thoughts on religious/spiritual belief

[firecat]

This was originally posted as a comment in vito_excalibur's journal here; it's slightly expanded here.

Whether or not deity exists, it seems clear that a lot of people have a lot invested in deity's existing (believing or hoping or acting-as-if or...). I'm probably just not looking in the right places, but sometimes I wonder why more attention isn't paid to why so many people invest so much in it. Most of the speculations about that I hear are insults or dismissals from people who don't have the investment and who think that having the investment means you're deluded. That may be so, I suppose, but I also think that throwing away some pretty amazing (and yes, also some pretty horrible) human accomplishments as entirely based on delusion is depressing and reductionistic - kind of like saying oh, thoughts and feelings are nothing but electrical signals in the brain. Yes they are, but they aren't "nothing but."

Can you think of any neutral-to-positive and non-insulting reasons that many humans have a lot invested in believing in the existence of deity? What do we get out of it; why do some of us need or strongly want it?

(Disclosure - I need/strongly want spiritual experience and have had spiritual experiences [that could also be explained in non-supernatural ways, but I choose to experience/remember them as spiritual]. I neither believe nor don't believe in the existence of deity. I usually boil this down to "I believe in deity on alternative thursdays.")

Comments

[opalmirror.livejournal.com]

I think dieties exist for many reasons people mention here.

Personal: I primarily feel that humans benefit personally and societally by having templates of social behavior to guide them in making socially acceptable decisions. The traditions and the dialogue about personal life choices that religion (under the guise of diety) seems to help people stay connected, discuss these things, examine themselves and gives them a chance to be rewarded for improvement. This is why I'm a fan of a supportive belief structure for 'most folks'... it gives them more tools for surviving and growing -- even though I'm not particularly religious.

Political: one thing I don't recall seeing mentioned is that by supporting diety and religion it's possible to create and enforce large social power structures. This creates an ecosystem for wealth concentration or redistribution. I subscribe to the belief that diety was originally an explanation for the rhythms of nature that hunter/gatherer tribes and eventually agrarian societies are dependent on (particularly in harsher climates). These stories were then coopted to allow management of larger populations, storage of food stuffs, taxation, justice, and war.

The enlightenment gave us an alternative where scientific method could be applied to social systems, but after the end of the progressive era, I suspect we're reverting more back to the style of Hamurabi's empire.