Why do people need religious beliefs and ideas? Hello there Jack Cummins,
What an interesting question. I want to stand in the idea that believing in God or whatever religion is not innate at all. Probably I going to sound so empirical right now but look the next point.
Complex and abstract terms like “God” “Heaven” “souls” are learned to us in our way of life when we are getting to the adulthood. I been raised in a house of atheists people. So in my case I never even been or heard about what is God or a church making me feel so impasible about religion. I cannot remember at all feeling in an innate state trying to find a “way” to understand my meaningless life.
Nevertheless, I understand your point and I guess we can direct it in other path. Sometimes we have that period of life full of complexity where we ask ourselves questions like “why am I here?” “Why am I living this moment?” “What the future holds?” Etc... some authors name this moment as “personal period of thinking” while some people will find the way in a religious path, others in the philosophy branches (determinism, nihilism, empirical, etc...) So somehow I guess it is innate that feeling of questioning everything in our reality but not the answers.
What I tried to explain here is that you can’t know exactly what being religious is if before someone never explained to you that way of beliefs.
Nice to meet you. I wish we can have more debate in the future.