Why religions are manmade?
The primary reason for the adaptation of religions was protection, they formed as a product of human curiosity and evolved to discipline humans on the fear of gods. But the definition is of right behavior varies from culture to culture. Just like every government has a constitution to run the country, religions have religious rule books (aka holy books). They tell us how a person should behave and the consequences of going against the rules. There is hell and heaven in every religion, those who follow a particular religion and obey their religious leaders will go to their imaginary heaven, and those who don’t will go to hell. In simple words, heaven motivates you to follow a particular faith and hell demotivates you not to do otherwise, but in some cases, it’s more complicated than that because religions have evolved with human intelligence. It makes people bend towards a religion and whatever that religion says is true and everything else becomes a lie for a religion blinded person. It’s easy to prove that religions are manmade but not to a close minded person. Ask some logical questions and almost every belief system will collapse,
1) Does the heavens exist as they say? Because all they contain is human pleasurable things, mostly for men, for example, some havens have good food, some have virgins, and some are very comfortable, there are dancing ladies, drinks, etc. but to enjoy all those things you need a body.
2) Is god really up there? If yes, where does he live? Many will say here and there, but how true is it, why can’t you just go and confirm it and end all this criticism once and for all about the existence of god? Because it’s not, belief is not physical. We have powerful telescopes, we can just look billions of light years far and in past.
There are many theories predicting the origin of religions, or you can make one of your own. The fact that there is more than one religion proves that religions are manmade, and this reality is too obvious to be ignored. We can be better as a species if we recognize that religions are manmade. If we consider the roots of religions and deal with life as it is and use our ability to use reasoning and critical thinking, the world will be a more reasonable place. Religions are full of flaws, gender inequality, and unrealistic rules. They formed like a language, evolved arbitrarily with sufficient randomness and surrounding circumstances. Different natural conditions, predatory environments, and survival tactics shaped different cultures.
Chances of Individual survival are more under a protector, starting with our mothers, attachment is reinforced physiologically through our brain chemistry. We easily expand our need for protectors to authority figures, like group leaders, religious leaders, but mostly, god. God becomes a superior parent, who silently protects us and cares for us even when our primary supporters disappear, due to reasons like death and distance.
One idea is that, just like many other animal species, humans gathered for protection and common survival, and as humans evolved from hunter tribes into larger cultures, they needed encouragement of cooperation and tolerance among relative strangers. So maybe the adaptation of religious traits and faiths was an effective solution to these challenges.
Also, in old times humans had a sense of existence and were curious, but they were not as knowledgeful and reasonable as we are. Similarly, future humans will be smarter than us, it’s evolution. Because of lack of knowledge, God was the ultimate answer to all questions like who created us? Who is giving us water from the sky? Where did everything come from? Etc. Different people, at different places on earth, came up with different creative answers, those who accepted these answers ultimately became followers of that imagination. That’s why there are so many religions.
Also, people knew nothing about things like seasonal cycles, the science behind other natural cycles and incidents like lightning strike, earthquakes and tsunamis. For them, these actions were the doing of godly beings, so they made customs to please god; for example, in summer it’s hot, water sources dry up, so people needs water to survive, then they start praying by looking up at the sky and when the rainy season comes, it rains. This makes people think that their prayers have paid off. You may think I’m wrong but we are evolved from apes and our intelligence has grown with time.
If we say, ‘once you die, you are just gone out of existence’ then suddenly maybe for a movement but nothing matters, you feel like life is meaningless if the truth is painful, we usually don’t like to accept it. But if you know that there is something beyond death, like heaven, next life, etc. then it seems fair (mostly in the case of a person who has less scientific knowledge). Human curiosity gave birth to these ideas and are based on imagination, misunderstandings, and natural coincidences.
The most common thing about religious people of many religions is that they think their religion is superior to others’, this makes them defensive against other faiths. And if a particular religion tries to impose its belief on others, those people, even if they are not religious, feel threatened about their identity. This is the same as one’s pride in his/her country. It’s not brainwashing but our brain’s wiring is evolved in such a way as to protect our identity. When one faith learns about the existence of another, the situation was like do or die, either impose your faith on them or accept others’ identity. This might have led to religious interchange customs.
Today we know that dreams are imaginary, but in the early time of homo sapiens they didn’t know that, for them “It must mean something, god is instructing me to do this and that…*”. There are so many other things too that contributed to the formation of religions like misunderstandings, false memory, and coincidences. People came up with many creative stories about the creation of the earth and life, based on their understanding of nature. That’s why the earth is flat according to one religion and spherical but revolving on some creature according to another.
By following this series of questions, you can come up with your own creative story of creation: Who, How, and Why someone created me? What’s could be the purpose of one’s life? How the creator runs the world? and What happens when we die? People may or may not have believed in those imaginary stories at that time, but it is highly possible that after centuries, those stories have passed through generations, each generation told the same story differently to the next generation, this way they evolved, and normal human stories became godly after hundreds of generations. We see this in real life too, you can do a fun experiment with it, just sit in a circle with a group of people, tell a short story to the first person, ask them to wait for some time, tell the same story to the next person, and repeat. Compare the evolved story with the original. Or stand in line, write a meaningful word on the first person’s back, ask that person to write what they think is written on their to back on the next person’s back, and repeat the same process. Compare the first word with the last one. Consider there was a very wise king who cared for his people, won many battles, did amazing things like building artificial islands, and was a skilled archer. So, one generation told his story to the next, his skills improved from generation to generation and after hundreds of generations, he never missed a target and had magical powers.
Radical religious people are usually close-minded so they deny explanation that proves how and why many religious rules are wrong. Religions are thousands of years old, so when you raise a question on them, it is very likely that someone before you have asked that same question, so they might have found an answer or have made a story to counter it. Just like a company or a program upgrade its model using customers’ complaints and their feedback, religions have evolved and created gods message behind every custom and imposed rule.
Different types of heavens represent common desires of early humans, some liked food so they have good food in their heaven, some may have had sexual desires, so they have virgins, and some like songs and dance so they have that in their heaven. It’s obvious that dying man’s lustful imaginations and hope for peaceful dead-life created heaven. And also, if gods are beyond human emotions like pleasure, lust, anger, ego, hunger then why there are only human pleasurable things in these heavens.
If a person is doing a very bad act on the name of religion, though he is wrong, he is a hero in his own story. Such people are unaware of the beauty of life, they are like isolated tribes in jungles unaware of modern society. If such people were told that ISRO or NASA is sending rockets in the sky to kill their god, they would believe it and may attack space centers. They are grown in closed camps, trained to cause violence, and die like animals; they are raised to be radical believers and live in the hope of heaven. The best way to stop terrorism is to educate each and everyone, because you don’t see the formation of terrorist organizations in countries with higher education rates, do you?
If there were no religion, we would have found other ways to separate ourselves from others to give ourselves an identity. The formation of religions was obvious and normal; it was a byproduct of human survival tactics. Each religion has its own belief system and a origin story. So, some theories may be right for one religion but not for others, but every single religion is indeed manmade. Religious leaders and politicians use religion to create insecurity in your mind for their convenience.
Every culture has its style of clothing, because of different environments. For example, in colder parts of the world, men usually were cote for warmth, in desert areas people were lightweight white cloths because of heat, whereas ladies were barakah it may be because of frequent sandstorms in desert areas, and in mountain terrains clothing is more flexible to move. But some people make this traditional clothing compulsory to get religious influence among common public. Today we are a much more developed and modern society, we don’t have to follow thousand-year-old rules which are unknowingly putting boundaries on us and stopping us from being open-minded. We’ve developed better alternatives, we must put our differences aside, adopt changes, and accept cultural traditions for our convenience, everything is ours, choose the one that fits you. To evolve into a better society.
We are all the same type of human, other species of humans have died in previous mass extensions (we are 8 billion from a few thousand).
Studies have shown that percentage of atheists in developed countries is more compared to developing countries, but the number of atheists is constantly increasing in the developing world too, due to growth in education and social awareness. As people get more scientific knowledge, they tend to become less religious. The number of atheists is increasing exponentially, there are 450 to 500 million atheists worldwide which is around 7% of the world’s population, most of them are younger compared to the average human age.
The extension of religions is unavoidable, as humanity will develop religions won’t matter. As we educate, we will realize the limitations that religion puts on us, everything that is logically incorrect will collapse in the next 25–50 years. Do you really think that people in the 23rd century will be waiting for gods to descend from clouds? First, no one would care about your religion, later you won’t too. I think cultural festivals may remain as they are but their objectives will change, as we realize their importance in mental health. If you want to stop the extinction of religions, you have to stop younger generations from being educated, which is out of anyone’s control. It will be very stupid to say “Thank God”.
