by Elton Gahr

Created on: May 27, 2009

Religion has existed since the first men looked at the world around them and asked if there was anything more. Religion at its base connects three of the most important needs of humanity, to understand, to control and to be safe. No matter how much we learn, how much control we have and how safe we become this inborn need for these things is never fully satisfied by the things of this world and so we look to the next.

The need for understanding is at the core of humanity. It is this that drives science, art, math, history and nearly every other aspect of our intellectual society. We want to know not only how things happen but why. We want to understand why bad things happen to good people and good things to bad. We want to know how to make the world a better place and why it isn't already one. We want answers and yet we know that we do not have them so we look to something more than ourselves and so we seek those answers in two places, others who have the same questions and may have new answers and God who has the answers and may be willing to share some of them. The joining together of these two needs is the basis of religion.

In addition to understanding the world humans seek to control it. We have learned to bring the animal, mineral and vegetable world under our control creating society on the back of this control. We Also seek to control ourselves, creating and enforcing rules that will keep us from harming each other or ourselves. Yet with all this we know that there is far more out of our control than in so we seek someone who can control all thing. God is the only being that can fulfill this role and so we seek a connection to him to bring about control.

One of the primary reasons that we seek control is for safety. We are a species that as a whole are physically weaker than predators and so we have the natural instinct to avoid danger at nearly any cost and as humanity has moved beyond that we have kept that need to be safe and slowly increased safety throughout society. Yet there are dangers everywhere and so when we cannot provide our own safety we turn to one who can.

Whether these needs for something more than ourselves to supply our most basic needs is something built into us by a creator or something we naturally developed to cope with the dangers of the universe in unimportant in the question of why religion exists. Religion exists because it is the only way to completely meet these needs and it will remain a driving force of our society until we have reached the level of ultimate knowledge, power and safety.

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