Abstract
Religions have three main functions. They firstly want to entertain or provide services that attract new members who enjoy being part of a community. Religions are normally an affair of groups or of masses and not of individuals. This is why the Catholic church calls their liturgical celebrations a ‘mass’. Coming together as a community is the main point so you can hear God’s Word not as an individual but as part of a mass of like-minded believers. At the end of the church service, the priest will invite the attendees to go out, spread God’s word that they have heard and increase the mass of believers. Religions secondly explain the unexplainable, which is part of their first function because hearing and learning what is not knowable attracts people. It is an instinct. Religions thirdly want to promote good behavior in society whatever ‘good’ means at different times and in different civilizations. ‘Good behavior’ practically means that you should do what the Romans do at the time when you live. Science and technology have improved over the recent millennia. Most dramatic improvements happened during the last 200 years with firstly the invention of steam and combustion engines, the appearance of ICT, gene-editing and space exploration. Scientists can now explain in minute details many phenomena in the world, including the creation of life. Many statements in old holy scriptures are outdated because they contradict scientific findings. If the authors of the Bible or of the Quran had known many centuries ago today’s scientific findings, they would have written very different books. But the churches continue making evidently wrong statements and insist that the faithful believes them. There will always be gaps of knowledge, black holes so to speak. Scientists will never be able to explain everything and to answer every question. Philosophers and lay persons fill the gap by proposing hypotheses and speculations. Religions do the same – they are masters in doing this. But religions force their unfounded speculations on their members as dogmas and doctrines. It is an innate human desire to obtain answers for phenomena that are unexplainable. People usually don’t feel comfortable when they should say “I don’t know”. Even some scientists shy away from saying that they don’t know. Instead, they might optimistically say that a question remains ‘an active area of research’. Most people seek answers for unanswerable questions with other than scientific or rational methods if ‘method’ is the right word for irrational or mystic thinking. This results regularly in the belief that higher authorities and spirits exists as a super king. Mystic sells well. Gods, spirits and secret powers are reality for believers who are convinced that these mystical and invisible powers stand above facts and above worldly laws and that they rule the world. Wanting to believe in gods and spirits is one of the human instincts that some researchers explain as the effect of certain genes and hormones. Hunger for religion is as natural as the need to breathe and the desire to eat. Some people say that religion is hard-wired in our brains. Human beings cannot touch, hear and see deities with the senses unless you claim that Gods or spirits speak to us with the smell of flowers or with the sound of thunders. Otherwise, you can perceive and see Gods and spirits only with a sixth or seventh sense that our genes have created. In conjunction with the herd instinct, which we have inherited from our animal forefathers, the need to believe holy concepts leads to the formation of congregations, of churches and of sects. Churches develop rituals as bonding exercises. They also establish rules for good behavior to create a well-oiled society. In this function, most religions have a laudable raison d'être. An incredible number of different beliefs, teachings and rituals have developed during mankind’s history and still exist today. We find a huge number of contradicting religious concepts, which are sometimes amusing, sometimes weird but consistently don’t pass a test of science and rationality. Most people think that they are not allowed to choose their religion freely. They stick to the faith of their parents who are usually successfully to pass on their religion to the offspring. Someone who feels free to chose for himself one of the existing religions, has extreme difficulties to select the right one out of thousands of different religions and churches. Many religions are interesting and appealing or mind-boggling but none is perfect or fully convincing. Most of them require that you believe something unbelievable and that you denounce similarly unbelievable beliefs of other religions. They ask you to denounce other religions with a critical mind but don’t allow you to use rationality while looking at your inborn religion. I present in this essay only few religions and churches that I have come across casually during my life. I describe them not as a strong believer, who I am not, but with a critical mind. The religions and churches that I mention, include mainstream religions like Christianism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism but also religious formations like the Cargo Cult in Vanuatu, Cao Dai in Vietnam and QAnon in the US. I included the latter just in case QAnon qualifies as a religion. If a reader of this essay has an independent mind, he might choose for himself one of the religions that suits him best. But you can also build your own religion by taking some convincing elements from one religion and others from different faiths. But if you do this, please, don’t create yet another church.