Why Religion?

Many people are members of some kind of religion. A few fundamentalists even believe in theirs so strongly that they think it is correct to kill for it. Yet many people disagree with this reasoning, and a few atheists even claim there is no God anyway. There are many good and moral people, in all cultures worldwide, in both camps. Without making hard conclusions, this is one agnostic’s theory, based upon his understanding of ancient and modern history, as to how so many of us came to belong to a formal religion in the first place. What would anyone want in a writer of a book like Why Religion? One would want the writer to be someone who is: • neither atheistic nor a believer, just agnostic, • sensible, • experienced in life, • knowledgeable about history, • fair-minded.