September 9, 2011
Intro to Religion
Wagner
Why does mankind seem so religious?
There is a lot of influential reasoning that can attribute to religion because some of it is man-made and the other is a divine revelation. I think that no matter what, all humans yearn for a universal presence of some kind that is responsible for our existence. Religion is thought to fulfill deep individual needs of humanity. Humans is incurably religious because of the passing of generational opinions and beliefs, such as from churches and other religious sources and organizations, and also what we learn in schools, varying from Greek mythology to evolution and more. The argument from universal belief insists that every human being has an innate knowledge of God- a sense of the divine- that these clues or arguments simply confirm it. However, Roman 1 also insists that we have a tendency to suppress this, this innate knowledge of God, choosing instead to rebel against our Creator (Romans 1:19-23). I agree with this due to the actions of society. In addition, man has always sought to worship something or someone. In contrast, a nineteenth century socialist philosopher, Karl Marx, argued that religion emerged from economic frameworks a mean for oppressing people and maintaining an unjust economic system. In his view, religion is an opiate for the masses to keep them submissive and unquestions about their lot in life. I do not think that man would use the law for an economic system or some kind of punishment. We are taught in school about religion , now depending on the approach the teacher is trying to give off can influence the outcome or the intensity of students perception of religion , because teachers/professors teach our growing youth. Religion goes beyond facts in the form of faith which has a connection to the facts. All the while, we come up assumptions when we look at the facts to determine reasonable conclusions.
Cited: Page 1. The New English Bible. London. Oxford UP and Cambridge UP. 1970. 2. atheism.about.com/od/philosophyofreligion/a/marx.htm