Belief and the human psyche

My roommate came home recently with a battered-looking mirror from a local "antique" store. The mirror had actually been sold to someone else, but they returned it convinced it was haunted.Understandably, they wanted their $5 back.\nNext to our "new" mirror hanging in the living room is a photograph of me posing underneath a large billboard on Fourth Street that proclaims: "Praise the Lord, Jesus Christ, He has risen."\nWhereas superstitions might be limited to frivolous horoscopes, or the more eccentric minds in our community, religion is engrained deep in American culture -- more so than perhaps any other western country: At least 50 church organizations exist in the Bloomington area alone.\nWhether there is a distinction between superstition and religion is irrelevant. Both are a belief in something for which there is no logical foundation.\nWhat is it about the human psyche that motivates us to believe in the supernatural?\nLooking up at the night sky is enough to realize just how insignificant the human race is in the scheme of things. Combine this with the inevitability of death and you could be forgiven for feeling a little depressed. \nWe also have a fundamental need to explain the existence of ourselves and the world around us. While some rely on scientific inquiry to satisfy that desire, others prefer to invoke spiritualism. The failing of science in the eyes of some, may reflect the belief that it diminishes beauty in the world. A classic example is John Keats' denigration of Sir Isaac Newton for destroying the mystique of the rainbow by explaining its existence through refraction (i.e., "unweaving the rainbow").\nTheology also allows us to place ourselves back into prominence with the universe. It invokes the notion that we are central to its existence, an equal reflection on the human ego as it is on our insecurity.\nAn afterlife is similarly more comforting in light of our mortality.\nWhile the existence of such beliefs may be a symptom of our frailty, is a society founded on religious ideals such a bad thing (e.g., be good to thy neighbor)? I could take the easy option and suggest many of the armed conflicts occurring across the globe result from a perversion of such ideals (e.g., be good to thy neighbor, but only when of the same creed or ethnicity). I could also point out the implication inherent in such an argument, that these values would depreciate in society without the vehicle of the church behind them -- as brutal as the human race can be, we deserve a little more credit than that.\nThe basic problem with placing faith in a God, or fortune-teller or astrological reading, is that it provides an excuse not to deal with reality. Relying on such beliefs to guide you through the difficulties of life may be comforting in times of adversity or uncertainty, but it ultimately stifles the human intellect by forfeiting the decision-making process. This promotes a passive, amble-through-life attitude, and will result in missed opportunities as a consequence.\n The continued persistence of religious beliefs reveals much about the idiosyncrasies of human psychology. At the grass roots level, the existence of such convictions is probably harmless for most people. However, the damage is done when questioning the relevance of such beliefs is considered socially unacceptable. In a country where free speech is paramount, this "political correctness" is oppressive.\nIncidentally, the billboard on 4th Street has since changed to "God Bless America"