I said earlier that I regarded all religions (including atheism) as a person's personal model of reality.
It occurs to me that perhaps it is not so much that a religion is a mental model of reality. Perhaps, rather, it is a filter. Even if one religion is the correct one, clearly almost all religions are wrong, for most of them are mutually exclusive. The very variety and history of religions of the world dictates that whether there is/are god(s) or not, we would most certainly feel the need to create them and worship them. But why?
Maybe it's because as a species we have a difficult time with the idea of accepting reality at face value. So we construct supernatural beings and worlds to explain that which we don't understand and promise ourselves eternal life. We place them conveniently out of reach in order to avoid encountering anything disturbing that we can't explain or anything that might counter the belief. We construct our 'reality filter' in such a way that reality makes sense to us and is made more palatable, and the Unknown is pushed forever out of sight and out of mind.
It occurs to me that perhaps it is not so much that a religion is a mental model of reality. Perhaps, rather, it is a filter. Even if one religion is the correct one, clearly almost all religions are wrong, for most of them are mutually exclusive. The very variety and history of religions of the world dictates that whether there is/are god(s) or not, we would most certainly feel the need to create them and worship them. But why?
Maybe it's because as a species we have a difficult time with the idea of accepting reality at face value. So we construct supernatural beings and worlds to explain that which we don't understand and promise ourselves eternal life. We place them conveniently out of reach in order to avoid encountering anything disturbing that we can't explain or anything that might counter the belief. We construct our 'reality filter' in such a way that reality makes sense to us and is made more palatable, and the Unknown is pushed forever out of sight and out of mind.
