The Need for Religion

Today was an awesome day, I finally learned how to solve a rubix cube! Its cool but there is a lot of patterns that you have to memorize. It snowed a lot today so there was really nothing else to do.

I have an Ethnographic Essay due tomorrow for English so I worked on that. It is about Man's need for religion.

here it is:

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Man’s Desperate Need for Religion

Why does man have a need for religion? This is the question that often pops into my head when I am sitting at church. I want to say right now, before I get into things, that I am not an Atheist. I am a Mormon and I go to church every week. At times I wonder why I’m there, I could be snowboarding or doing something important, but every week, I still go and sit for three hours listening to people talk about our religion. Why is religion so important that millions of people dedicate their time and money to teach it and live by it? Through this paper I hope we can find an answer.

First, I’m going to go over the many elements of religion. Most religions are based upon a specific event in history. For example, Jesus Christ is believed to be the messiah. Most religions believe in a higher power or God that governs all people. They also have set standards to live by or certain things you can and cannot do. They have a specific location to gather and worship on a specific day. Some religions can’t really even be considered religion, take Theravada Buddhism for example. Thomas A. Idinopulos writes, “Here is a something called "religion" which is not a religion. Although Theravada Buddhism is usually included in any book on the world's religions, it is not theistic, recognizes no sacred being or beings, and does not officially encourage worship of Buddha or any "higher being" (despite popular veneration of the Buddha-ideal). Theravada Buddhism appears to be a technique or program for human self-purification or self-fulfillment or self-negation.” So not all religions believe in a god.

Some people might wonder, is religion a scam? Did the government create it to control the people and get revenue? Why can’t it be proven? You might be thinking that whoever asks these types of questions must be paranoid. Austin Cline wrote, “One of the reasons for the existence of religion is that it's an effective means for society's powerful to control everyone else.” Diana Hardman states, “It is proven in statistics that without God as a basis for living that crime, sex, drugs, etc. has greatly increased.” So this shows that whether the Government created religion or not, religion does decrease a person’s motivation to commit crime. There is no solid evidence that there is a god or higher being. On the contrary, evolution has been proven on a microscopic level, InfoZine News says, “DNA sequencing and molecular biology have provided a wealth of information about evolutionary relationships among species.” So it is up to the person if they want to believe in a particular religion or not.

A major reason a person would want to be part of a religion is they want a feeling of belonging. Some people join a religion because they feel their life has no purpose and they want to put meaning to their life. Ohio State University Research states that there are 16 desires of humans that attract them to religion, “The desires are power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor, idealism, social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance, eating, physical exercise, and tranquility.” Ohio State also stated, “people embrace religion because of a fear of death, as expressed in the saying ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’.”

There are many reasons why people need religion. As stated in the previous paragraph, people need a sense of belonging, direction, power and family. Imagine a world with no religion, what would it be like? What kinds of problems would there be? Without religion what is the purpose of our existence? It’s surely not to just live, reproduce and then die. There has to be something more meaningful to life. It’s up to you to decide if you want to have a long purposeful life, or to live in fear of dying. It’s an easy decision for me.

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There you have it. Feedback is appreciated.

Dinner and a movie?

Today started out really crappy but it got a lot better. My Dad makes me go to church every Sunday, its torture. The worst thing about it is that it’s at 9.00am! So I dragged myself out of bed at 8.30am and got ready. Mormon church is 3 hours long! It sucks; sometimes I wish I belonged to a different church.

After church I came home and decided to hang out with my friend amber (surprisingly my dad actually let me go even though it was Sunday). Amber, her mom, her two neices, her nephew, her other niece and I went to go see "Sweeny Todd" in theatre. It was a really good although it was very very gruesome and it was a musical. After that we ate out at a Chinese restaurant, which was extremely delicious. Then we came home and ambers friends came over. We spent the rest of the day watching TV and talking.

At about 9.00pm we went to Dennys, there was not enough room in the truck so amber and I had to lie in the bed of the truck, it was torture because it was freezing. When we got to Dennys we got some free hot chocolate and some fries (interesting combination). Then we came home.

When we got home, we found out that ambers phone was missing; we still don’t know where it is.

Awkward Family Christmas Party (Pics!)

I kind of feel like I am wasting my Christmas break because I don't feel like I have done much. I probably have done more than most people but I have just been sleeping in until 11am every morning and that pretty much wastes half my day.

Well today I woke up around 11.30am and took a shower. Then I came upstairs, ate breakfast and got on the computer. I did various pointless and boring things all day until about 6.00pm. Today was the annual family Christmas party in Provo, Utah. My whole family gathers, except for my Lutheran Aunt. She doesn't play well with her Mormon relatives.

We got off to a late start after rushing to the store to get some last minute presents to exchange. We all piled in to the Dodge Spirit, which only holds six people and we had seven, and headed off to pick up my sister and her fiancé. When we got to their house we found out that her fiancé Josh was "sick"(he didn't want to go to the family party). Piper got in the car and we had to hold two little kids on our laps.

After an hour of driving we surprisingly got to the party at 6.55pm, five minutes early, which never happens, not even in a parallel universe. Anyway, we were kind of scared because no one was there yet and we thought we came on the wrong day. We walked up to the house and noticed that we were the second ones to get there. We walked into the house and were greeted by my Mexican cousins and my aunt Kelly. We sat and ate refreshments while everyone started to show up. I was very disappointed when I found out my favorite cousins couldn't make it. It almost made me wish that I stayed home. The refreshments were extremely good; they had cherry and blueberry shortcakes, chips, seven-layer salsa, olives, beef stick, crackers, a cheese ball, and plenty of soda. After eating and talking to my relatives for 20 minutes, I decided to go downstairs where all of my younger cousins were.

On the way down I ran into my senile grandma, she cant think right at all. Like she'll see something and then she'll say, "oh isn't that beautiful?" and it'll be a piece of paper! It gets really annoying after a while. I gave her a quick hug as I walked by and continued down the stairs.I got to the bottom of the stairs and walked into a room that was an entertainment room, it had a TV, computer, Atari, workout set, and various instruments of exercise. I headed straight for Atari because it had been at least eight years since I last played it. I dug through the games and found Super Mario Brothers. I was happy and I played the game for about 30 minutes. After that it was time to exchange gifts with the family.


We all sat in a circle and there were at least 15 people in the room. First my aunt had us all share a talent or a joke. One of the families got up and sang "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" with a red ball on each their noses. Next we went around in a circle and shred jokes. My cousin was tempted to share these two dead baby jokes:

"Q: How do you make a dead baby float?

A: With two scoops of ice cream and one scoop of dead baby.

Q: What is the difference between a Corvette and a pile of dead babies?

A: I don’t have a Corvette in my garage"

But fortunately she didn’t share the jokes. When it was my turn, I shared a very lengthy and pointless joke called "The Pink House" and it goes something like this:

"There's these three men in a van and it breaks down. So one of them says hey I
think there's a house right up there I’m going to check it out so as he’s
walking up to the house he notices that the fence is pink so he reaches the
fence and the grass is pink. He walks up the green driveway and goes on the pink
porch then he reaches for the pink doorknob on the pink door. Hello he yelled
down the pink hallway no answer so he stepped in the pink house and look around
and everything was pink the floors the walls and the ceiling so he goes up the
pink stairs and into a pink room lies down on a pink bed and goes to sleep. A
while later one guy is wondering what’s taking the other so long so he walks up
to the pink fence down the pink drive way through the pink door up the pink
stairs into a different pink bedroom and lies on a pink bed and goes to sleep.
The third guy decides to see what the others are up to so he goes to the pink
fence in the pink house then he goes up the pink stairs into his own pink bed.
The first guy wakes up and goes into the pink bathroom and takes a shower in the
pink tub grabs a pink towel puts on his clothes and goes to the pink kitchen and
grabs a pink bowl a pink spoon pink milk and some frosted flakes. He pours the
pink frosted flakes, eats it and goes back to the van. Second guy wakes up takes
a pink shower gets a pink towel gets dressed goes to the kitchen pours himself
some frosted flakes and leaves the pink house and goes to the van the third guy
wakes up and takes a pink shower grabs a pink towel gets dressed goes to the
pink kitchen and grabs the box of cheerios and pours himself a pink bowl eats it
and goes back to the van. What’s the moral of the story? 2/3 people prefer
frosted flakes over cheerios."

After I told the joke everyone kind of got mad at how much time I wasted. It was funny. After the joke telling we exchanged gifts. My family got a game called sorry. And my grandpa gave us some food for storage. My mom uttered the comment, "all grandpa got us was a box of disappointment!" she was angry because my grandpa has half a million dollars in his bank and all he got us was some dry food. Later, my uncle John told my grandpa that she made that comment so it was really awkward for the rest of the night. I still gave him a hug because I want him to help pay for my LDS mission. The party was over and everyone headed home. I gave all my relatives a hug (except for my senile grandma) and we left.

I thought it was a lot of fun to see my cousins again and I can’t wait to see them on Christmas.