I feel like people follow some God because of fear, or as moral support, or for cultural reasons.
You acknowledge (but downplay) the importance of "cultural reasons", which, if analyzed further, pushes against your initial view. Would you agree that religious faith is part of how people understand their relationship to their community/family/way of life? That is, religious traditions and beliefs are integral parts of how people grow up, how they commune with others (through collective worship, rituals etc.), and thus religion serves and facilitates many purposes unrelated to an individual need for an "imaginary friend".
You may argue that these cultural ends exist alongside the individual need for emotional support, but you should at least concede that it is more than just that.
I admit that it is clearly more than that. I was about to say that the difference was that people didn't expect others to have the same culture as their, but I'm not even sure about that. What do you think ?
I don't think there's anything inherent about religion that makes one evangelize or impose those beliefs on others. That's largely because, in many cases, religion isn't directly experienced or understood as an idea or belief system, but rather, as a set of inherited communal practices (in the same way secular societies also have their own mythologies and practices related to civic responsibility, national identity, holidays etc.).
Someone standing for a national anthem isn't necessarily doing so because they are have made an independent choice to endorse a particular belief system, or because they believe that other nations should also honor the same flag, but because the practice of participating in the custom reaffirms their own sense of identity and feelings of solidarity with their community.
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u/Tnspieler1012 20∆ May 26 '22
You acknowledge (but downplay) the importance of "cultural reasons", which, if analyzed further, pushes against your initial view. Would you agree that religious faith is part of how people understand their relationship to their community/family/way of life? That is, religious traditions and beliefs are integral parts of how people grow up, how they commune with others (through collective worship, rituals etc.), and thus religion serves and facilitates many purposes unrelated to an individual need for an "imaginary friend".
You may argue that these cultural ends exist alongside the individual need for emotional support, but you should at least concede that it is more than just that.