Why Do People Believe In God

Why do people believe in God despite the overwhelming lack of evidence for his existence? Why do people go on praying to God despite the fact that there is no evidence that prayers are answered? How can people continue to believe in the various religious denominations, sects, and cults when science has so thoroughly destroyed many of their central beliefs? People continue to flock to churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques despite the many fakes, scams, frauds, absurdities, and even crimes of their denominations’ and leaders.

Perhaps the answer is our fear of death. Religion may not have arisen solely because of the fear of death, but if you ask people today, they will tell you that there has to be some continuing life after death. Religion provides assurance that there is such life.

Death is part of nature. Every living thing dies. All humans die. No matter how long science is able to extend the length of a human life, we will all die. It is inherent in all living things. Why do we fear death? Why is death the most terrible part of life? Why have we surrounded death with such enormous horror and grief? You would think that such a natural, universal event would be stoically accepted by us as inevitable. But it isn’t.

We fear death because fear is part of our survival as a species. Any species that does not develop some type of fear of death is likely to become extinct. Our young species has managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years in part because of our fear of death. Like other genetically successful species, we have developed evolutionary methods of avoiding death, at least until we have reproduced and spread our genes. Whether we will be as successful a species as the long-lived turtles, sharks, and alligators, remains to be seen.

I believe that one of the many strategies the human race uses to deal with its fear of death is the creation of imaginary beings called “gods.” By creating gods, humans seek to avoid the despair that might accompany a full understanding of their fate. The invention of gods is a tranquilizer that helps man deal with the fact that when we die, we die to eternal oblivion.

Most people realize that the human body does not survive death. What they hope for is the survival of human consciousness and memory. The idea is that our spirit or “soul” survives in an afterlife. It would make little difference if the spirit or soul survived but did not remember living on earth. Most people wish for the survival of our memory. In heaven we would know who we are and remember our lives and family on earth. For most people this includes seeing and getting back together with our loved ones (although Jesus said that in the resurrection there was no marriage, Matt. 22:23-30). For most, the afterlife is an idealized version of life on earth. There is no pain, no misery, no stress, no sin, no evil, only unlimited joy. For Catholics it is the “beatific vision.” For Moslems it is “Paradise,” an eternal feast in a green garden with beautiful virgins serving the faithful. For most people, people in heaven are aware of what is happening on earth, and many believe that the dead can intervene in earthly events.

There is something contradictory about the idea that our consciousness survives our deaths. Death is, ipso facto, the death of consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the brain, and if the brain is dead it does not function. We want to believe that somehow through the hand of God, our consciousness, our brain, goes on working after death even though for earthly purposes it is finished. We want to believe that the mind is not really part of the body, but rather, a spiritual function. Science knows that the mind is the brain and the nervous system, a purely physical phenomenon, and like the rest of the body, it dies.

Another reason people today seem to want to believe in religion is that religion gives an answer to the question of evil. Religion tells people that certain actions are right and certain actions are wrong. People fear that without religion, there is no reason for morality, no punishment for evil, no reward for good. People say that without God there is no meaning and purpose in life.

We live in a violent world, full of tragedy and sorrow. Our invention of a God helps us to deal with life. Without God, we find no transcendental reason to be good rather than evil. Without God, life seems meaningless. We see evildoers prospering, while good people suffer. We want an explanation. We desperately need to believe that there is a supreme being who hands down moral laws, rewards goodness, and punishes evil.

When believers argue that without God there is no meaning and no purpose in life they are making a meaningless argument. Meaning and purpose are not things that exist as separate transcendental entities in the universe. They are concepts invented by human beings to explain certain things. Meaning and purpose exist only in the human mind. If a thing has meaning, it has meaning only to the mind of a person. It is the sense, significance, import, intent, or end of something as construed by the mind. The purpose of something is the goal or object for which something exists or is done by a human being. The existence or nonexistence of God has nothing to do with meaning or purpose. Even if God existed, the concepts of meaning and purpose would still be functions of the human mind and not something created by God.

There is something magnetic about great art. People are powerfully attracted to and inspired by it. When we view a great painting or sculpture, we are able to lose ourselves in it. We forget it is a piece of canvass or a chunk of rock, and see it instead as a representation of something. It is capable of moving us deeply. The same is true of great music. While we listen to it, we do not think of it as a series of sound waves varying in length. We are transported, lifted out of the moment, moved to wonderful feelings and emotions. When we read a novel, we forget that it is just a story, and get caught-up in its plot.

In the theater and motion pictures we are captivated by the story. We forget that the characters are only actors mouthing the lines written for them. We suspend our disbelief. We let our thoughts and emotions go with the story as if it were really happening. Our art, as a reflection of ourselves, is something we not only create, but something which--if it is even halfway good--can move us to suspend our knowledge of reality. It captures and enthralls us.

This can all be explained by the working of the brain. I believe that each person in his or her innermost mind recognizes that there is no God. We must deal with the absence of God and the powerful desire that he be present. To deal with this we have created God--the pictures, stories, music, theology, ritual, liturgy, mystery--everything. It was necessary to do this to explain what we did not know, to help us deal with death, and to explain our awe, fascination, and need for meaning. We objectified our feeling of the numinous. Once we created God, as with all of our artistic creations, we were captured by him. God became not just a creation, a story, a picture, but a reality--a creator, a God who is wholly other.

But somewhere deep in the mind of every halfway intelligent person is the realization that there is no such thing as God. He does not exist. He is a figment of the human imagination. That is a melancholy thought. But it is the truth.