Argumentative Essay: Why Does Religion Exist?

Religion is a confusion. The earlier statement appears to be a contradiction considering one of the very purpose of religion is to bring cohesion and unity among people. But examining closely, one can realize that religion exists in many forms like Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. Apart from that these different forms of religion worship different gods and believe in different principles; Christianity has Jesus, Islam has Allah, Buddhism has Gautama Buddha and Zoroastrianism has Zoroaster. So, amidst of these things in consideration, how can religion fulfil its mandate when it exists in different forms and structures? Before diving onto the main topic, one must know at least the meaning of the thing he is explaining. So, what is religion

Freud further argued that religion is a mass neurosis and is a product of distress of human beings. That is why to alleviate the distress, trouble or whatever emotional conflict a person undergoes, human beings created religion. Morover, Frued stated that the illusions of religion is possible to eliminate by alleviating the distress (Cline, n.d).

Now that the topic about the origins of religion has been completely illuminated, the subject about the diversity of religion is on hand. Like in the origin of religion, there are a number of explanations developed by numerous persons as to why there exists a variety of religion. Witherington in his book, The Sociology of Religion, stated that there is an environmental and social bases as to why people have religious beliefs or why they accept as true certain statements and ideas. (Witherington, 1955,

This is stated by Rita Gross who considers the psychological and spiritual aspects of humans as explanations on why there are many forms of religion. She declares that religious diversity, which is an inevitable phenomena, exists because it is impossible for humans to conform to only one type of religion psychologically and spiritually (Gross, 2015). This notion is supported by William James who said that it is not possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner (James, 2014). To put it simply, what James is trying to say is that every individual have different experiences and the way these individuals deal with these things is through religion. So, many different experiences meant many different forms of religion (James,