Message from @Timo)))
Discord ID: 355972044510199809
*Religion was created as a means for humans to cope with their own mortality. Supporting this, arguments in favor of life after death, and simply being religious, reduce the effects of mortality salience on worldview defense. Thoughts of death have also been found to increase religious beliefs. At an implicit, subconscious level, this is the case even for people who claim to be nonreligious.*
*The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profound – albeit subconscious – anxiety in people that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it. On large scales, societies build symbols: laws, religious meaning systems, cultures, and belief systems to explain the significance of life, define what makes certain characteristics, skills, and talents extraordinary, reward others whom they find exemplify certain attributes, and punish or kill others who do not adhere to their cultural worldview. On an individual level, self-esteem provides a buffer against death-related anxiety.*
*It has been suggested that culture provides meaning, organization, and a coherent world view that diminishes the psychological terror caused by the knowledge of eventual death.*
If religion is a way to cope with the fear of death why would they create the idea of hell, which is worse than death?
To keep you from leaving the religion.
Yes but why
That creates more terror
If religion is just to make life easy why add the horrible stuff
Chance of salvation vs no chance of salvation. It reinforces the society to conform to the religion, thus increasing the overall self-esteem and feelings of invulnerability.
The Book of Revelations gives little comfort
Apocolyps and few will make it to heaven
It's acts like a herding dog.
Which creates a fate worse than death, so I don't think religion is a coping mechanism
If anything thinking nothing comes after life is more comforting
What Christian actively believes they are going to Hell though? Kind of defeats the point. It's a way to 'punish' the unbelievers, while knowing you will instead be saved. Hell is not random, it is reserved for the unrepentant.
It raises the stakes.
Like I said, the book of revelations says very few will make it to heaven
It's not very comforting
Even if you make it to heaven, there's a chance a good friend or family member will not, which adds stress and terror to your life
This is deep theology. But like I said, it creates a divide against the believers and non-believers. Apart of self-esteem is knowing the torment that you have avoided. In proposing a fate worse than death, it actually increases the religious response even more.
Maybe adding terror makes people even more religious.
Right, but why add it if it's jut to cope with terror
If it was really just that you wouldn't end up with christianity, it'd be much more soft
If religious is a coping mechanism which works, that a super terror makes a more robust coping mechanism. The greater the terror, the stronger the religious response, and the greater the feelings of invulnerabilty. It's a feedback loop. Once you start it, it feeds on itself.
The people that strike me as less afraid of death are the non religious people
Thinking of religion as simply a coping mechanism is too one dimensional imo
Of course non religious people are not afraid of death, if they were they would be more religious. This is what the theory predicts.
Atheism is relatively new. The comforts of modern life make people less afraid, less consciousness of death.
So people are afraid of death, so they believe in a system in which they can end up at a fate worse than death?
Not only them but everyone they know
Seems to add a lot of stress about death
Not for the the believers.
Yes it does
If you believe you are saved.
Book of revelations tell me otherwise
Jesus is a harsh judge