nature of religion

Why we believe what we do
Religion, discipline or calling?


A religion is, in the most basic of definitions, sets practices and principles inspired by the belief in a certain set of individual truths. This is not to say that they aren’t true, just that not everyone believes in the same individual set. Although religion is the way of living through practices, processes and beliefs, it does not fall certain that for one’s beliefs to be called a religion, one has to belong to any particular group. People often mistake 'religion' as a group practice when actually a person's religion is a very definite, personal matter, whether the actual practice is.
To discuss the “why” religious beliefs, let us first examine the why not. Weak atheism is the belief that gods don’t exist, strong atheism on the other hand is the belief that particular gods do not exist and agnosticism is the belief that the existence of gods is unknowable, which is to say that agnostics believe in a suprem...