Obviously, it's all based on faith on some being, concept, etc etc.  So where did it all originate?  What was the cause for it?

I was just reading John Dewey's passage in "Living Philosophies" (Einstein) and I kind of liked this...

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Why have men in the past resorted to philosophies of that which is above and beyond experience?...  The answer, undoubtedly, is that the experience which men had, as well as any that they could reasonably anticipate, gave no signs of ability to furnish the means of it's own regulation.  It offered promises it refused to fufill; it awakened desires only to frustrate them; it created hopes and blasted them; and it evoked ideals and was indifferent and hostile to their realization. ...Since experience did not contain the arts by which its own course could be directed, philosophies and religions of escape and consolatory compensation naturally ensued

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Ideas?  Thoughts?
As a side note, if all you have to say is "l0l god isnt real",  dont waste your time.

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Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin

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safety blanket.

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Basically, yeah. Those who aren't strong enough to stand on their own two feet, and those who are raised to be that religion.

Don't care if you bitch about me all you religions fags, I won't reply as I'm expressing my opinion and you should appreciate it.

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DFTBA.
Now an obligatory party song/dance.

Religion exists because people want and need to believe that there is something more to this world.
Comfort, assurance, righteousness, morality. etc.

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I'd promised myself that I'd go steady this week, but
with the week i've just had this shit is just what I need!

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Quote: from negative0 at 2:01 pm on Nov. 16, 2008

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safety blanket.

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Basically, yeah. Those who aren't strong enough to stand on their own two feet, and those who are raised to be that religion.

Don't care if you bitch about me all you religions fags, I won't reply as I'm expressing my opinion and you should appreciate it.

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So only you are allowed to express your opinion now?  And all the "religious fags" are not?

Hmmm.

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Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin

Post edited at 2:16 pm on Nov. 16, 2008 by kjm55

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I'd promised myself that I'd go steady this week, but
with the week i've just had this shit is just what I need!

Now, although it may be our natural urges to just go out and procreate, to really help our children, society had to have it's own rules to sort this kind of stuff out. So I believe religion was developed to do this. In very early societies, just doing it for the good of the communities was a much harder concept to grasp than "if you don't do it, big electricity from the sky will kill you".
I kind think that;'s what your quote's saying.

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Incidentally this signature is available in the foyer.

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Because humans are so inherently narcissistic that they want to believe that they are special. That there is a plan for them and that they are not alone.

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I think you're confusing specific religious ideology here with religion as a whole, first of all.  Some religions have no real "plan" and others are based almost entirely on philosophy rather than a higher being.

Secondly, although the author of the pasage was arguing (I believe) that religion is, in fact, a product of human cognition...I think he was more getting at the idea that we are constantly trying to figure out if there's more to what's around us than what meets the eye.

That could easily apply to science just as much as religion.  The two aren't that different.

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Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin

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We need a society to ensure that the children we produce aren't just left to fend for themselves, which is what often happens in the animal kingdom, but since we decided to walk upright, our hips had to be reshaped, so our infants needed to be smaller and weaker.

Now, although it may be our natural urges to just go out and procreate, to really help our children, society had to have it's own rules to sort this kind of stuff out. So I believe religion was developed to do this. In very early societies, just doing it for the good of the communities was a much harder concept to grasp than "if you don't do it, big electricity from the sky will kill you".
I kind think that;'s what your quote's saying.

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I agree that that is/was a motive behind a number of religions, however I don't really think that's what the quote is saying.

I think it's more that we aren't satisfied to really accept what we see around us as "all there is".  We need to know if there is something more.  For some people, that "something" is a belief in good or a higher power, and for others that something is the ability to measure and observe explicity how the physical world works (this is what we call "science").

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Around and around and around we spin,
With feet of lead and wings of tin

LOL @ People only using Abrahamic religions.

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Man is so afraid of their own mortality and smallness, that they are willing to fabricate the existence of some "higher being" that gives order and meaning to their lives. Plus, an afterlife is just the kind of fantasy that some people need in order to go on with their lives. So basically, people are afraid and religion is a warm blanket.

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Not all religion has an after life, not all religion has reincarnation.