| I would hesitate to coin the human need for religion as an instinctual or genetic occurence. However, I think it is hard to deny that some kind of social evolution of the the concept has taken place.
Religion seeks, as I think the other posts have touched on, to explain the infinite. Just like a calculus problem (at least for me), there are some things which cannot be concretely understood. To me, these fundamentally include, "How did the universe begin" and "What happens when we die." These are two immediately relevant questions that surely have plagued humans since we first began to acquire sentience. How did our ancestors deal with such problems? Through religion and stories. These serve as stabilizing factors in society.
As time has gone on and humans have become more cognitively advanced, the need for explicit religious belief is fading. Is there still the infinite? Of course. But at least we are beginning to come to terms with it for what it is. |