Almost every Russian knows the actor Ivan Okhlobystin, but for some it still remains a secret that he is a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. Why did a young successful and sought-after person come to religion?
This question can be answered only by studying the history of the emergence of religion and its role in the modern world. This is necessary, first of all, for people who are weak in faith or who do not believe at all, but a believer knows that religion is a connection with God. This connection is established for all times until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ occurs and the time of the Last Judgment comes.
Religion is a worldview based on belief in God
The word “religion” is translated from Latin as “to bind”, “to unite”. There are several definitions of this term. In science, religion is usually understood as a certain belief system, which is determined by belief in the supernatural.
It includes a certain set of moral norms and rules of behavior, as well as rules for conducting rituals and religious activities. Religion is characterized by the unification of people in organizations. For Christianity it is the Church and the religious community.
Creation of Adam. Fresco. Michelangelo Buonarroti. Around 1511. Religion is the connection between man and God
From the point of view of representatives of religion itself, it acts as a form of worldview, which is focused on the knowledge of the Supreme Being, which acts as the First Principle of all things, that is, God.
Moreover, for a believer, religion is a connection with God. It answers the question about the meaning of life and indicates the purpose of man on Earth.
Religion is the external expression of a person’s connection with God, and faith is its internal content.
Very often religion is identified with faith. It is not right. The content of faith is the internal relationship of a person with God, while religion is its external manifestation. Faith is manifested in the fact that a person recognizes all the events described in the Holy Scriptures, believes in God and turns to him through prayer.
In order for all this to have a certain form, religion is necessary. At the same time, a special place is given to the clergy, as a connecting link between man and God.
Abbots and abbesses of the Russian Orthodox Church at a solemn service in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on the day of the 100th anniversary of the enthronement of St. Tikhon of Moscow. In religion, a special place is given to the clergy, as a link between man and God
A religious system is not subject to scientific research or experimental verification. It relies on faith and mystical experience. The fact is that religion is connected with a person’s relationship to the superhuman spiritual world, about which he may know something, but not have reliable information.
The foundations of religion are written down by man in a sacred text. For Christians, this is the Bible, which contains the basics of Christian doctrine.
Why don't I believe in God
What allows me to take such an impartial position is the fact that I am not a devotee of any of the existing religions, for the following reasons.
All religions are based on an unproven belief in the supernatural
In my opinion, every truth needs proof before it can be accepted as such. We do not have any recorded evidence in favor of the existence of God (or indeed his absence).
It is clear that with evidence this will no longer be faith, but as soon as the criteria of truth cease to exist for us, then we can believe in anything we want, no matter what! “I believe because it’s absurd!” It is unreasonable to base all your knowledge about the world on some book written by who knows who and rewritten it is unclear how many times throughout its existence!
Belief in a higher entity stems from the characteristics of human psychology
For me, a large number of believers around the world is not at all a criterion of truth. I remember a quote from J. Orwell: “common mind is not a statistical concept.”
No, contrary to the opinion of some philosophers, psychologists and cultural experts, I am not going to recognize religiosity (except for its extreme manifestations) as something from the category of mental illness. It is more of a psychological pattern than a deviation. We encounter the creation and worship of one god or several gods in thousands of different manifestations throughout the entire existence of mankind: from the most primitive societies, to technological and modern ones.
This fact confirms that belief in a higher entity, the creator, is characteristic of people for a number of psychological and cultural reasons. The deification of nature is a creative act aimed at seeing in the entire universe, in death, in birth, in grief and in the natural elements, not blind chaos inaccessible to knowledge and control, but reason, divine will, a manifestation of heavenly logic.
The most ancient religions were attempts to explain and curb the unbridled natural elements that surround man. Through sacrifices and spells, man tried to achieve mercy from the capricious gods and, thereby, influence natural processes: to save the harvest from drought, and to protect himself from the predatory beast in the forest.
Put yourself for a moment in the shoes of an ancient man. You live in a circle of your own kind, diseases are raging around you, for which, at that time, there were no cures, fellow tribesmen are dying - yesterday they were - but today they are not. You are constrained by concerns about your survival: if only the harvest would come up, if only the hunt would be successful. Your entire existence depends on the vagaries of nature: whether it will rain, whether the animal will disappear in the nearby forests.
You do not have any confirmed knowledge about the world, which modern man has: every day a fiery luminary rises in the sky, and at night a large white circle appears there surrounded by flickering dots. You don’t know what it is, but your life, the lives of your children and the people around you depend on it.
Imagine all this horror and awe of the forces of nature that ancient man experienced and which is unknown to modern man, except, perhaps, in the most primitive communities! From such deep-seated fear the first religions were born, as attempts to understand nature and influence it, as an answer to the question why we all die and where we end up after death, what lights up in the sky every day, and what appears in it at night.
With the development of science and technology, people have learned to tame and explain the elements: predict natural disasters, use various sources of energy and food, and treat diseases. Gradually, religion was forced out of the sphere of explanation and domestication of natural processes.
If the harvest is threatened by drought, we will not jump around the plantations with a tambourine, but will use technologies that allow us to bring water to our agricultural lands. We know approximately when it will rain, that this is not the will of the Lord, but the result of processes occurring in the atmosphere and on the earth.
Indeed, science has provided answers to many questions and taught us to be much less defenseless in the face of the elements. But many gaps in knowledge remained unfilled. We still don’t know why we live and how we came to be, what happens to us when we die.
The answers are beyond human experience, where it is difficult to prove or disprove anything, where what is said cannot be verified, and therefore there is a lot of scope for imagination and interpretation, namely where religion exists.
No one really knows or can know what will happen after death. No one ever returned from there. Therefore, you can fantasize as much as you like on the topic of life after death, build an entire philosophy on it, because no one can refute it, since it lies beyond the boundaries of any experience! That's what religion does.
People ask eternal questions and receive at least some answers. Many representatives of the human race cannot say “I do not know and cannot know whether there is a God and life after death, this is not yet accessible to my mind,” because they do not know how to exist in conditions of incomplete knowledge, when there are gaping unfilled gaps, and there is some uncertainty and incomprehensibility.
For some reason, these people believe that there should be clear and simple answers to all questions, and here, just in time, religion appears under the banner of absolute knowledge. Religion satisfies a person’s need to know everything and relieves him of the fear of ignorance. But belief in a higher essence plays not only this role. Also, many human psychic aspects find their satisfaction in belief in God.
Why do many people believe in God?
We are afraid of death. This fear runs very deep. We are afraid that one day our existence will end, our existence will end and we don’t know what will happen. This makes us passionately desire some kind of continuation, contrary to all logic and common sense, we can believe in continuation as something taken for granted, which we can be sure of for sure, although we ourselves know nothing about it.
We love justice. We want rewards for our good deeds and want bad people to be punished. This will be fair - we believe, and nature cannot be unfair, if in this earthly world my bad neighbor achieved everything, and I, the good one, was left with nothing, then in the afterlife I will be blissful, sitting on a cloud, while my neighbor is being fried with a bang in a huge frying pan. It is psychologically comfortable for us to believe this.
We need a higher spy. In the feeling of some force that protects us, watches over us. This is our reaction to the unpredictability of life. Just as ancient people endowed the unconscious nature with reason, so we fill our destiny, subject to the dictatorship of chance and uncertainty, with meaning, believing that everything that happens happens thanks to someone’s will.
We need confidence in our lives and our actions. We want to live in the consciousness that we are fulfilling some higher orders dictated by our faith. Every day we strive for salvation, liberation, everything has meaning for us.
We crave connection with other people. When we say about ourselves, “I am a Christian,” “I am a Muslim,” we feel unity with a multimillion-strong community of believers. We are imbued with a commonality of views and ideas, the awareness of the presence of many like-minded people, “brothers in faith.”
We want peace. Religion calms us down, thanks to the above factors, and creates a feeling of psychological comfort. The atmosphere of many rituals stabilizes and calms the psyche. Faith is also intoxicating, like a drug. Many people mistake this effect for divine grace, for a higher power.
These, as well as other psychological factors that I did not name, make religiosity a natural mental phenomenon. We want to believe in a higher power. But this desire itself cannot speak in favor of the correspondence of faith to the true, actual state of affairs. We believe because this is how we are made.
All religions are primitive, mythological and bear the imprint of human creativity
Even if a higher intelligence exists, does it necessarily correspond to one of the existing religions? Imagine that suddenly creationists somehow miraculously refuted the scientific fact about the existence of evolution. It doesn’t matter how, but they succeeded, just assume that it happened in some science fiction novel =). We found ourselves facing the fact that we were created by someone. Is this evidence of what is said in the Bible or, say, in the Indian Vedas?
What does it mean that our creator is certainly the guy with the beard who came to earth and allowed himself to be crucified on the cross in order to save people from himself? The fact is that we know nothing about our creator: it could be a deity, or aliens, or anyone else.
The thought of the possibility of the existence of a creator mind must visit each of us. It can captivate us and make us want to know more. And religious teachings are right there! This quite sensible idea (after all, why shouldn’t there be a creator, it’s possible) is wrapped up in a ready-made template of beliefs and ideas: “if you admit the existence of a creator, then he is exactly like this, like this and like this: crucified, blue and many-armed ( emphasize what is necessary), his teaching is exactly like this, and the world was created this way and that way, and not in some other way.”
As if if someone accepts the idea of the existence of God, then this someone must accept everything that is described in one of the religions. But that's exactly what happens.
Religious ideas are primitive and archaic. They are like myths that bear the imprint of their creators: they tell of the cruelty, vindictiveness and pride of the Almighty. It’s as if people copied this image from themselves!
We were not created in the image and likeness, but we created our gods in our own image! This all just seems like the feeble attempts of a man limited by his culture, brain power, and biology to understand the unknowable and form a rough idea of what he thinks God should be like.
This is more like myth-making, the writing of fairy tales in which, traditionally, good fights evil, the bad are punished and the good are rewarded, there is betrayal, enmity and repentance. It's all so human! These fables, in my opinion, are too simple and predictable to claim to describe the existence of a supreme being.
And how many religions there were! Does the fact that the tale of the man crucified on the cross is more popular today than the collection of myths about the Olympian gods make it more truthful than the latter? Throughout its history, humanity has given birth to religions and in all of them it has left a trace of itself, its thinking, its premonitions and hopes, just as one and the same author gives birth to the imprints of his presence in all his creations, even if they are written under different, fictitious names ...
There are two main concepts of the origin of religion: theological and atheistic
Religions appeared in ancient times, and many outstanding philosophers devoted their works to it.
So Seneca in his writings argued that every person has an innate concept of deity. Plutarch also spoke about this.
XVIII - XX
During these centuries, religious studies flourished, as well as criticism of religion
The heyday of religious studies occurred in the 18th - early 20th centuries, when most eminent philosophers, historians and psychologists paid a lot of attention to the study of religions.
Bust of Plutarch in his hometown, Chaeronea. Plutarch, in his writings, argued that knowledge about the deity of a person is natural and inherent in him from birth
All major theories of the origin of religion are divided into two main groups:
- theological concept;
- atheistic (evolutionary).
The theological concept is that faith was originally given to people by a higher power - the Creator or Creator. God shares the knowledge He created with people through the prophets. Through them, he gives them the law and commandments that regulate the behavior of people in society and are binding on everyone.
Until the second half of the 19th century, the theological concept was not questioned, however, towards the end of the 19th century, more and more researchers were inclined towards the evolutionary concept.
The end of the 19th century was the heyday of the evolutionary concept of the origin of religion.
The evolutionary or atheistic concept of the origin of religion is that faith arose due to the fact that people could not explain certain phenomena of the external world. In order to do this, they “invented” gods and supernatural forces.
In addition, adherents of this concept also say that religion makes it possible to control people, so it has little to do with faith.
They directly link the evolution of religion to the level of development of society, while some of them do not deny the existence of God, but do not recognize religion.
Karl Marx, 1875. Karl Marx is the creator of the Marxist theory of the origin of religion. Its essence lies in the transfer of real social relations to a mystical level, an unearthly level
There are five main theories of the origins of religion that are included in the concepts described. This:
- theistic;
- naturalistic;
- sociological;
- Marxist;
- psychoanalytic.
In addition, cases of confusion between these theories are widespread. It should be noted that Christian theologians have carefully studied and analyzed all theories of the origin of religion. In all, except for the one contained in the Bible, there are serious flaws that do not allow us to explain the process of the origin of religion.
Benefits of Religion
But, although religious truths deserve to be doubted, religion has a certain useful function in the education of the individual.
There is no doubt that, contrary to the ideas of opponents of various religions, that belief in God is completely evil, religion has a number of advantages for self-development.
Value orientation
All world religions set the correct, in my opinion, code of values. Indeed, the meaning of life is not only to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure from material wealth. Passions and desires need to be controlled and contained, love, kindness, mutual assistance are, in fact, good, but envy, anger, vanity and pride are really bad. At the heart of religion is a certain teaching about the development of personality, about its correct upbringing, and this teaching, if we discard much else, contains a sound grain.
Discipline of personality
Following the spiritual principles of faith disciplines you. Religion requires knowing moderation in food, sex, alcohol, fulfilling ritual instructions (prayers), and fasting. She teaches you to monitor the movements of your emotional world (how to control your emotions) and resist it when it comes to forbidden passions.
Such restraint forms strength of character, strong self-control and awareness (though with the condition that it does not go to the extreme, into asceticism. All the advantages of faith that I am talking about are such only until they take a radical form.)
Abstractness, otherworldliness, transcendence
Belief in God is abstract in relation to everyday life, that is, it stands above all your momentary affairs, goals and desires. This sets a certain higher goal, the pursuit of which allows you not to drown in routine and everyday worries, to always keep this high spiritual landmark in your attention, look at it and not let your gaze freeze under your feet...
Relaxation techniques
Prayers calm your mind and give you relief from all your problems. Concentrating on the recitation of the text acts like meditation. Daily prayers strengthen your nervous system and make you calmer and more relaxed. All sorts of religious rituals with their magnificent solemnity, framed in the shining decoration of temples, also have a calming effect. The power of religion also lies in the power of the art inspired by it.
Believers, those who have not been touched by demoniac fanaticism, are, as a rule, more calm and balanced than others.
These are significant advantages; I recommend that militant atheists and opponents of faith pay attention to them. Now about the cons.
The Christian religion arose as a result of Divine revelation
Only a non-believer can ask the question: why was religion invented? For a believer, in principle, it does not exist, since all information about the emergence of Christianity is contained in the Holy Scriptures. If we talk about the historical side, Christianity originated in Palestine in the 1st century AD. e.
Video: The origin of religion. Victor Lega. At 27 seconds, the author says that believers know that religion existed from the beginning, since God created religion.
The Old Testament tells us how Abraham gave birth to many nations, including the Israelites. In addition, it talks about God concluding a Covenant with the Israelites through the prophet Moses.
Moreover, the Old Testament says that Bol will have to send his Son, the Messiah, to earth.
The fact is that the people of Israel were unable to cleanse themselves from sin, despite the fact that the Lord gave them commandments, laws, kings and judges.
Through the death and resurrection of Christ, the Lord concluded a New Covenant (agreement) with humanity.
After the Savior, Jesus Christ, a direct descendant of King David, came to earth, as is directly stated in the Holy Scriptures, the Lord concluded the New Testament.
This happened through Christ's death on the cross and His Resurrection. God has already concluded a New Testament (agreement) with all humanity, to whom Christ, through his suffering on the cross, opened the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Sermon on the Mount. K.G. Bloch. 1877 The foundations of the new religion, Christianity, were set out by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount
The fundamentals of Christian doctrine were set forth by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. The Savior founded the Church from his disciples-apostles. By God's Will, they acquired the gift of speaking different languages and went to carry the Word of Christ to different countries of the world.
For example, in the territory of the future Kievan Rus, Andrew the First-Called preached. This is how the Christian religion arose, while Judaism was preserved, since some Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Harm to Religion
Religion slows down intellectual development
The most widespread world religions are authoritarian, that is, they require unconditional acceptance of their truths, without the right to doubt. We are told “do this - it says so in the Bible”, this is dogma, we cannot ask questions “why exactly this”.
Such supposedly unconditional truths imposed on us suppress our critical ability, since we cannot make an independent assessment, but are simply obliged to accept something on faith. This limits the scope for an inquisitive mind: many questions are given a final and categorical answer, while other questions remain taboo.
This significantly hinders the development of an individual, and especially a child: while his brain must absorb a lot of information about the world, learning to make independent judgments is instilled in him with a ready-made teaching where everything is final: “this way and that way and no other way.”
If you want to put an end to the intellectual development of a child, send him to some church school, where the teaching of “seditious” disciplines like biology and physics is severely limited and will not allow him to read a lot of fiction, since there is also a lot of “bad” in it, according to the church .
Religion is full of paradoxes and in order to appear more consistent it has to take skillful steps to circumvent logic. If you hold everything that is in the teaching in your head and try to combine it into a holistic picture yourself, then your logical core may suffer, since you accept a fundamental teaching in which logic is not always present. Accordingly, because of this, the ability to consistently, logically think and reason is lost. Those who have encountered the arguments of believers are well aware of this.
Religion breeds ignorance
Religious teachings contain a lot of nonsense that does not stand the test of common sense, logic and scientific, proven truths. And the teaching requires that we take all this nonsense on faith, sacrificing proven, scientific knowledge about the world. What good can be said about the erudition of a person who is firmly convinced of the statement, contrary to all facts, that the earth appeared 10,000 years ago and all animals and people were formed immediately in the form in which we see them now? I think nothing.
Access to all the knowledge about the universe, accumulated with great difficulty, is closed to him, since this knowledge contradicts his faith. The result is complete ignorance and mental limitations, which can be inherited.
Why spend years studying biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, when everything you need to know is contained in a few paragraphs of a beautiful fairy tale about the creation of the earth? Religion, with cunning images, has forbidden doubt in its very provisions; supposedly, unlike science, it does not need proof and cannot be refuted!
Even if her truths contradict obvious facts, all the same, the truth remains behind her, according to believers. Only religious people can doubt the obvious, the obvious, the proven, and without complaining accept on faith the absurd, contradictory and unproven! This is a serious crime against common sense and a symptom of religious ignorance.
You can, of course, being supporters of faith, retort to me by saying that a lot of scientists, people of science believed in God! I will say that they may have believed in God, but they clearly didn't take all that nonsense about the creation of the world 10,000 years ago seriously, if they were really serious scientists. You can’t delve into dinosaur bones or look at the stars and at the same time keep in your head the absurd thought of the appearance of the earth, by astronomical and geological standards, a moment ago!
It is unclear to me why opponents of evolution need to push forward their ignorance, disputing a proven scientific fact, when it is possible to admit that evolution exists, it’s just that God himself launched it, like a programmer, wrote all its complex algorithms so that it, like an ever-working biological program, ensured the development of life on earth, the crown of which would be man.
This form of creationism is more consistent with common sense, although it deviates from the biblical tale. What makes you take on faith the contents, in full, of some ancient book, which probably contains elements of fiction and myth-making?
There is an ethical side of the Bible, which says how to behave, and there is a “physical” side, which, apparently, based on ancient ideas, describes how this world works and how it came to be. And is it possible that by rejecting the latter we come to the denial of the former?
Opium for the people
Religion is indeed the opium of the people, in a sense. It is like a strong psychoactive drug, which, if handled skillfully and under the supervision of a specialist, can still bring some benefit, but there is always the possibility of going crazy and going to extremes.
This is due not only to the religious system of ideas itself, as such, but to the character of the believer. Temperamental, passionate natures can easily succumb to fanaticism due to their disposition. In their minds, religious values may become distorted to justify their passionate actions. Punishment, cruelty and even murder can turn into acts in the name of faith!
If earlier the destructive impulses of these individuals were somehow restrained, now they have received the “green color” and, thanks to the perversion of the tenets of faith, these people are sincerely convinced that they are doing the right thing and in the name of a higher idea. Fanaticism is not only aggressive. Some people just become very meek and withdraw into themselves, which is like some kind of quiet and calm mental illness.
In general, I want to say that a believer has every chance of becoming violently insane on the basis of religion. I think that you don’t have to look far for examples of religious cruelty...
The absurdity of some postulates
Few people try to think about the appropriateness of some church regulations, because “what is said, it must be done.” I’m talking, for example, about the fact that Catholic priests are not allowed to marry (it seems that this is prescribed by church norms, and not by Holy Scripture).
I doubt that the church will take into account psychiatry in order to understand what such persistent suppression of sexual desire can lead to. And everyone knows very well what this leads to: the psyche ruined since childhood, injuries to parents, lawsuits... If someone doesn’t understand, I’m talking about cases of pedophilia.
I believe that sexual desire needs healthy control so as not to turn into depravity, but only control, and not a complete ban! The instinct to procreate is something that is inherent in us by biology and cannot simply be renounced!
If we want to deprive someone who is in good health of the opportunity to have sexual intercourse with members of the opposite sex, then it is better to castrate him immediately, so that the unsatisfied desire does not manifest itself in the ugliest and perverted forms, ruining someone’s life and destinies .
This desire for extremes manifests itself in many other religious prohibitions, even if these prohibitions, at their core, contain a healthy grain. But the truth, as always, turns out to be in the middle, between religious radicalism and a complete lack of inhibitions and permissiveness.
The failure to accept this is the mistake of many militant opponents of the church. They are offended by the fact that religion is trying to subjugate and pervert the most natural thing in a person. From this they conclude that this natural thing (sex, food, pleasure) does not need any care at all, although this is not the case.
Humility, submission
The basis of morality in many religious systems is unconditional submission and blind obedience. This makes a person obedient and ready to follow any authority at the first command. This, of course, greatly limits the freedom, will and independence of the individual, instills in him an eternal need for a leader and the inability to think and act independently, in the absence of orders and regulations.
Religion cultivates and encourages herdism, lack of individuality and lack of personal opinion.
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is not a virtue of a religious system specifically. This is simply a characteristic of many believers, so I decided to touch on it here. Religion sets very high and difficult behavioral standards to achieve. In order to be kind towards others, not to envy, not to get angry, and to fulfill all the requirements of religion, you need to do quite a lot of work on yourself and follow strict religious discipline. Not every believer wants this.
Many people want to live and experience some forbidden pleasures and do not want to work on self-discipline. But at the same time, they are frightened by the prospect of terrible punishment after death. And they allegedly find a compromise. They can fulfill some instructions selectively: go to church, wear a cross, but at the same time, they are capable of cursing a random passerby, deceiving someone for money and at the same time not experiencing any repentance, that is, they are acting contrary to their religion!
This is a very nasty form of hypocrisy! I appeal to such people, do you really think that you will achieve salvation if you do this? There are no compromises in faith: you cannot be a half believer! Remember, faith is, first of all, actions, the state of your inner world, and not the performance of rituals: wearing crosses, amulets, attending services, etc.
Fear
Most of the world's religious systems are based on intimidation: if you do not obey, eternal torment awaits you; whoever is not with us is against us. The biblical provision about free will is simply a profanation, because there is no free will. And no theological speculation on this issue can make black become white, and this is so: fear of punishment is an essential element of faith and there is no smell of free will here.
And fear and coercion are far from the best incentives for personal development, when actions stem not from some internal, sincere and conscious interest in development, but from the fear of simply being left behind.
And if suddenly this incentive disappears, for example, a person doubts the existence of hell and heaven, then he inevitably comes to the concept of permissiveness. Because, apart from fear, nothing else kept him from bad deeds and degradation.
Modern society needs religion, despite the fact that it is atheistic
The question: does a person need religion began to be asked in ancient times. At the same time, active criticism of the Christian religion began to be conducted from the beginning of the 18th to the 19th centuries. It was then that such a movement as Voltairianism developed, which had a pronounced anti-clerical orientation.
It was then that the foundations of free thought or the concept of human rights emerged, which put man first, not God.
Bust of Voltaire. Colo Marie-Anne.1770s. Active criticism of the Christian religion occurred in the 18th - 19th centuries and was initiated, among other things, by Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
Modern society professes the ideas of Western-style democracy and human rights as the highest value. It is atheistic in its essence, however, it needs religion.
In many countries of the world, the Church is separated from the state, while religion continues to have a significant influence on political and social processes in them.
As a result, it is religion that shapes people’s views on life, their beliefs and civic position.
The 18th and 19th centuries were a time of active criticism of Christianity by philosophers and thinkers.
Answering the question: is religion needed in the modern world, it is necessary to point out its following functions, which are in demand by modern society:
- satisfying the spiritual and mystical needs of people;
- establishing rules and moral norms governing human behavior in society;
- educating a person in the spirit of observing established rules and norms of behavior in society;
- support and comfort of people in moments of tragedy, difficult life situations and severe mental suffering;
- uniting people with similar interests into one group, establishing communications between them.
Thus, even the most free-thinking representatives of modern society clearly understand why people need religion in our time. Even atheists speak of believers as people with a strong spiritual and moral core.
In an atheistic world, religion gives a person a feeling of being right and stable, because a Christian in his life relies on the Word of God, expressed in the Holy Scriptures. An atheist has nothing to rely on, so his life is complex and unstable.
Only the Church preserves and interprets the Holy Scriptures
The Christian Church, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Its task is not only to preserve, but also to correctly interpret the Holy Scriptures. It is in it that the revealed truths are captured, as well as the Tradition passed on from the apostles through generations of people.
Tradition is the totality of spiritual experience, everything that the Church has accumulated over the centuries of its existence. The Holy Tradition includes:
- Holy Bible;
- works of the Church Fathers;
- books by theologians and spiritual mentors;
- experience of prayer and worship.
Naturally, one person outside of religion and the Church cannot accumulate all this.
Saint Apostle Paul, Andrei Rublev, icon around 1410. The Christian Church, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15)
The few who declare that they do not need religion because they have God in their souls know that they are dooming themselves to spiritual death. The fact is that without religion a person would never have known that there is a God.
He would live only to serve the needs of his mortal body. In addition, there is always the danger of getting lost, because an ordinary person is not able to learn all the subtleties of theology and therefore can easily become a victim of heresy.
If a person considers himself a Christian, he cannot isolate himself, since he must be a member of the Church. He is obliged to observe the cult, that is, to pray, participate in worship, attend sermons, etc.
In addition, it is the duty of a Christian to keep the commandments. At least these are the commandments of Moses and the Beatitudes.
"Commandments of Beatitudes", Orthodox icon. A believer must, at least must, keep the commandments of Moses and the Beatitudes
You can't call yourself a Christian if you don't know what you believe. To do this, you need to know the Creed in order to sing it at the liturgy. All of the above are the basics so that a person can show that he believes in Christ. Without religion and the Church, a person is not able to gain knowledge about them, so these institutions are needed in the modern world.
Criticism and defense of religion
In this article you will find both criticism and defense of religion (not denial or affirmation of the existence of a higher essence, but an assessment of a social phenomenon). Why am I writing this? Not to simply state my opinion on a religious issue. And, then, to show that religion also has its own wisdom and you should not ignore it to your detriment, even if you are not a religious person at all, which I am. I want to show that many attacks on belief in God are not entirely fair.
But I will also talk about everything archaic, outdated and harmful that exists in every religion. And all this in order to draw a conclusion about whether we need religion, and if not, what good we can inherit from it.
A little clarification. I constantly write “the benefits and harms of religion in a social context, the context of personal development,” what does this mean? This means that I want to limit the area I am considering, as objectivity requires it. If you look at religion from within itself, it turns out that all of it is an absolute good, as it itself prescribes. But I will consider this phenomenon from the outside, as a cultural, social phenomenon with its pros and cons, and not as an absolute, undeniable truth that does not require proof.
Religion gives meaning to a person’s life, which is important in the modern world
A modern person has access to a lot. With the help of modern technologies, he can receive any information; in addition, advances in science and technology have made it possible to satisfy the urgent needs of most people.
All this creates numerous temptations for them, the main one of which is the deification of man. At the same time, neither science nor technology can give people an idea of the meaning of life.
His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill. Patriarch Kirill in his speeches will constantly talk about the fact that without religion, modern man cannot get rid of sin
The spiritual life of a person, his connection with God is the natural sphere of responsibility of religion and the Church. In 2021, His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' said:
“Today sin is not just obvious... Today sin is demonstrated in the most attractive way - through cinema, through theater...
And art, which is designed to cultivate the human personality, enrich it, raise it to the sky, becomes a weight that does not allow a person to take off.”
That is why in the modern world the role of religion not only remains important, but is increasing all the time.
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Does believing in God make people happy?
One of the questions that ardent minds are raising concerns the relationship between faith and well-being. A number of studies report that among a control group of more than 160,000 Europeans, 85% of those who regularly go to church confidently said they were “very satisfied with their lives.” At that time, the percentage was slightly lower among atheists - 77%. Psychologists insist on three factors why this happens:
- social support. Faith is not individual and implies integration into groups of practitioners who provide each other with psychological and material assistance;
- finding the purpose of existence. The level of happiness and well-being increases when a person understands why he lives and what he strives for;
- feeling of emotional unity. Communication with God brings a person a sense of satisfaction and increases his personal significance.
