives. Science shows that when we die, our consciousness disappears and our soul is gone forever. But for Indian religious systems, including Hinduism and Buddhism, when we die, our soul leaves our body and reincarnates into a new life.
Compared with the brutal fact of "goodbye world", reincarnation seems far more comfortable and more acceptable.
So religion is not only a solution to our unsolved mysteries, but also a solution to our spiritual needs.
Religion exists to serve us this role, and the resulting worldview generates customs, law and order. Religion actually helps country-building so much that in the last century, several countries were broken up by it.
South Sudan separated from Sudan in 2010 because their population majorities are Christians and Muslims respectively.
In 1946, on the Indian subcontinent, which religion you are in would decide whether you should move to India or Pakistan. India is Hindu majority, and Pakistan is Muslim majority. India would open its arms to people with different religions, but Pakistan would attempt to Islamize the country as much as possible.
You can think of more roles that religion plays, basically it contributes to our society so much that the points above are just a few.
Why God exists? Because we exist?
We need explanation, so we invented religion.
When there are unsolved mysteries, we choose religion.
When there are spiritual needs, we choose religion.
To unlock the power of people, we must first unlock the power of god.
When we harness the power of god, we can harness the power of people.
This is the origin of religion. To learn more about social customs or other topics related to our ordinary life, make sure to follow PotatoNews. We will also post some cliffsnotes on our socials, make sure to follow them.