Religious Belief - Reasons For Adherence To Religious Belief

Reasons For Adherence To Religious Belief

See also: Existence of God

Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following:

  • "Moral framework": Belief in God is seen by some to be necessary for moral behavior.
  • "Majesty and tradition": Many people consider religious practices to be serene, beautiful, and conducive to religious experiences, which in turn support religious beliefs.
  • "Community and culture": Organized religions promote a sense of community among their followers, and the moral and cultural common ground of these communities makes them attractive to people with the same values. Indeed, while religious beliefs and practices are usually connected, some individuals with substantially secular beliefs still participate in religious practices for cultural reasons.
  • "Spiritual and psychological benefits": Each religion asserts that it is a means by which its adherents may come into closer contact with God, Truth, and Spiritual Power. They all promise to free adherents from spiritual bondage, and bring them into spiritual freedom. It naturally follows that a religion which frees its adherents from deception, sin, and spiritual death will have significant mental health benefits. Abraham Maslow's research after World War II showed that Holocaust survivors tended to be those who held strong religious beliefs (not necessarily temple attendance, etc.), suggesting it helped people cope in extreme circumstances. Humanistic psychology went on to investigate how religious or spiritual identity may have correlations with longer lifespan and better health. The study found that humans may particularly need religious ideas to serve various emotional needs such as the need to feel loved, the need to belong to homogeneous groups, the need for understandable explanations and the need for a guarantee of ultimate justice. Other factors may involve sense of purpose, sense of identity, sense of contact with the divine. See also Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl, detailing his experience with the importance of religion in surviving the Holocaust. Critics assert that the very fact that religion was the primary selector for research subjects may have introduced a bias, and that the fact that all subjects were holocaust survivors may also have had an effect. According to Larson et al. (2000), "ore longitudinal research with better multidimensional measures will help further clarify the roles of these factors and whether they are beneficial or harmful."

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