debate-pointsThe answers to this question, I hope, will help me better understand the motivations of religious leaders.
Directly, The Lazy Factor
From my own observations, I think there are a lot of people that seek some sort of "rules template" or dictation for their lives. By this I mean those who basically are more comfortable being told what to do, how to shape their lives, and how to decide right from wrong. While all of these choices can be made without religion playing a role, religion does often offer a "preconceived, ready-made template" for groups of people to adhere to. Atheism by definition requires critical thinking, self-reliance, and often deep insight. Religion allows people to "skip" these steps and arrive at a fully built model for their lives, family and community. While said model may be riddled with holes and shoddy construction, it serves many people who might not otherwise question the origins of said model. Why do people prefer this? They might be lazy, not wanting to go through the logical steps required to refute the doctrine presented them. Some choices in life are hard, and religion gives them a cheat sheet so they don't have to think.
Indirectly, Through Charity
I recently watched the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair (Official, Youtube) which offers some interesting insights. Blair talks about religion's role in uniting people for causes and its efforts in charity. While Hitchens shows that charity work is done independent of religion, you cannot help but acknowledge that some people benefit from religion indirectly due to good intentions and charity work. (Hitchens goes on to point out that religion often is a leading cause that give rise to the situations that require charity work, for example the South African AIDS outbreak and its inflammation from Catholic belief that birth control devices should not be used, but inadvertently ignoring benefits like reduction in the transmission of STD's.)
The main beneficiaries of religion are churches and the clergy. There may be some charitable donations and work done but they pale by comparison to the direct benefits reaped by churches.
In the US the annual income of churches totals 100 billion dollars. That makes religion the 14th or 15th biggest business in the country. I’m not certain of the exact value of charitable donations by churches but I’m positive it is less than 1% of the income.
I am personally acquainted with several clergymen of different religions and none could be considered poor by any standard. The only possible exception is my father-in-law who is retired on a small pension. He does have his house paid for and owns a large tract of beach property.
I’ve seen a few individuals with dysfunctional lives benefit from religious conversions, including accepting a particular religion, switching from one religion to another, and rejecting all religion.
What I’ve concluded is that sometimes people get themselves psychologically backed into a corner. They need to change their lives, but can’t bring themselves to do it, so they live in misery. A religious conversion gives them the opportunity to do a “reset”, change what they need to change, and pin it all on the conversion.
However, I’d say that’s by far a tiny minority of the religious conversions I’ve seen. Leaving their religious views out of the picture, most folks I’ve seen have been pretty much the same after converting as they were before.
What is a benefit? I can try to measure it with the values of said person, or try to do it with supposed values of yours, or with my values.
My values, for example, would show, that loosing time with boring prayers isn’t a benefit, or staying away from sex, and so on.
A trivial assumption is, that everybody is doing what he prefers the most, so if somebody prefers to believe in god, he knows what he does. But that is not very compelling. A model may show, that people can easily step into a trap of a local optimum, and stay there, not seeing how they could benefit in a different way.
And another possibility is to assume common benefits. Widely accepted is a monetary benefit. But of course people can benefit in different ways, be it mood, lazyness, harmony with the parents, political power, reputation and so on.
Of course the leaders profit in some ways more than the ordinary people (power, reputation, income) but a lot of religious people are in so far honest, as they don’t fool each other.
On the other side, some techniques of fooling people, fake miracles or fake fetish are not disputable, but obvious. It’s the same coexistence of good intents and bad practice, as you can find it in ideological, secular systems.
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