Where do your beliefs come from? There's a school of thought that sees religion as a mind virus that wastes the time and effort of human beings, but evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein offers a more reasonable explanation: "belief systems have flourished because they have facilitated the interests of the creatures involved,"
“Belief systems” could include a lot more than just religion. There are philosophical systems and political belief systems for example. A devout Marxist would survive better under communism I would think.
As I see it, religion is more of a behavior pattern than a set of beliefs.
I’m thinking that you could generalize and say that human behavior patterns exist for reasons that were once good reasons, and might still be good in some ways, but we get to decide if they are good for us.
@Gwendolyn2018 Interesting idea. Maybe organized religions really do serve a purpose in restraining selfish behavior that harms others. It is sad to think that a person would need the fear of hell in order to keep from doing criminal stuff. What kind of life would that be? There must be something better.
B.F. Skinner did research on pigeons in a controlled environment called a Skinner Box. From Google: "Skinner published his study on a group of pigeons that showed even animals are susceptible to the human condition that is superstition. ... What observers of the pigeons found showed the birds developing superstitious behavior, believing that by acting in a particular way, or committing a certain action, food would arrive."
Wictionary: superstition is "A belief, not based on human reason or scientific knowledge, that future events may be influenced by one's behavior in some magical or mystical way."
is a superstition. Animals are also superstitious. It is to know what is and what is not.