Why do people hold an irrational belief?

[Patrick Degan]

If there existence is finite, maybe you should take as best care of them possible. People ought to take care of each other, because This Is IT and we are all in life together. Know what I mean?

I'm not saying we need religion to have some sort of purpose or morality in life. I'm talking about the fact that unless we could eliminate most people's fear of death or fear of not seeing their loved ones ever again, most people in any society would still have some sort of believe in an afterlife.

The Japanese national religion, Shinto, has at best a very vague concept of an afterlife and mostly teaches that concern about it is not as important as making the most of the life you've got. In Shinto belief, the spirits of the deceased eventually merge into the fabric of the world after a time. Fear of death is pointless in Shinto, and is regarded as preventing one from living life to the fullest and thus is discouraged. This has largely worked for the Japanese since 500 BCE, along with Buddhism and it's cycles of reincarnation or attainment of Nirvana, as an alternative to the death-cult religions of much of the rest of the world.

[Elaro]

I just can't grasp why it's so difficult. These are the conditions under which we exist. Just fucking deal.

People's personality may be different? It's like saying why it is hard to grasp why some people take a longer time to recover from the death of a loved one than others.

Oh, come on. Saying "oh, they have different personalities" doesn't really explain anything. Okay, which personality traits make it slower or faster to move on from a loved one's death? How can we encourage (or discourage) such traits?

Look, when my mother died, the first thing I thought of was: "This was going to happen eventually." Number two was: "You're on your own now." (Speaking emotionally.) Number three: "Take care of yourself, because no one is left to do it for you." See what I did there? It took me an instant to realize my mother was dead, to which situation I responded appropriately (enough, I think). I dealt with it.

Maybe I'm just "better" than some other people. But I don't believe it.

[wolveraptor]

It's also noteworthy that the earliest religions were NOT, in fact, guides to ethics and morality, but rather explanations of how things worked and came to be. It was Zoroastrianism, and it's subsequent influence on the Abrahamic religions that established the concept of morally judgmental god. So the idea that religion is NECESSARY for a working society is very suspect.

Although I will grant that in early societies it must have served as a sort of lubricant, easing interactions between human beings that, previously, had no experience living with groups larger than a few hundred people. Religion, along with authority, helped give people a reason not to kill the first person they saw who wasn't a blood relative/close friend. Prior to the formation of larger societies (and organized religion), homicide was probably the most common cause of death. Religion also probably helped justify the ruler's dominance and establish social order and stratification, as well as the redistribution of wealth (this ONLY explains why religion persisted until it gained it's own inertia, not why it originated).

Note: Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" influenced my thinking greatly on this subject.