The number one reason people believe in God
Guy P. Harrison has written a truly excellent book that for the intellectually curious should be very instructive. I don’t see how anyone of any belief system could read the first few paragraphs and not at least pause to consider the origin of their faith. Whether there is a creator or not, certainly the various human implementations of earthbound religion are just that — misguided, organic mythological human creation.
Take a look at this excerpt from 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God
Chapter 1
My god is obvious.
If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced? -Percy Bysshe Shelley
Perhaps the most common reason that people give for believing in a god is the claim that their god is obviously real. The god’s existence is so plain to see that even listening to counterarguments or entertaining doubt is a waste of time. Probably the majority of the world’s believers have no interest in investigating or debating the existence of their god for this reason. They see no possibility that they could be wrong about this because it is just so darn obvious that they are right. After all, their god is everywhere. Their god made everything. Their god answers prayers. Their god runs the universe. Nothing could be clearer than their god’s existence, they say. Many believers find the mere suggestion that their god might not exist to be laughable.
Obvious or not, belief in gods deserves to be challenged. Believers owe it to the world and our collective future to at least hear and consider basic questions about gods. These claims can’t be given a pass because they are connected to some of humankind’s most divisive and dangerous behavior. If a significant portion of our species insists on discriminating, hating, killing, and slowing scientific progress in the name of gods, then don’t we owe it to ourselves to at least try and confirm whether or not these gods are even real in the first place?
I have found that most believers are highly skeptical people. I have talked with Muslims who are world-class skeptics on the subject of Christianity. They know how to punch holes in virtually every claim that religion makes. Many Christians I have encountered are brutally analytical and filled with doubt when it comes to the claims of Islam. They can dismantle every Muslim argument very effectively. I have read the Koran and it is not obvious to me that it is a perfect book that was inspired by a god. Christians feel the same way about it. They agree with me that Muslims should be more skeptical about Muhammad’s claims and demand evidence. But I also have read the Bible and it is not obvious to me that it is a perfect book that was inspired by a god either. Muslims agree with me because it’s not obvious to them either. They also agree with me that Christians should be more skeptical about the Bible and demand evidence. Of course all this skepticism vanishes when the spotlight turns to their own religion. The truth is, just about everybody is a skeptic-except when it comes to their own “obviously true” belief. Unfortunately, this is the one religion that they need to challenge most of all. It makes no sense for a believer to arbitrarily exempt one religion out of thousands. All religions deserve equal scrutiny, even if it is the one that mom and dad told you was true when you were a child.
[Ed: This next part is really interesting. Emphasis mine.]
The breakdown of who believes in which god and how they must be worshipped should trouble religious people, or at least make them curious. Why is it, for example, that the “obvious” god of more than one billion Muslims is unrecognizable to the five billion non-Muslims who are alive today? About five-sixths of the human population does not think he is really there. Nothing is more obvious to Christians than Jesus. So why do more than four billion people not believe he is a god? Some one billion Hindus think their gods are obviously real. But five billion of their fellow humans do not see it that way. This misalignment of belief demolishes claims that anyone’s god is obvious. Wouldn’t an obvious god be able to convince at least a majority if not all of the world’s people that he or she exists?
Believers who say that their god is obviously real should explain what they mean. A tree standing in front of you is obviously real. A shoe on your foot is obviously real. How is an invisible and silent god (at least to most of us) obviously real? It shouldn’t be too hard to convince others if the god truly is obvious. Of course, believers already put a tremendous amount of effort into trying to show others “glaringly obvious” gods. Everything from songs and comic books to missionaries and military invasions have been used to try and get people to see an “obvious” god. For some reason, however, the results have been mixed. Today, after two thousand years of Christianity and fourteen hundred years of Islam, for example, half the world’s population still thinks those two religions have it all wrong. How can this be explained if Jesus and Allah are obvious?
Any god that is obviously real should be recognizable to anyone, even atheists. I don’t think most atheists would deny the obvious. I cannot speak for all nonbelievers but certainly I know that I am open to the possibility that gods exist. I would never close my eyes or my mind to good evidence or strong arguments. I am a curious person and want to know as much as I can about everything. I would never deny scientific confirmation of a god. If the African god Fidi Mukullu descends upon Times Square tomorrow, I would be glued to the TV and Web to find out every detail about the historic event. I would be excited, not upset. My first impulse would be to try and get an interview with him to learn everything I could about what it’s like to be a god. I certainly wouldn’t cling to atheism. I am a passionate fan of science and enjoy learning about the latest microbes found at the bottom of a deep sea or the weird behavior of atoms. I couldn’t turn away from any unusual discovery-including a god-if I tried. If the world’s scientific community presented overwhelming evidence that Fidi Mukullu or any other god was real, I would not hang my head in shame for having been an atheist. I would be grateful to know something new and important. If any gods are real I sincerely want to know them.
The problem is that what may seem obvious to many believers is far from obvious to nonbelievers. Stories in sacred books have not convinced most people that one god or another is real. Merely pointing out the complexity of the universe has not been enough either. At this point in time it looks doubtful that anyone will ever come up with something that will show that a god is undeniably real. For centuries, brilliant theologians, monks, imams, authors, and even many scientists have taken their best shot at showing the entire world that their god was real. But none of them came close to succeeding. Today a high school student with a fair understanding of religious claims and a good science education can defeat, or at least cast crippling doubt on, every argument for a god ever posed by the greatest religious minds of history. This is not to say that Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, C. S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, and all the others were dumber than a high school kid. It just shows that there is a severe lack of ammunition when it comes to defending the claim that gods are real.
Still, a believer might say, someone is up there. Maybe we got the name wrong and maybe organized religions have corrupted the stories, but a god must have created everything. A god must be making the world go round. This much is obvious, they say. However, even a claim as vague as this is not obvious to everyone. There are many people all over the world who do not believe in any gods. According to sociologist Phil Zuckerman, between five hundred million and seven hundred fifty million people currently have no belief in any gods (Zuckerman 2005). This is a huge number. And it is even more impressive than it appears at first glance because Zuckerman only included what he calls “organic atheism” in his calculations. Organic atheists, he says, are true nonbelievers who are living in relatively free societies and able to believe or not believe without fear of severe punishment from an oppressive government.
So who are these five hundred to seven hundred fifty million infidels without a god in their lives? Are they the misfits and maniacs of the world? Are these the people who fill the world’s prisons? It doesn’t seem so. Zuckerman’s research shows that these nonbelievers mostly come from the safest, healthiest, most educated, most charitable, most technologically advanced, and most crime-free nations on Earth. Countries with high percentages of nonbelievers include global bright spots such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Canada, and France. These people are not the world’s idiots. If a god was obviously real, it’s likely that they would be bright enough to recognize it and honest enough to admit it.
A more specific group of people worth considering are scientists. Why do so many scientists fail to see these “obvious” gods whom believers keep talking about? Despite the fact that the United States is a highly religious society, almost all elite American scientists are nonbelievers. Researchers Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham revealed this with a study of members of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. They found that only 7 percent of these accomplished scientists believed in a god. A full 93 percent indicated that no god is obvious to them (American Atheists 1999). But how can this be? The ability of modern scientists to detect and observe objects and phenomenon both far and near is astonishing. Scientists are able to study viruses, molecules, atoms, even parts of atoms. Scientists are able to see far beyond our solar system and our galaxy. They can even see back in time with deep-space imaging. But despite all of these abilities, no one has ever had any success at discovering so much as the slightest trace of a god. After all of this searching, listening, and looking, we still have nothing but weak arguments and unreliable eyewitness accounts to support the existence of gods. I’m not sure how anyone who thinks their god is obvious can explain what is going on in the minds of these nonbelieving scientists. We can safely assume that these are very smart people. That’s why they ended up being elite scientists. If an obviously real god created the universe, the earth and all life on it, wouldn’t you think that America’s best astronomers, geologists, and biologists would be the first people in line to worship that god? Wouldn’t you think that smart professionals who have dedicated their lives to exploring, discovering, experimenting, and thinking about life and the universe would be the first to detect a god? How can it be that so many of the brightest people on earth have not yet come across a compelling reason to believe in a god? At the very least it means the existence of gods is far from obvious.
Excerpted from “50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God
Copyright © 2008 by Guy P. Harrison.
And the people replied…