Religion Is An Enigma Explained By The Mind

Religion was born of an ancestral necessity, or at least this is what is believed, and has survived to the present day, with no hint of a possible disappearance.

If we think of history, we realize that religion – always if we can speak of a unified form – has undergone several changes. For example, we have witnessed the birth of monotheistic religions, in which one God is venerated.

These deities have also changed over the centuries and have adopted different names and forms. There are divinities for which there are no representations and still others to which fantastic forms are attributed, in some cases, associated with animals.

Religion has also been institutionalized and social institutions have been established in its name with the aim of providing or improving certain services, such as education or health. The downside, however, is that great wars have also broken out in the name of religion and countless crimes and injustices have been committed in the name of faith, which is misinterpreted in many cases.

The explanations of religion

Many explanations have been given over the centuries in an attempt to explain the birth and life of religion. One of the most widespread is the one we have previously exposed – the function of religion is to give answers to questions that we otherwise cannot answer – but this is not the only explanation that has been related to religion.

Here are some attempts to explain the birth and persistence of religion:

• Religion was born as a result of drug use. People who consumed hallucinogenic substances had visions that they ended up interpreting as messages from the afterlife. Some shamans and sorcerers took drugs to feel closer to the gods or to communicate with them when they needed to make decisions. It is also thought that the consumption of these substances was not intentional in some cases, therefore the interpretations that refer to the deities are plausible.

• Religion was born to explain phenomena to which it was not possible to give a logical interpretation. Some phenomena for which it was not easy to find a convincing explanation, such as rain or thunder, were not interpretable with a logical reasoning and the motivation to explain the cause led people to create deities. Consequently, it was the deities who caused these phenomena without rational explanations.

• Religion also emerges as a form of idolatry.  Some people came to be idolized because of their actions and words. This worship led to the creation of religions around these figures.

• Religion appears as a cognitive adaptation. With the term cognition we refer to functions, processes and mental states with a particular focus on processes such as understanding, inference, decision making, planning and learning. This perspective is one of the most accepted by biology and psychology.