Religion why does it exist

If you do not think that it matters whether persons continue to exist after death, then such speculation is of little consequence. But suppose that the afterlife is understood as being morally intertwined with this life, with opportunity for moral and spiritual reformation, transfiguration of the wicked, rejuvenation and occasions for new life, perhaps even reconciliation and communion between oppressors seeking forgiveness and their victims. Then these considerations might help to defend against arguments based on the existence of evil.

Insofar as one cannot rule out the possibility of an afterlife morally tied to our life, one cannot rule out the possibility that God brings some good out of cosmic ills. The most recent work on the afterlife in philosophy of religion has focused on the compatibility of an individual afterlife with some forms of physicalism. Arguably, a dualist treatment of human persons is more promising. If you are not metaphysically identical with your body, then perhaps the annihilation of your body is not the annihilation of you.

Today, a range of philosophers have argued that even if physicalism is true, an afterlife is still possible Peter van Inwagen, Lynne Baker, Trenton Merricks, Kevin Corcoran. The import of this work for the problem of evil is that the possible redemptive value of an afterlife should not be ruled out without argument if one assumes physicalism to be true. For an extraordinary, rich resource on the relevant literature, see The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology , edited by J.

Walls, Perhaps the justification most widely offered for religious belief concerns the occurrence of religious experience or the cumulative weight of testimony of those claiming to have had religious experiences. Does such testimony provide evidence that God exists? That it is not or that its evidential force is trivial is argued by Michael Martin, J. In an effort to stimulate further investigation, consider the following sketch of some of the moves and countermoves in the debate.

Objection: Religious experience cannot be experience of God for perceptual experience is only sensory and if God is non-physical, God cannot be sensed. Reply: The thesis that perceptual experience is only sensory can be challenged. Objection: Testimony to have experienced God is only testimony that one thinks one has experienced God; it is only testimony of a conviction, not evidence. Reply: The literature on religious experience testifies to the existence of experience of some Divine being on the basis of which the subject comes to think the experience is of God.

If read charitably, the testimony is not testimony to a conviction, but to experiences that form the grounds for the conviction. See Bagger for a vigorous articulation of this objection, and note the reply by Kai-man Kwam Objection: Because religious experience is unique, how could one ever determine whether it is reliable? We simply lack the ability to examine the object of religious experience in order to test whether the reported experiences are indeed reliable.

Reply: As we learned from Descartes, all our experiences of external objects face a problem of uniqueness. It is possible in principle that all our senses are mistaken and we do not have the public, embodied life we think we lead. We cannot step out of our own subjectivity to vindicate our ordinary perceptual beliefs any more than in the religious case.

See the debate between William Alston [] and Evan Fales []. Objection: Reports of religious experience differ radically and the testimony of one religious party neutralizes the testimony of others. The testimony of Hindus cancels out the testimony of Christians.

Reply: Several replies might be offered here. Testimony to experience the absence of God might be better understood as testimony not to experience God. Failing to experience God might be justification for believing that there is no God only to the extent that we have reason to believe that if God exists God would be experienced by all. Theists might even appeal to the claim by many atheists that it can be virtuous to live ethically with atheist beliefs. Perhaps if there is a God, God does not think this is altogether bad, and actually desires religious belief to be fashioned under conditions of trust and faith rather than knowledge.

The diversity of religious experiences has caused some defenders of the argument from religious experience to mute their conclusion. Thus, Gutting contends that the argument is not strong enough to fully vindicate a specific religious tradition, but that it is strong enough to overturn an anti-religious naturalism. Other defenders use their specific tradition to deal with ostensibly competing claims based on different sorts of religious experiences.

Theists have proposed that more impersonal experiences of the Divine represent only one aspect of God. God is a person or is person-like, but God can also be experienced, for example, as sheer luminous unity. Hindus have claimed the experience of God as personal is only one stage in the overall journey of the soul to truth, the highest truth being that Brahman transcends personhood.

For a discussion of these objections and replies and references, see Taliaferro The holistic, interwoven nature of both theistic and atheistic arguments can be readily illustrated. Moreover, if one thinks that theism can be shown to be intellectually confused from the start, then theistic arguments from religious experience will carry little weight.

Testimony to have experienced God will have no more weight than testimony to have experienced a round square, and non-religious explanations of religious experience—like those of Freud a result of wish-fulfillment , Marx a reflection of the economic base , or Durkheim a product of social forces —will increase their appeal.

If, on the other hand, you think the theistic picture is coherent and that the testimony of religious experience provides some evidence for theism, then your assessment of the classical theistic arguments might be more favorable, for they would serve to corroborate and further support what you already have some reason to believe.

From such a vantage point, appeal to wish-fulfillment, economics, and social forces might have a role, but the role is to explain why some parties do not have experiences of God and to counter the charge that failure to have such experiences provides evidence that there is no religious reality. There is not space to cover the many other arguments for and against the existence of God, but several additional arguments are briefly noted.

The argument from miracles starts from specific extraordinary events, arguing that they provide reasons for believing there to be a supernatural agent or, more modestly, reasons for skepticism about the sufficiency of a naturalistic world view.

The debate has turned mainly on how one defines a miracle, understands the laws of nature, and specifies the principles of evidence that govern the explanation of highly unusual historical occurrences. Detailed exposition is impossible in this short entry. There are various arguments that are advanced to motivate religious belief. One of the most interesting and popular is a wager argument often associated with Pascal — It is designed to offer practical reasons to cultivate a belief in God.

Imagine that you are unsure whether there is or is not a God. You have it within your power to live on either assumption and perhaps, through various practices, to get yourself to believe one or the other. There would be good consequences of believing in God even if your belief were false, and if the belief were true you would receive even greater good. There would also be good consequences of believing that there is no God, but in this case the consequences would not alter if you were correct.

If, however, you believe that there is no God and you are wrong, then you would risk losing the many goods which follow from the belief that God exists and from actual Divine existence. On this basis, it may seem reasonable to believe there is a God. In different forms the argument may be given a rough edge for example, imagine that if you do not believe in God and there is a God, hell is waiting.

It may be put as an appeal to individual self-interest you will be better off or more generally believers whose lives are bound together can realize some of the goods comprising a mature religious life. Objectors worry about whether one ever is able to bring choices down to just such a narrow selection—for example, to choose either theism or naturalism. Some think the argument is too thoroughly egotistic and thus offensive to religion. Many of these objections have generated some plausible replies Rescher For a thoroughgoing exploration of the relevant arguments, see the collection of essays edited by Jeffrey Jordan Recent work on Pascalian wagering has a bearing on work on the nature of faith is it voluntary or involuntary?

For an overview and promising analysis, see Chappell , Swinburne , and Schellenberg A promising feature of such new work is that it is often accompanied by a rich understanding of revelation that is not limited to a sacred scripture, but sees a revelatory role in scripture plus the history of its interpretation, the use of creeds, icons, and so on see the work of William Abraham [].

A burgeoning question in recent years is whether the cognitive science of religion CSR has significance for the truth or rationality of religious commitment. But others have argued that CSR can intensify the problem of divine hiddenness, since diverse religious concepts are cognitively natural and early humans seem to have lacked anything like a theistic concept Marsh Needless to say, at the present time, there is nothing like a clear consensus on whether CSR should be seen as worrisome, welcome, or neither, by religious believers.

For some further work on the framework of assessing the evidence for and against theism and other religious and secular worldviews see C. Evans , Chandler and Harrison In the midst of the new work on religious traditions, there has been a steady, growing representation of non-monotheistic traditions. An early proponent of this expanded format was Ninian Smart — , who, through many publications, scholarly as well as popular, secured philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism as components in the standard canon of English-speaking philosophy of religion.

Smart championed the thesis that there are genuine differences between religious traditions. He therefore resisted seeing some core experience as capturing the essential identity of being religious. Wilfred Cantwell Smith — also did a great deal to improve the representation of non-Western religions and reflection. See, for example, the Routledge series Investigating Philosophy of Religion with Routledge with volumes already published or forthcoming on Buddhism Burton , Hinduism Ranganathan , Daoism, and Confucianism.

The five volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion mentioned earlier to be published by Wiley Blackwell projected for will have ample contributions on the widest spectrum of philosophical treatments of diverse religions to date. The explanation of philosophy of religion has involved fresh translations of philosophical and religious texts from India, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Exceptional figures from non-Western traditions have an increased role in cross-cultural philosophy of religion and religious dialogue.

The late Bimal Krishna Matilal — made salient contributions to enrich Western exposure to Indian philosophy of religion see Matilal Among the mid-twentieth-century Asian philosophers, two who stand out for special note are T.

Murti and S. Dasgupta — Both brought high philosophical standards along with the essential philology to educate Western thinkers. As evidence of non-Western productivity in the Anglophone world, see Arvind Sharma and There are now extensive treatments of pantheism and student-friendly guides to diverse religious conceptions of the cosmos. The expanded interest in religious pluralism has led to extensive reflection on the compatibility and possible synthesis of religions.

John Hick is the preeminent synthesizer of religious traditions. Hick a and b advanced a complex picture of the afterlife involving components from diverse traditions.

Hick claims that different religions provide us with a glimpse or partial access to the Real. Seen in [an] historical context these movements of faith—the Judaic-Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim—are not essentially rivals. They began at different times and in different places, and each expanded outwards into the surrounding world of primitive natural religion until most of the world was drawn up into one or the other of the great revealed faiths. And once this global pattern had become established it has ever since remained fairly stable… Then in Persia the great prophet Zoroaster appeared; China produced Lao-tzu and then the Buddha lived, the Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion and, probably about the end of this period, the writing of the Bhagavad Gita; and Greece produced Pythagoras and then, ending this golden age, Socrates and Plato.

Then after the gap of some three hundred years came Jesus of Nazareth and the emergence of Christianity; and after another gap the prophet Mohammed and the rise of Islam. The suggestion that we must consider is that these were all movements of the divine revelation. Hick ; emphasis added. Hick sees these traditions, and others as well, as different meeting points in which a person might be in relation to the same reality or the Real:.

The great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is taking place.

Kant distinguishes between noumenon and phenomenon, or between a Ding an sich [the thing itself] and the thing as it appears to human consciousness…. I want to say that the noumenal Real is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports. If successful, this approach would offer a way to accommodate diverse communities and undermine what has been a source of grave conflict in the past.

He advanced a philosophy of religion that paid careful attention to the historical and social context. By doing so, Hick thought that apparently conflicting descriptions of the sacred could be reconciled as representing different perspectives on the same reality, the Real see Hick , Indeed, articulating the nature of the Real is no easy task. Hick writes that the Real. None of the concrete descriptions that apply within the realm of human experience can apply literally to the unexperienceable ground of that realm….

We cannot even speak of this as a thing or an entity. It has been argued that Hick has secured not the equal acceptability of diverse religions but rather their unacceptability. In their classical forms, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity diverge. Hick has been a leading, widely appreciated force in the expansion of philosophy of religion in the late twentieth century. In addition to the expansion of philosophy of religion to take into account a wider set of religions, the field has also seen an expansion in terms of methodology.

Philosophers of religion have re-discovered medieval philosophy—the new translations and commentaries of medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic texts have blossomed. There is now a self-conscious, deliberate effort to combine work on the concepts in religious belief alongside a critical understanding of their social and political roots the work of Foucault has been influential on this point , feminist philosophy of religion has been especially important in re-thinking what may be called the ethics of methodology and, as this is in some respects the most current debate in the field, it is a fitting point to end this entry by highlighting the work of Pamela Sue Anderson — and others.

Anderson and seeks to question respects in which gender enters into traditional conceptions of God and in their moral and political repercussions. She also advances a concept of method which delimits justice and human flourishing. A mark of legitimation of philosophy should be the extent to which it contributes to human welfare. In a sense, this is a venerable thesis in some ancient, specifically Platonic philosophy that envisaged the goal and method of philosophy in terms of virtue and the good.

For a constructive, subtle treatment of religious contemplation and practice, see Coakley Another key movement that is developing has come to be called Continental Philosophy of Religion. A major advocate of this new turn is John Caputo. This movement approaches the themes of this entry the concept of God, pluralism, religious experience, metaphysics and epistemology in light of Heidegger, Derrida, and other continental philosophers.

I am indebted to John Deck, Cara Stevens, and Thomas Churchill for comments and assistance in preparing an earlier version of this entry. Portions of this entry appeared previously in C. Bunnin and E. Tsui-James eds. The Field and its Significance 2. The Meaning of Religious Beliefs 2. Religious Epistemology 3. Religion and Science 5. Philosophical Reflection on Theism and Its Alternatives 5. The Field and its Significance Ideally, a guide to the nature and history of philosophy of religion would begin with an analysis or definition of religion.

Let us now turn to the way philosophers have approached the meaning of religious beliefs. The Meaning of Religious Beliefs Prior to the twentieth century, a substantial amount of philosophical reflection on matters of religious significance but not all has been realist.

According to Karen Armstrong, some of the greatest theologians in the Abrahamic faiths held that God was not good, divine, powerful, or intelligent in any way that we could understand. Armstrong x A prima facie challenge to this position is that it is hard to believe that religious practitioners could pray or worship or trust in a being which was altogether inscrutable or a being that we cannot in any way understand.

Phillips At least two reasons bolstered this philosophy of religion inspired by Wittgenstein. Religion and Science The relationship between religion and science has been an important topic in twentieth century philosophy of religion and it seems highly important today. This section begins by considering the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine now the National Academy of Medicine statement on the relationship between science and religion: Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience.

According to Steven Pinker, science has shown the beliefs of many religions to be false. Pinker Following up on Pinker, it should be noted that it would not be scientifically acceptable today to appeal to miracles or to direct acts of God. As Michael Ruse points out: The arguments that are given for suggesting that science necessitates atheism are not convincing.

Ruse 74—75 Ruse goes on to note that religions address important concerns that go beyond what is approachable only from the standpoint of the natural sciences. Philosophical Reflection on Theism and Its Alternatives For much of the history of philosophy of religion, there has been stress on the assessment of theism.

Augustine of Hippo put it: so that of those things which emerge in time, the future, indeed, are not yet, and the present are now, and the past no longer are; but all of these are by Him comprehended in His stable and eternal presence. This section surveys some of the main theistic arguments. John Leslie observes: Alterations by less than one part in a billion to the expansion speed early in the Big Bang would have led to runaway expansion, everything quickly becoming so dilute that no stars could have formed, or else to gravitational collapse inside under a second.

Religious Pluralism In the midst of the new work on religious traditions, there has been a steady, growing representation of non-monotheistic traditions. Hick ; emphasis added Hick sees these traditions, and others as well, as different meeting points in which a person might be in relation to the same reality or the Real: The great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the Real from within the major variant ways of being human; and that within each of them the transformation of human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is taking place.

Hick writes that the Real cannot be said to be one thing or many, person or thing, substance or process, good or bad, purposive or non-purposive. Bibliography Abraham, William J. Aquino eds. Almeida, Michael J. Augustine of Hippo, c. Ayer, A. Bagger, Matthew C. Beaty, Michael ed. Second edition, Murray, and Michael C. Rea eds. Brody ed. Brower, Jeffrey E. Flint and Michael C. Brewer and Robert MacSwain eds. Bruntrup, Godehard and Ludwig Jaskolla eds. Caputo, John D. Chandler, Jake and Victoria S.

Harrison eds. Revised and fully expanded second edition, VanArragon eds. Craig and J. Morelanad eds. Copleston, Frederick C. Craig, William Lane and J. Moreland eds.

Crockett, Clayton, B. Keith Putt, and Jeffrey W. Robbins eds. Diller, Jeanine and Asa Kasher eds. McBrayer eds. Schellenberg eds. Stephen and R. Flew, Antony and Alasdair C. MacIntyre eds. Douglas and Brendan Sweetman eds. Gendler, Tamar and John Hawthorne eds. Griffiths, Paul J. Hare, John E. Second-order elaborations are even more complex, and occurred in the evolution from Homo erectus 1. Guilt and shame, for example, two crucial emotions for the development of religion, are the combination of sadness, fear, and anger.

As selection worked on existing brain structures, enhancing emotional and interpersonal capacities, certain behavioural propensities of apes began to evolve. Some of the propensities that Turner lists as already present in apes include: the ability to read eyes and faces and to imitate facial gestures; various capacities for empathy; the ability to become emotionally aroused in social settings; the capacity to perform rituals; a sense of reciprocity and justice; and the ability to see the self as an object in an environment.

An increase in the emotional palette available to apes would, according to Turner, result in an increase in all of these behavioural capacities. Though many if not all of these behaviours have been documented in apes, I want to concentrate on two of them — ritual and empathy — without which religion would be unthinkable.

In archival footage , primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall describes the well-known waterfall dance which has been widely observed in chimpanzees. Her comments are worth quoting at length:. When the chimpanzees approach, they hear this roaring sound, and you see their hair stands a little on end and then they move a bit quicker. Goodall has observed a similar phenomenon happen during a heavy rain.

These observations have led her to conclude that chimpanzees are as spiritual as we are. This view fits with various theories in developmental science, showing that playful activities are often crucial for developing important abilities like theory of mind and counterfactual thinking. Play also occurs in bouts: it has a clear beginning and ending. Play involves a sense of justice, or at least equanimity: big animals need to self-handicap in order to not hurt smaller animals.

And it might go without saying, but play is embodied. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men take part in the Tashlich ritual, during which sins are cast into the water to the fish Credit: Getty. Now compare that to ritual, which is enacted, which is embodied.

Rituals begin and end. They require both shared intention and shared attention. There are norms involved. They take place in a time within time — beyond the time of the everyday.

Play allows us to do this. There is a continuity between the two. The second trait we must consider is empathy. Empathy is not primarily in the head. The ritual symbolises the release of kindness and goodwill Credit: Getty.

Empathy is absolutely central to what we call morality, says de Waal. It makes us interested in others. It makes us have an emotional stake in them. De Waal has been criticised over the years for offering a rose-coloured interpretation of animal behaviour. Rather than view animal behaviour as altruistic, and therefore springing from a sense of empathy, we should, these wise scientists tell us, see this behaviour for what it is: selfishness.

Animals want to survive. Any action they take needs to be interpreted within that matrix. Altruistic tendencies come very naturally to many mammals.

Yes, of course there are pleasurable sensations associated with the action of giving to others. But evolution has produced pleasurable sensations for behaviours we need to perform, like sex and eating and female-nursing.

The same is true for altruism, says de Waal. That does not fundamentally alter what the behaviour is. Such a hard and fast line between altruism and selfishness, then, is naive at best and deceptive at worst. And we can see the same with discussions of social norms. An animal may perform the behaviour X, but does it do so because it feels it should do so — thanks to an appreciation of a norm?

The development of the scientific method in the 17th century in Europe and its modern further advances have had at least as great a set of world-transforming consequences. There have been many historical theories , but none capable, I would argue, of explaining as fundamentally transformational a set of events as the rise of the modern world. It was a revolution in human thought, operating outside any explanations grounded in scientific materialism, that drove the process.

The only choice we get is what to worship. Even though Karl Marx, for example, condemned the illusion of religion, his followers, ironically, worshiped Marxism. That the Christian essence, as arose out of Judaism, showed such great staying power amidst the extraordinary political, economic, intellectual and other radical changes of the modern age is another reason I offer for thinking that the existence of a god is very probable.

Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Does God exist? Nelson , University of Maryland.

Author Robert H. Laws of math In the Princeton physicist — and subsequent Nobel Prize winner — Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question : Why did the natural world always — so far as we know — obey laws of mathematics?

The first three studies had shown direct causal evidence of religion on self-control—and downstream effects on enduring discomfort, delaying rewards, and exerting patience.

But is it possible that the religious priming might have activated something else—moral intuition, or death-related concerns?

In order to rule out these possibilities, the scientists used a completely secular self-control task, one with no moral overlay: the so-called Stroop task. This is the task where one must rapidly identify the ink that words are printed in, rather than read the words. The scientists primed some with religious words as usual, but others were primed with moral words—virtue, righteous—and still others with words related to mortality—deadly, grave, and so forth. Then all the volunteers attempted the Stroop task on a computer, which measured accuracy and reaction time.

The results, as reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science , showed that religiously primed volunteers had much more self-control than did controls or those primed to think about mortality. But those with religion on their minds were statistically no different than those with morality on their minds. This was an unexpected finding, and it suggests that activating an implicit moral sensibility may have some of the same effects as religion.

One possibility is that religion makes people mindful of an ever watchful God, and thus encourages more self-monitoring. Or religious priming may activate concerns of supernatural punishment. A more secular explanation is that religious priming makes people more concerned about their reputation in the community, leading to more careful self-monitoring. Notably, almost a third of the volunteers in these studies were self-defined atheists or agnostics, suggesting that these robust effects have little or nothing to do with the suggestibility of the most devout.

I think that religion was created by people and for people. When you look at the similarities between religions, they all have a core idea of something being there after death, and in Christianity especially, there is a punishment for doing the wrong thing and a reward for doing the right thing.

But I also believe that religion is for people who are unable to think for themselves. Religions tell you how to think, what to think, when to think, and what to think about. Nothing in this world was invented by man without a need. Religion should have been invented to meet a need. To understand the need we need to port ourselves years hence leaving behind our prejudices and beliefs.

Every king made his own laws. And it was not uncommon to find a new king ruling every now and then. Law kept changing with every king. Life should have been pretty difficult.