What are we do with humanity’s apparently insatiable need for religion?  Do we accept it?  Or do we agree with Sigmund Freud that it is simply a coping strategy driven by primeval sexual and relational longings?  Or do we side with Ludwig Fuerbach and say that it is no more than a projection of desire?  Or do we conclude that it is simply, for better or worse, irrationality and confusion?

     We could go on for quite some time debating why religion persists.  I share this much because as I was reading, again, the final sections of James Frazer’s massive tome, The Golden Bough (much of which, by the way, has been rejected by most social scientists today), I noticed anew how although Frazer reduces religion to a cultural impulse, he also observes that no matter what form it may take, religion has remained a steady presence in the human community for the entirety of the latter’s existence.  It will not go away.

     If we set aside the contention of some that this indicates that we are all born with a “God shaped hole” which we must fill, we might say that religion’s persistence may say something highly significant about human beings.  That is, it says that most people by and large believe, almost instinctively it seems, that they will not find full meaning unless they look beyond themselves.  Whether they view the supernatural as explanation, coping strategy, or epistemological conviction, and even if they think that it or God are more often than not largely hidden and silent, most human beings want to believe that some level of the supernatural, be it inanimate or personal, exists.

     The seemingly growing cadre of atheists in the West and the violence of some religious fundamentalists notwithstanding, it’s hard to believe (no pun intended) that over six billion people suffer from the same delusion.