Religion is a way of life, rather than something you turn to at times of crises. However many people find religion helpful at times of pressure and stress. Many people have become deeply committed to a religious faith after some event in their lives.

Often when someone has very strong bad feelings, normal thinking goes out the window, and it seems difficult to cope with something. Thoughts seem uncrontrollable, as does the situation.

Allowing feeling to be, and putting some faith in a higher order or reasoning can help people get through diffucult situations. Many religions teach this.

Below are some links to introductions to religions

Introduction to religions, USA
Introduction to religions, BBC
Overview, freeserve user
Understanding Islam

Technology, the future of religion?

Click here for definitions of main beliefs and faiths

Click here for more information about religion, coping and health

Faith is a confident belief in the truth, or value something, someone or some idea. Everyone begins life by having faith in whoever is caring from them (parents usually).

Once childhood is past, everyone needs some sort of faith to get them through life, people try to find something or someone else to trust, like
· themselves
· a relative
· friends
· or an idea
· a person
· a power outside themselves.

Faith, putting energy into trusting a thing or person helps cope with life’s difficulties and disappointments; but of course, people can be conned, and people can be let down by those they put their faith in.

Religious faith happens because people try and understand life’s unanswerable questions – like

· ‘why is there suffering?’
· ‘what happens when you die’.

To answer these sort of questions, people may believe in a superhuman, extra-terrestrial power, or powers that govern the universe. People with religious faiths will be reverent about this, like, through worship or deference.

Other people don’t hold such beliefs, but put their trust in things like
· the collective goodness of humanity,
· earth’s rhythms (see Gaia)
· or in a particular political system.

People may believe in these with the same intensity and independence from proof, although they are not religions.