50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (3 page)

American Atheists. "God and the Scientists: A New Debate, an Old Question." August 26, 1999, www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism6.htm.

Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.
New York: Viking Adult, 2006.

Mythology: Gods, Goddesses and Heroes from Around the World. London:
Kingfisher Publications, 2001.

Zuckerman, Phil. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns." In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin, 47-65. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Do you ever ask yourself: What if I'm wrong?

-Daniel C. Dennett

elief in gods is old and widespread. Our fascination with
spirits, ghosts, and gods surely predates civilization. Today,
more than two hundred years after the Enlightenment and within sight
of a possible Star Trek-like future, there remains some attraction to
gods in every society. Belief in gods seems to be nearly as much a part
of being human as music and language are. Was our tendency toward
belief carved into our minds by evolution because it fostered tribal
unity during prehistory? Or could it simply be an odd idea that stuck,
gained momentum, and never looked back? We cannot yet say with
certainty. One thing is clear: belief is popular. So popular, in fact, that
many people find confirmation for their god in numbers alone.

More than 80 percent of the world's people claim to have some
sort of religious identification or belief in a god. It is likely that this
percentage has been even higher throughout most of our past. Many
believers take note of the overwhelming majority of religious
people around the world and conclude that there must be something
to it. All this praying and prostrating that is going on day and night
could not possibly be in vain, they say. Five billion believers can't
be wrong, right? Some believers stretch this idea even further, declaring that "if almost everyone in the world is religious, then my
god must be real."

There are problems with this attempt to justify belief, however.
First of all, every believer around the world, regardless of what religion he or she follows, is operating without overwhelming evidence or
arguments for any of the supernatural claims they may be making. The
weight of believers alone is not enough to tip the scales. Only the
weight of evidence can do that. Imagine, for example, if a couple of
billion people believed that elves were real but none of them had any
evidence or good arguments to support their belief. Obviously it
would be intellectually lax to conclude that a high number of elfbelievers alone meant that elves were real. It would make the case no
better than if there was only one elf-believer. When it comes to claims
for the existence of elves or gods, count the evidence, not the
believers.

It is important to keep in mind that all the world's believers are not
continually discovering the same gods on their own generation after
generation. Virtually every believer today believes in the same god or
gods that their parents taught him or her to believe in. Religious
beliefs are learned not discovered. They don't thrive for centuries on
their own. It is likely that the sharing of belief from adults to children
is the primary means of survival for religions. This brings into question the significance of large numbers of religious people. A high
number of believers in the present shows only that a high number of
believers in the past taught religious belief to their children and
nothing more. It is far from proof that gods are real.

The need for parents and other adults to make an effort to get children to believe in various gods raises questions. If the human brain is
hardwired for belief in gods, as some scientists think it is, then why
should there be this need for so much instruction, encouragement, and
even coercion in many cases for belief to survive? Furthermore, if one
particular belief is valid, then why do people have to be taught about
it and consistently encouraged to accept it? If a god or gods were real
one might think it would take root naturally, without the need for so many Sunday schools, madrassas (Islamic schools), books, movies,
and marketing campaigns. So much money, time, and effort are
invested into teaching children to believe in gods that it leads one to
wonder if belief might vanish overnight if it was left up to gods rather
than people. Isn't it interesting that most adult believers so easily dismiss every religion except the one they were encouraged to believe in
childhood? Many believers are not too shy to admit that they view
other religions as unproven and maybe even a bit silly. And this is
despite the fact that these religions have no more or less evidence than
their own. What would happen if most people grew up without any
belief system imposed on them? Would they see all religions as
unproven and maybe even a bit silly?

Another problem with the "everybody is religious" justification
for belief is that "religious" is a loose term that applies to many different beliefs. The extraordinary diversity of belief does not make for
a unified front for all religions. Nor does it make a good argument for
any one of them. The world's believers are not in agreement on even
the most basic points. There is no consensus on which gods are real or
how these gods want us to worship them. Nobody can even agree on
what the gods want us to eat or how they want us to dress. Disagreement and disunity is the rule for the world's believers. A high number
of religious people says our species is fond of religion and nothing
more. One cannot find evidence for a god in billions of believers
alone. How, for example, does a modern-day worshiper of pagan gods
in Greece reinforce the claims of a Mormon in America? How exactly
do a billion Hindus complement the religious claims of 1.5 billion
Muslims when the two are in complete disagreement on the basic
claims of their respective belief systems? Finally, some religious
people-including many Buddhists and Taoists, for example-do not
believe in any gods at all. Therefore, they should not be lumped in
with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and others who do.

Various religious groups make claims that are vastly different
from each other and, in most cases, irreconcilable. It is impossible to
unite them all under the banner of religion and declare that collectively they prove gods are real. If anything, all of these opposing beliefs
cancel each other out and only show how prone humans are to
believing in unproven gods. Let's say, for example, that we decide
Allah is the one real god and Islam is the only true religion. That
would mean about four billion non-Muslim religious people have
made a big mistake. They believe in the wrong gods and follow the
wrong religions. The mere presence of these billions of misguided
believers would be a strong indication that there is something about
the human mind or human culture that makes us vulnerable to
believing in gods that do no exist. Once we accept that, however, we
would need go back and rethink Allah's existence too, because if the
majority of believers can confidently believe in gods that were never
there, then the minority of Muslims might be mistaken too. Look
around our world today and you will see most people not just
believing, but believing in many different gods. Look back across history and it becomes impossible to count the religions and the gods. Is
this really validation for claims that any particular god is real? Or
could it simply be an indication that we have always been very good
at inventing gods?

Hitchcock, Susan Tyler, and John L. Esposito. Geography, of Religion. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006.

Joshi, S. T., ed., Atheism: A Reader. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has
endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended
us to forgo their use.

-Galileo Galilei

Faith is believing what you know ain't so.

-Mark wain

hile some believers attempt to produce evidence to support
claims of their god's existence, others simply declare that
"faith" is enough and leave it at that. In this context, faith is belief in
a god that is secure and unconcerned with logic or reason. It is important to separate "faith" that a god exists from the kind of "faith" one
has in a friend or family member. The latter describes a form of trust
that is based on past experiences and loyalties to people who obviously exist. Faith in a god's existence also is very different from
having faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. The latter is a
prediction based on previous observations and knowledge about the
solar system. Some believers merge or seamlessly switch back and
forth between these meanings during conversations about their god.
But they are not the same. Yes, I have faith in many things too, but not
in the existence of gods because there is nothing to base that faith on.
I have faith in my children, for example, meaning I think they are good kids and will do the right thing in most situations. But I don't have
faith that they exist because I don't need to. I know that they exist
because I have seen them, heard them, and felt the bitter sting of their
little kicks and punches when we played Roman gladiators.

Many believers are not shy about declaring that they "know" their
god is real simply because they believe it so strongly. According to
them, faith means believing in a god even though there is no reason to
believe in a god. It sounds silly when put like that but that's what faith
is. It is believing without reason. Despite the hype, this is not a very
good justification for believing in a god or anything else.

A big problem with faith is figuring out where one should apply it.
How does a believer justify picking one god over another if faith
works for the existence of any god? Why, for example, is faith in the
existence of Allah or Ganesha more or less valid than faith in the existence of Jesus? Faith that a god is real has nothing to do with evidence
or reason, therefore it can be directed with equal force toward any god.
Yet for some reason Muslims I have spoken to about this have little or
no respect for the faith that confirms the reality of Jesus as a god to
Christians. To Muslims this is a mistake, an error in judgment. Faith is
not a good enough answer for them. But then Christians tell me that
the faith Muslims have in Allah's existence is not the same as their
faith. How they know this is a mystery.

There are people in the world today who believe that fairies are
real. Don't laugh. According to the Skeptic's Dictionary, belief in
fairies "seems common in rural peoples around the world" (Carroll
2003, 136-37). Many of these people probably base their conclusion
about fairies on faith. It must be faith because, to my knowledge, no
one has produced any genuine fairy fossils or little fairy footprints.
Who needs evidence or good reasons to believe when you have faith?
Probably most believers in a god-I hope-would agree with me that
fairies are not real. But how did they come to the conclusion that there
are no little winged people buzzing around in gardens? How can
faithful god-believers so easily dismiss the faith of fairy-believers? Is
fairy faith significantly different from god faith? If it is, how so?

Having lived most of my life in societies that are dominated by
Christian believers, I have heard many times that I "just need to have
faith" that Jesus is real. Believers have told me that all I have to do is
stop all my obsessing about evidence and "just believe" that he is real.
But if faith works for Jesus, why won't it work for fairies, and Odin
too? Shouldn't every person who defends faith as a legitimate reason
to conclude that their god is real also respect faith when it comes to
the existence of thousands of other gods? What's the difference? But
if one can have faith in the existence of just about anything, then faith
would seem to be of no value at all for getting to the truth.