I found a news article recently that asks: Do We Need Religion to Survive?
My answer to that question is no.
We do not inherently need religion. People do it all the time. They live without believing in any type of higher beings or any kind of purgatory. People can also believe in those things and not be tied to any specific religion.
Originally, the word "religion" was defined by having a belief in God, which was usually referring to Christianity. But today, religion can be defined as so many things other than just a "belief in God." It can be a personal spirituality or can be a cultural diffusion from a particular society.
Religion is a regiment. It gives the spiritual people a way to be able to express their spirituality. Whether it be going to church, wearing specific head coverings, having a precise diet to follow, it directs a person in the way of proper glorification to his or her higher being or power.
As a Christian, I believe more in the personal relationship than the religion. And here's the big problem: so many religious people claim to believe in the religion. They attend church and do the religious things, but do they believe in what they're doing?
As people, we will not dissipate without religion. We can still have moral judgements and ideas and hypotheses about life that can be tested and proven or not proven. Religion is still important, don't read me wrong, but it is not something we have to believe or even be a part of, for our survival.
We were created for relationship. Not religion.
I know that today religion can be influential or insignificant. People believe so many things about the way the world, life and the way humans work. A fundamental conclusion to all of this is not to "Go look it up in some version of your holy manuscript." That is just someone's translation of a higher deity. People are imperfect, and we are flawed even in our translations.
Our religions are based on human perceptions of something holier and higher than us. We will be able to survive without a sole religion leading us. Religions have caused wars and peace. We have differences in religious ceremonies, beliefs and texts, and because of these differences there are so many problems with religion. For example, there are church divides because of minuscule divergence in beliefs.
Religion is not, in the long run, going to give us what we need to survive. We may look to religion as a factor of whether we believe we will survive, but it is not the holder of our destinies. At some point, there will be no religion to fall back on, no manuscripts with rules and testimonies to remember. And where will we be if we believe that religion is absolutely necessary for survival?
Making one or not surviving.
Religion is not a survival tactic. It is a belief system.
