|
People fear death, belief in an afterlife is basically a way to give Death the finger. Also, religiousness has a tendency to become more expressed in a socierty during times of hardship and societal breakdown. For example, it is often assumed that Christianity helped with the fall of the Roman Empire; I disagree, I think the decline of Roman power, starting in the chaotic period between 180AD and 300AD, caused people to look to religion as an escape to thier misfortunes, causing the rise in the popularity of salvation cults like Christianity and Mithraism, which were much more "personal" religions then Graeco-Roman paganism.
|