# Does the fact that so many people believe in God mean anything? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 17, 2013, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177 "2013-03-17T15:55:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![panaccione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@panaccione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panaccione)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/1 "2013-03-17T15:55:46Z")
Let me start by saying I’ve always thought of myself as an Agnostic. I don’t follow any religion but despite all the reading I’ve done, and knowing full well I have no evidence to back it up, I’ve always believed I have a soul. Obviously, a lot of people feel this way. Now, when I look at life, consciousness, space, time and infinity, I find it to be as incomprehensible as the concept of god. It makes no sense. Our evidence tells us our universe is infinite, but logically shouldn’t that contradict our reality? I mean in an infinite universe why should the laws of gravity apply? Shouldn’t they break at some point? Furthermore, where did anything even come from and why is it here? Wouldn’t nothingness be more logically consistent than reality? These are questions I don’t think will ever be answered. In essence, life is a big mystery and the only thing that tells us it’s real is from our experiences. But what of the experience that so many people claim to have when they say they believe on god? Sure, it cannot be measured, but why should we dismiss it out of hand? [This VSauce video](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4e_kz79tjb8) is what gives me pause. Towards the end, they discuss an experiment where people are asked to guess the amount of M&M’S in a bottle. No one actually got the answer right, but the groups median answer was within 5. It’s a concept they refer to as “Wisdom of the Crowds.” Now, use that as an analogy to a belief in God. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/2 "2013-03-17T16:01:14Z")
I would say it says something about human nature, but has nothing to say about the existence or non-existence of God or a god. 50 Million Elvis Fans _can_ be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/3 "2013-03-17T16:03:07Z")
> [@panaccione](#): > > . . . I mean in an infinite universe why should the laws of gravity apply? Shouldn’t they break at some point? Among many other things . . . what is your reasoning here? ---
**Author:** ![panaccione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@panaccione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panaccione)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/4 "2013-03-17T16:08:44Z")
Well, in an infinite universe all possibilities exist and are certain to happen. Yet, that makes no sense. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/5 "2013-03-17T16:18:41Z")
> [@panaccione](#): > > Well, in an infinite universe all possibilities exist and are certain to happen. Yet, that makes no sense. There are are 81 possible outcomes in tic-tac-toe, this does not mean that it becomes checkers at some point. infinite space may or may not have all combinations of mater but the “rules” will still apply (assuming we know the correct rules) ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/6 "2013-03-17T16:19:07Z")
> [@panaccione](#): > > Well, in an infinite universe all possibilities exist and are certain to happen. This is false. Just because something is infinite does not mean that “all possibilities exist in it”, and just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s “certain to happen”. Roll a six-side die. The odds of a six coming up are 1 in 6. Roll it twice, the odds are 1 in 3. Roll it an infinite number of times, and the odds of seeing a six are really, really high, _but they’re not 100%_. There’s a tiny chance that a six will never appear. Now imagine a long sequence of digits between 1 and 6. Any sequence is possible, but it’s easy to imagine really long sequences that are unlikely to occur (like inifinity - 1 sixes in a row). Further, an infinite universe does not even mean that all possibilities exist. The set of even numbers is infinite in size, and doesn’t contain a 3. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/7 "2013-03-17T16:21:59Z")
What is the evidence that the universe is infinite anyway? Isn’t it also possibly finite? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/8 "2013-03-17T16:25:35Z")
It might mean something if they all believed in the _same_ god, which is what you imply in both the title of the thread and the OP itself…but they most certainly don’t. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/9 "2013-03-17T16:29:28Z")
In terms of proving the existence of God, no. _Argument ad populum_ was and is a logical fallacy. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/10 "2013-03-17T16:31:38Z")
> [@panaccione](#): > > Well, in an infinite universe all possibilities exist and are certain to happen. As others have already pointed out, this is not true. For further discussion, see these old threads: [“Anything that can happen, will happen, given enough time.” – Really?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=520614) [Assuming an Infinite amount of time, are all things inevitable?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=637765) [Given infinity, is everything imaginable inevitable?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=648579) ---
**Author:** ![panaccione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@panaccione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panaccione)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/11 "2013-03-17T16:34:27Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It might mean something if they all believed in the _same_ god, which is what you imply in both the title of the thread and the OP itself…but they most certainly don’t. Good point. But, I see this a large portion of society who have let themselves be misled. If they were to drop their religion and see it for the lie that it is, they would still have a belief in god and be more apt to search for the “truth.” It truly could be lead to new discoveries but instead these peoples minds are sqaundered on this topic because they have been given the “answer.”. It only adds another layer of contempt I have for religion. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/12 "2013-03-17T16:45:49Z")
As for the question posed by the thread title, I think the answer is **maybe**. If many — meaning a significant percentage of the world’s population — people believe in something, whether that something is God or ghosts or extra-terrestrials or True Love or the female orgasm or… whatever, that suggests to me that it is in some sense **natural** to believe in that something. This **might** be evidence that the thing in question actually exists; or it might be because there are widespread phenomena which, rightly or wrongly, get reasonably interpreted as evidence for the thing’s existence; or it might be that there’s something about human nature that predisposes us to belief in the thing’s existence. In my opinion, the fact that so many people believe in God tends to rebut the claim I’ve sometimes heard that the only reason anyone believes in God is because other people have told them to, because they were deliberately brainwashed when they were young. In other words, the fact that so many people believe in God isn’t in itself an argument for God’s existence, but it’s something that ought to be investigated by anyone who wants to take the question serioiusly: Why do they believe in God? What experiences or insights might they have had that make them believe? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/13 "2013-03-17T17:09:31Z")
> [@panaccione](#): > > … If they were to drop their religion and see it for the lie that it is, they would still have a belief in god and be more apt to search for the “truth.” … This is just bullshit. You have no idea what they would do. Most people who drop their religion pick another one because they like it more or there are family/cultural reasons to change. Many become atheists. Many become agnostics. You cannot base any conclusions on an assumption like this. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/14 "2013-03-17T17:12:04Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > As for the question posed by the thread title, I think the answer is **maybe**. > > If many — meaning a significant percentage of the world’s population — people believe in something, whether that something is God or ghosts or extra-terrestrials or True Love or the female orgasm or… whatever, that suggests to me that it is in some sense **natural** to believe in that something. This **might** be evidence that the thing in question actually exists; or it might be because there are widespread phenomena which, rightly or wrongly, get reasonably interpreted as evidence for the thing’s existence; or it might be that there’s something about human nature that predisposes us to belief in the thing’s existence. In my opinion, the fact that so many people believe in God tends to rebut the claim I’ve sometimes heard that the only reason anyone believes in God is because other people have told them to, because they were deliberately brainwashed when they were young. > > In other words, the fact that so many people believe in God isn’t in itself an argument for God’s existence, but it’s something that ought to be investigated by anyone who wants to take the question serioiusly: Why do they believe in God? What experiences or insights might they have had that make them believe? Well, the thing is that a majority of people end up following the religion of their parents, so it is still the case that “other people told them”. There is no direct link available now, but Google answers posted the relevant info: > [@](#): > > Table 29 of the study presents the percent of people raised in a > particular religion who reported currently being members of that same > faith: > > Table 29 > > A. Major Religions > > Protestant 90.4% > Catholic 82.3 > Jewish 86.6 > Other 70.5 > None 45.4 “Counting Flocks and Lost Sheep: Trends in Religious Preference Since World War II” By Tom W. Smith, Univerity of Chicago. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/15 "2013-03-17T17:18:44Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > As for the question posed by the thread title, I think the answer is **maybe**. > > If many — meaning a significant percentage of the world’s population — people believe in something, whether that something is God or ghosts or extra-terrestrials or True Love or the female orgasm or… whatever, that suggests to me that it is in some sense **natural** to believe in that something. … I disagree. What is “natural” is curiosity and perhaps a sense of wonder or amazement. And IMO, there is a natural desire to make sense of things, and most people will settle for something that makes sense on the surface without probing it to the fullest extent. People are always trying to answer questions, and the fact that they find an answer has no bearing on whether the answer is correct. And as already noted, for the nature of a god, at least, there are thousands of answers, and the number of people who believe in one particular version has no bearing on the correctness of the belief. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/16 "2013-03-17T17:18:58Z")
> [@panaccione](#): > > [This VSauce video](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4e_kz79tjb8) is what gives me pause. Towards the end, they discuss an experiment where people are asked to guess the amount of M&M’S in a bottle. No one actually got the answer right, but the groups median answer was within 5. It’s a concept they refer to as “Wisdom of the Crowds.” Now, use that as an analogy to a belief in God. Wisdom of crowds really only works in very narrowly defined circumstances: when estimating something in such a way that errors are evenly distributed, and even then only provided all guesses are statistically independent. In the M&M case, it’s roughly as likely to over- as it is to underestimate; thus, given the large sample size, the error tends to even out. But if there is some systematic bias, i.e. if people would for some reason preferentially overestimate, the effect vanishes; likewise if later guesses are influenced by earlier ones (i.e. are not statistically independent). Thus, there is no actual ‘wisdom’ in crowds: rather, the effect derives itself from the fact that all members are equally ignorant, and simple statistics. The question of the existence of a god thus is not one for which ‘majority opinion’ is a good signpost: first of all, it’s just not the kind of question that benefits from statistics. God’s existence is not some quantity to estimate; he either exists, or not. Second, it’s very likely that people’s opinions are systematically biased in this case: most people will retain the faith they have been brought up with. Third, for the same reason, people’s ‘guesses’ won’t be uncorrelated: in fact, your social environment and history constrains your guess very tightly; you will likely guess the same way your peers do. So, there’s really no good reason this video ought to give you pause. But even without the video, the answer is no: even ignoring the differences between different religions (or within them), it’s simply the case that for most of history, most of the people have been wrong about most of what they believed. So, what people believe is not an especially good indicator of what is the case (this is sometimes called ‘pessimistic meta-induction’, which I just mention because it’s fun to write/say). ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/17 "2013-03-17T17:28:51Z")
I suppose it simply means that belief in god is the longest running meme on record. ---
**Author:** ![lekatt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lekatt/32/7269_2.png) [@lekatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lekatt)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/18 "2013-03-17T17:34:16Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > In terms of proving the existence of God, no. _Argument ad populum_ was and is a logical fallacy. Well said and I agree, but what about the millions who have experienced God. Now I believe that should mean something. https://www.youtube.com/embed/3AGNnOk6dhA?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/19 "2013-03-17T17:58:31Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > Well said and I agree, but what about the millions who have experienced God. > Now I believe that should mean something. > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AGNnOk6dhA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AGNnOk6dhA) Nothing much, as pointed before even a documentary from the 80’s that dealt with this subject (A documentary that was much in favor of the phenomenon being proof of life after death) there was even the case of an atheist that reported the big light and he still remained an atheist after what happened to him. AFAICR it was not the only one. So, it is not good evidence still. > **[near-death experience (NDE) - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com](https://www.skepdic.com/nde.html)** > [@](#): > > Blackmore wrote that in 2004 but, as noted above, in 2006 scientists demonstrated brain activity in someone in a vegetative state, which is not identical to a flat EEG but which indicates that some machines might detect brain activity while others do not.\* Thus, those researchers who claim that their patients have memories of experiences they had when they were dead (as Dr. Michael Saborn does of musician Pam Reynolds) may be mistaken. Just because their machines don’t register anything cannot be taken as proof positive that a person is dead, nor can it be taken as proof positive that the patient isn’t aware, on some level, of what is going on around her. Unconscious patients may hear what surgeons and nurses are saying, even if the hospital machines aren’t registering any brain activity.\* > > Furthermore, NDE stories are now known to a large audience. Thus, when new stories are told about going into the light, etc., one has to be concerned that these stories may have been contaminated. They may reflect what one has heard and what one expects. Such experiences are still subjectively real and may have profound effects on a person, but they should not be taken as strong evidence of separation of body and spirit, much less of life after death. (In any case, making extraordinary claims that can’t be disproved won’t hurt Dr. Saborn’s book or Reynolds’s record sales, a fact that has not escaped the attention of the webmaster of the [near-death.com](http://near-death.com) page promoting the sale of Saborn’s book and Reynolds’s CDs. Granted, the page is not on par with the unseemliness of Kübler-Ross’s turbaned man standing in for the spirits of dead husbands, but the page doesn’t do anything to encourage belief in the professionalism or reliability of Saborn’s reports.) > > One way to avoid contamination of stories has been developed by University of North Texas professor Dr. Jan Holden.\* She designed an experiment in which a laptop computer that opens flat hangs from the ceiling with the screen facing away from the floor. Her husband developed a software program that produces a series of animations. If a patient claims to have been floating above her body on the operating table, then she ought to have seen the computer screen and be able to report on what she saw. Dr. Bruce Greyson has apparently been using this protocol for a few years but so far has not reported anything of interest. > > Finally, Raymond Quigg Lawrence (Blinded by the Light) thinks that NDEs are the work of Satan. Perhaps, or they may be telepathic communications from doctors, nurses, or others in attendance when the subject is near death, or they may be mixed memories composed after waking up and hearing others talk about what was happening while one was near death, or they may be recollections of subconsciously recorded data overheard while in a groggy state. At this point in our knowledge, to claim that NDEs provide strong evidence that the soul exists independently of the body, and that there is an afterlife awaiting that soul that just happens to coincide with the beliefs and wishes of the near-death experient, seems premature. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2013, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177/20 "2013-03-17T18:08:44Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > Well said and I agree, but what about the millions who have experienced God. > Now I believe that should mean something. > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AGNnOk6dhA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AGNnOk6dhA) Why should it? Many people claim to see UFOs and ghosts. Many people claim to possess memories of past lives. Many people believe they can read minds and talk to the dead. Many people think they can tell the future by dealing cards a certain way. None of this has ever given me pause, though. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-fact-that-so-many-people-believe-in-god-mean-anything/653177.md?page=2)