Would We Be Religious? (ritual, preaching, experience, atheist, spiritual)

[Lightkeeper]

Would we be religious if we were not afraid to be religious? Does preaching fear keep us coming back?

[Sunstone]

I certainly think there are some people whose religiosity is fear-based, Lightkeeper. I often wonder if such people are not in fact less spiritual than some atheists I know. It seems to me that a fear-based religiosity is a petty religiosity.

[painted wolf]

My spirituality is not based on fear, so in my case no, fear is not a part of religion for me.
I think that if anyone in my spiritual group preached fear than they would drive people away rather than draw them near.

wa:do

[Sunstone]

There is a large part of me that thinks a fear-based religiosity must be something caused by a pathology, such as depression or psychosis. There is a smaller part of me that wants to believe a perfectly healthy person could have a fear-based religiosity. But I find that very, very difficult to swallow.

I see many vices coming from a fear-based religiosity. Vices like intolerance, arrogance, insensitivity, anhedonism, etc. It just doesn't seem like a healthy thing to me.

[jewscout]

The use of Fear has turned me away from religions in the past, which is why i never considered myself a christian since most of my experiences with christianity was having people trying to scare me into believing. I follow my faith because of hope and an attempt to better myself. Now granted i could probably do some new age crap to better myself but i find that Judaism fits me just as well.

[Green Gaia]

Many people have a religion that is not fear based and are very religious, and in fact it is the fear factor in some religions that turns people away from them.