Philosophy and Religious Belief Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Philosophy and Religious Belief - Essay Example tion of helping humans to be able to deal with aspects of life they are not able to understand, or are afraid of and therefore not entirely necessary for meaningful human existence. There have been all types of explanations for religion. Many professional have written about. For instance, Tolstoy (58), after going through an episode of meaningless of life, concluded that only faith (or religion), can be able to explain life and that only faith can help people to understand life and thus help them have a meaningful life. This argument by Tolstoy seems to prove Freud’s (10), argument about faith; that faith and religion are used by man as a way to deal with the aspects of life they do not understand. In his book, Theism as Illusion, he argues that people ascribe to religious beliefs because it helps them deal with aspects of life they are not able to comprehend or that give them anxiety. He argues that men ascribe to the belief of life after death because they are scared of death. Death is a scary phenomenon for most people because of two main factors. First, the finality of death scares people. Death is not undoable; once it happens, the diseased is gone and gone forever. The second issue about death that may make people want to believe in a second life after death is the fact that they are do not know what happens after it There is no way to know what happens to a person after they die. This finality and unknown nature of death comes as a scare for most humans and therefore the idea of an afterlife acts as a beacon of hope, as a way to overcome death. Almost every religion there is, from the early Egyptian religion to modern Christianity to Hinduism and Islam, believe in an afterlife, even if they do not believe in the same God. The Egyptians took it a little too far by building massive pyramids for their kings in order to immortalize them and thus also immortalize themselves. This may be an indication that religion serves the purpose of assisting people to deal