Not really. Yes, most of them do so, and you see them going to church, but not giving a penny to beggars. It’s like falling in love with love itself, and not with the one you pretend to love… Isn’t it absurd? You’d better not fall in love at all… No wonder stuff like Jediism exist.
Well, I am not religous…but I don’t think it is because it is what ‘works’ for me. I don’t need religion for meaning in my life or anything like that, so if I was going to be religous it would be because I had some concrete reason to believe in God…but I don’t have any such reasons…although I don’t have a reason for disbeliving either…so I suspend my judgement, but I don’t worship and I don’t have faith, so I am not religous.
I think many people are religious because of the existential aspects afforded to them by religion…the meaning it brings for them, the feeling of being part of something bigger, the hope for an afterlife and justice…even the desire to go beyond the mundane physicality of everyday life and just generally to be happy. I don’t fault anyone for these desires…and different people have to deal with them in different ways.
I would not say that religous people are just into the act of believing…because atheism is a belief also…just as strong a belief as theism. On a more phenomeological level, it may be simply the experience one has when one is religious…the point of view that it gives a person in their life…so I might actually say that it may be moreso the religious people who are religious because it works, as opposed to the atheist or skeptic.
Trey