Does the belief of a higher power have a direct correlation to fear?

Question

For instance, I asked a friend last night who follows the Christian belief to step outside of her views for 5 minutes and think for those 5 minutes that there is no God or higher power-- what would be her first reaction and thought. She said fear and insecurity. If belief in a higher power brings you security, would that not mean that fear is a component to believe in God?

Now for those that believe, don't bash me and give rude answers, I am curious and mean this as a respectful question to all; whether you believe or not.

Answer 1

I think it's scary but liberating to be completely responsible for your self without a safety net. I don't really care whether fear is a component to belief in God or not. It doesn't affect me either way. Not a fan, but to quote nirvana "all alone is all we are" That's what I believe.

Answer 2

~YES...

~he request for reinforcement when the odds are against YOU...

~insecurities in a new job, school and neighborhood environment...

Answer 3

i think it's more a leaning towards the irrational and the fantastical.

Don't mistake Jehovah as being the same as all gods, fear may not play into belief in buddha, kokopeli, etc...

Answer 4

I think SOME people become members of a particular religion because they fear they have no purpose in life and they need to fill that gap to feel good about them selves and also they don't necessarily fear death but what happens to them when they die which I think is to become pretty much none existent and being nothing but a rotting corpse.

Answer 5

The fear of death has created GOD that is why it is said in the BIBLE that God created man in His own image. But it should be other way round. Man created God in his own image that is why you will find Gods pictures in different races differing from another. A black mans Christ is black and a white mans christ is white. .how can that be if christ was one and born in Israel. So we made GOD to identify and associate himself with us and feel safe. There is no higher and lower power it is just our description about fear which has classified all these things in this world and that may differ as per persons fear and belief.

Answer 6

That's because Christians believe the 'highest' power is on their side.

Hence in the belief there is no God a Christian experiences fear.

The rest of us fear any power greater than ours,  and then die of some microbe too small to see.

Fear is a component of life.  So it follows that it is a component of pretty much anything life believes.

Answer 7

I beleive that it has a direct correlation to control. A tactic commonly used to control people is to make them fearful. Scared people can be controlled by something they beleive is protecting them. Much like the government... the people of a country only rely on its government for protection and if they are fearful of an attack from another country or something, the government will have a much easier time controlling the people and getting them to do exactly what they want. Religion is a form of control.

Answer 8

One would have to determine what was the essential nature of the God in which a person believed in order to establish your correlation.  Further, fear is not by necessity something that is negative.  In fact, it can serve the purpose of of a particular good.

Answer 9

Consider this.  We are in direct opposition to everything that is natural about this universe.  All of nature both macro and micro operates according to one overriding law above all others.  Selfishness.  

Lions do not care for the safety or welfare of zebras, much less for each other.  They operate solely by instincts.  Males will kill their young to save their own skins.

Stars do not care for their systems. This is why Earth must protect itself with a magnetic field.  At the same time, the Earth wears our bodies down with its gravity, while it tears us apart with its storms to preserve its atmosphere.  

Black holes gobble up whole star systems and galaxies without the least care of what lies inside them.  Viruses and bacteria will consume and grow until they destroy the host they inhabit.

Everything operates according to selfishness.  It all is destroyed for the need and want of self.

Why then are we the only species in the universe who seeks to maintain morality?  Unselfishness is NOT natural to the universe.  It is NOT natural to evolution.  Kindness and even politeness is NOT natural to the universe.  Destruction, annihilation, mass extinctions, these are natural to the universe.  Killing and consuming, these are natural to the Earth.  

So every time you make a complaint about babies dying or people suffering, you prove you are not a product of this universe.  Babies dying and people suffering ARE natural.  Why then are you repulsed by it?  Could it be there really is someone on the outside looking in?  Could it be that this same someone made you and desires you to change the damage you have helped to inflict?



Tell me, my friend. If you are not a product of this universe, whose product are you?  And should you not be horrified by the prospect that you don't know?

Answer 10

Yes, I think so.  I think religion is fear.  We seem to want to feel comforted by a sense of security and certainty - which cannot possibly exist - because we are terrified of our personal individual selves coming to an end, and so we want to block out all possibility of such a thing as "death" occurring, death in itself appearing to be little more than a word heaped with multitudinous notions and associations and terrors.  

I think religion is a comforting distraction that avoids real inquiry by fabricating a heaven, a nirvana, a God, reincarnation, higher powers, good and bad and whathaveyou, but that is okay; I don't want to judge anybody and I am not attempting to be disrespectful, but am merely stating my own fuzzy opinion.  

I think it is somehow on a par with everything else; with clothing, with computers, books, cigarettes, tasty food, relationships, all these distractions to keep one from feeling any fear, any discomfort, any boredom which might lead to more fear at the idea of what one actually is and what the ending of what one perceives oneself as being could possibly mean.  Where will "I" go?  Will something bad happen to me?  What am "I" anyway?  Yikes!  But "I" am so precious; my life, my family, my job... isn't that how we think?  The terror of the known coming to an end.  It is safer to create a happy, or at least predictable, ending.

Answer 11

Yes, i would agree with you.

Its because of fear that we seek for security from whoever or whatever we believe can provide.And this fear is normally brought about by the results/consequences of our daily behavior due to what might happen in the future.

We have been told right from childhood that who ever commits sin will burn in eternal fire and that there is some thing known as the devil, awaiting/preying to harm/mislead us to that eternal fire and therefore, we much seek refuge from God who is the only one who can manage to curb the works of the devil.

So ofcourse, naturally , no one wants to burn eternally, so that fear drives us to believe without questioning.

However, there is also an element of faith.There are people who believe but not driven by fear, (but we can also agree or disagree that the first step was taken as a result of fear) and these people in most case are selfless.

Thanks you for asking

Answer 12

to not believe in God for me to to have no purpose or reason to live this life.i have to believe that there is a reason for my existence otherwise why do we?

Answer 13

In the beginning we didn't understand the night that loomed outside our caves and our camp fires. Our holy men told us stories of things in the darkness that wouldn't harm us if we did this and that. We saw our women and children dying, our mothers and fathers succumbing to old age, disease, starvation, and our holy men told us that we had nothing to fear, for some part of us would live on after our bodies died, if only we did this and that.

At some point we all fear death. The question is... do we listen to our holy men, or do we brave the night?

Fear is an integral component of belief, because it is belief which allays that fear. Let me repeat that - Belief = no fear.

All that differs is which rituals and "this and thats" you are obligated to do in exchange for that freedom from fear. It's never a gift, there is always a price, there is always an exchange.

Once it was a nightly ritual, songs to the moon, and burial with one's favored hunting weapons. Now it's weekly hours at the local holy house, a sermon from a hopefully not child-abusing holy man, and 10% of your income in the offering plate.

I see belief as the cop-out. As enriching and satisfying as it may be to many of those who practice it, the fact remains that the trade is still made - fear for belief in things that once loomed only in darkness and shadows.

EDIT:

"So every time you make a complaint about babies dying or people suffering, you prove you are not a product of this universe."

Fallacy. Things happen - black holes consume, etc. That is natural. It is not good or bad, it simply is. It is humanity, with its sentience, that places a judgement on natural process, where often none should be. People die and people suffer. That is natural, and it is human regret that judges it as anything but. The same sentience that makes all of these judgement calls can be shown to have risen from natural processes, the same natural processes that consume galaxies and cause tsunamis and cause the grass to grow.

We are not "of a different universe". Stop being so confused!

Saul

Answer 14

I believe there's a direct correlation to fear. Fear of death and insignificance. Without a God who loves you; you are just another animal. Without a Heaven; you fear death. It is scary to think that the end could just be like turning off your television. I also believe that Guilt is the biggest reason anyone would believe. Jesus is the God of forgiveness, you know? I'll admit though, it does feel overwhelmingly awesome to feel loved and to be protected by an imaginary friend.

Good lyrics to portray the way I think someone who's a strong believer feels...it may take a poetic mind to understand these...they're Tool lyrics:

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.

Withering my intuition leaving opportunities behind.

Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.

Reaching out to embrace the random.

Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.

I embrace my desire to

I embrace my desire to

feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow

to feel inspired to fathom the power, to witness the beauty,

to bathe in the fountain,

to swing on the spiral

to swing on the spiral

to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.