Jared Diamond’s book, THE WORLD UNTIL YESTERDAY, has a chapter on religion. He lists several reasons for religion: 1. explanation 2.comfort 3.anxiety 4.order 5.organization 6.treatment of others, and interestingly 7.justification for war.
Was it Friedrich Nietzche that contended “If there was no God mankind would have invented him?”
Maybe my parents named me properly (Thomas, as in “doubting”). Maybe I was just like the thermos bottle (“how do it know?”), but listening over and over again I began to assume a devil’s advocate attitude (now there is a pun). And early on, and later on, I was probably a definable agnostic. There have been later life experiences that have led me to a kind of faith.
Yet it still bothers me for someone to contend that they KNOW about the “hereafter”.