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Why Do Humans Need Religion?

For thousands of years the majority of people have had a religion that they can call
their own. A god that helps lead them through their life with a set of moral guidelines and
rules they believe are right. This led me to ask what draws humans to the need of a higher
power? Now there are people that have turned away from this idea of religion, such as
atheists and agnostics. But for the vast majority of the world they have some sort of religious
ideals. Some people have one god or are monotheistic. Others that have many gods are
polytheistic. Is there some sort of programming in our brain that makes us crave a religion, or
is it a social aspect that people find the need to interact with people with the same or similar
moral ideals?
While researching this topic I stumbled upon a website named Angelfire that gave me
very good information in an article titled Why do humans need religion? I thought this
would be a good place to start, thinking I could get just average peoples ideas on the subject.
As I was reading it, I found it wasn't some person attacking religion or saying those without
religion are evil peopleit simply explained how religion seems to always be in our history.
The anonymous author states, When a person doesn't know how to explain something they
need to make an explanation they understand. This made me think that religion can just be
there to help us explain natural events, but is that not what modern day science does as well?
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Then it went on to say that religion, not necessarily God, is responsible for moral
guidelines and acceptable behavior because religion has become more social in recent
centuries. It is more of an acceptable thing if you go to church and believe what your
neighbors believe, even if you don't necessarily believe it. Whether you have a religion you
call your own or simply think youre all alone, you have morals; you live your life the way
you believe to be right. This gives people the idea of good and evil or a right and wrong.
Most modern-day ethics and morals have a stem back to the bible. Whether it's the bible you
believe in or not, most people agree on values. Such as not killing and not stealing. So do
morals actually come from a god or religion? Or are they simply just part of human culture?
I like the ideas this article posed without attacking religion and saying it is right or
wrong, it gave facts about history and human mentality. From deep reading of it its slightly
biased to religion being non-essential now because of science and other methods of
information. It discussed how morals play a huge role in religion and how religion is used to
gather people together with the same morals. I have definitely noticed in my life that people
of the same religion will believe a lot the same and share in common morals and guidelines.
Next the article spoke about having a parental figure in your life, all through being a
child and teenager youre able to be led through your life and helped along the way by your
parents. Now a higher power could be the same way, a person or entity that is there to just
guide you through life helping you with your choices and being there if you screw up. But
that got me thinkingwhat about those people who don't have much parental influence in
their lives at a young age Do they become more religious because they are trying to fill a
space in their life? Do they need some more guidance because their parents were not there to
help them through life? Or how about the ones that want to get out of parental control, do
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they become more agnostic, or even atheist, because they do not see the need for a parental
guiding figure in their lives? So many questions have occurred to me as I have been doing
this research, but I wish to focus on just the main question at hand, why do humans have
religion.
The article continues speaking of the afterlife and the unknown; both of those can be
scary with no one there. When you were a child and you went somewhere dark and scary,
what is most likely the first thing you did? I don't know about you but for me it was grab my
parents hand. When you are a child of maybe five or six, you do not always know or
understand what is going on. A god can do that same thing for you by helping you through
lifes scary moments with comfort and support, dying is a scary thought to some like entering
a pitch-black room as a five-year-old. But instead of grabbing your parents hand you grab
onto a gods hand, hoping he will guide you through the darkness and bring you to a better
place on the other side. Whether God is really there or not doesn't really matter, because if
you think he is there to help youif you put some of your fears in Gods handsthen you do
not have those fears or burdens just on you anymore. This entire article has been good
information just from a common mans perspective. It stayed unbiased from the perspective
of whether God is real or fake and just told why we think or believe He is there.
The rest of this article helped me a lot, too, because it talked mainly about God and
why Hes there. They say He is like a parent, which makes a lot of sense to me personally.
Because when you leave your parents you feel out of place for a while, so thinking of a
higher power as a parent may help a lot in your lifegiving you more of a feel of safety while
living your life. It also talks about religion being a safety net for when you die, which to a lot
of people is really true. I think a major part of religion is giving you hope in something that
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no one really knows about: dying. A lot of this article makes sense and really got me thinking
more to dive into my research.
Robert Winston titles my next article, Why do we believe in God? Published on
TheGaurdian. This page is written with a more professional look on religion. Winston states,
Religion is as old as humans itself. This just means that its always been there to help
humans in their lives. Its not a modern day creation; its as old as time itself. In prehistoric
days it is said that religion was used so that people could work better together. If you all have
the same ideals then it is much easier to get along. And if you got along you could do better
hunting and thus get a bigger community because there is more food, and then more children
are born into religion and continue this cycle. Thus by Darwins law religion helps in natural
selection. Those without religion that stay in small groups will eventually die out, but those
with religion helping them become a closer family will survive. Thus religion becomes an
inherited trait passed on through the generations.
Also there may be proof that there are genes that can determine if you will be
religious or not. There are genes that determine your personality, so some genes may give
religious affinity while others have religious repulsion. Also, morals seem to be imbedded in
the brain thus sprouting religion out as a by-product of our mental blueprint. A story told in
this article is that in the southern states there was a pastor giving a sermon. Some people
thought it would be funny to dump snakes on the podium so they did. However they did not
get the intended results from this, as theyd hoped. The pastor grabbed a snake and at that
point started a new religion. There was no divine inspiration or holy revelation. Simply a
man was able to bring a large group of people together with similar goals and beliefs. This
helps me think about religion historically and how it helps humans survive and thrive as a
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people as long as they have common goals or beliefs. Apparently religion can come from
anywhereif you get people fired up enough about a topic they may just band together and
bring another religion into the world because they all have common goals.
This article was very heavy on the science, which gave different points of view on the
subject. I never really thought that people were genetically disposed to religion, but from
reading the article it makes a lot of sense. How the people in older times used religion to their
advantage because they all thought the same thing. I can use this with my first article to get
both science and opinion to find truly why humans need religion.
The next article I found in my research comes from Clare Aukofer and Anderson
Thomas in the article Science and religion: God didn't make man; man made gods. Los
Angeles Times. It also refers to prehistoric times with hunters and gatherers being able to
work together because of similar goals and morals. Again saying natural selection is not just
about physical traits as some people are taught to believe. But religion also plays a big role in
natural selection with how people work together under similar circumstances. For instance if
you take a wolf and put it on its own, it can survive but not for very long. So wolves
developed packs or families to help them survive and their religion brings them all together
and is mostly based on food, survival and reproduction. That also shows how religion can
help us survive by simply bringing people together in a group.
Then the article refers to God as a super parent. Much like a mother to her child, a
god will protect you and lead you through life. But just like with parents, if you live under
their roof youll live by their rules. These rules are what the foundation of religion is.
Bringing people together with the same ideals and same God to all think the same way. And
if people differ from what the mainstream in their religion believes, then now there is a new
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religion and those with those same ideals go with them. This shows there is a possible
endless view of religion. This report has shown me a lot of the articles have ideas that they
share such as God as a parent or survival of the fittest. These all seem like valid reasons for
religion but we will just have to keep digging.
Reading this article reaffirmed me of my first two articles being a good choice; a lot
of the same ideas are in both articles, showing that its not just one persons belief of what
theyre writing, its an actual idea that many people have thought about and discussed with
fellow researchers to help write the information in articles. Again in the history with the
hunting tribe, religion helped them survive. Both articles compared God to a parent and I
believe I am getting some good solid research by comparing the similarities in these articles.
My next article is by Wray Herbery Why Do We Have Religion Anyway. Were
Only Human. Wray states the vast majority of the 7 billion people in the worlds population
have some religion. But there are a vast variation of churches such as Christian churches
believing in one god who helps you through your life at almost all times. Then there is the
Hindu religion with thousands of godsfor an everyday task there is a different god to pray
to. No matter which religion you call your own, they all help people with their lives and
views on lives. Any religion can help you with social behavior; it also helps with difficult
cognitive processes such as self-control. Religion is used for an ideal called delayed
gratification. Putting aside temptation so that you can have a greater prize later.
I like this piece because it tells more of the social aspect and how religion helps in life
rather than just the scientific explanation of why we have religion. It makes me think maybe
people at first are driven to religion to be accepted, but then come to find for themselves they
really belong there.
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My final article by Pedro Timteo titled Why do People Believe in God? States
many reasons as to why people start a religion or why they follow religion. One of his
reasons for religion is that people crave information. When there is something in the
unknown people want to find it out. However, there are some impossible questions that we
cannot seem to find the answers to. Some would say god did it even if later science could
prove how it happened. This article also covers the same area as other articles by saying that
religion gives hope in the fear of death. Timteo states that people want something they can
see in the afterlifesome better place that will keep them there until they are reunited with
their families.
This article has an ample supply of ideas that I can correspond to other articles to
show that the information is used widely and is an accepted view from professionals and
average peoples point of view. Such as that religion is used to answer questions that just
seem to be un-answerable. I enjoyed this part of my research because it seemed to cover all
the bases, but because some information from this article I have not verified with other
sources, I have chosen to leave some information out until further research is done to prove
the credibility of those ideas.
In conclusion, there are so many answers to my question of why humans need
religion that I could not list them all; I have been able to branch that off into so many
different answers and questions. But if I could choose from my research the best answer to
my question it would be that humans have religion or have created religion for survival and
acceptance. That sentence sums up all of my answers together. For survival, in the past it
meant working together for food. Or that having a life after death to look forward to will help
motivate and inspire the members of your group. With morals and how you live your life a
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lot of religions teach guidelines that can help you live longer. And on the acceptance side of
the answer, people are social followersmeaning they go to church to go to church, not
because they say I need to go to a good afterlife. They are there to meet people and to be
happy in a friendly environment. There is still more research that could be done on this
because religion is such an extensive area of study, but in the end I feel I have come up with
a reasonable idea for religion and why it is here.

















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Works Citied
Why do humans need religion? Angelfire: Web. 30 Oct. 2012
Winston, Robert. Why do we believe in God? TheGaurdian 12 Oct 2005. Web.
30 Oct 2012.
Aukofer, Clare Thomas, Anderson. Science and religion: God didn't make man; man made
gods. Los Angeles Times.18 July 2011. Web. 30 Oct 2012.
Herbery, Wray. Why Do We Have Religion Anyway? Were Only Human. 9 Nov 2011.
Web. 30 Oct 2012.
Timteo, Pedro Why do People Believe in God? Way of the Mind 27 Sep 2006. Web.
1 Nov 2012.