# Why do so many people still believe in God?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 17, 2022, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965 "2022-04-17T20:24:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 23
### Author:  [@philipdalton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/philipdalton)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/441 "2024-01-20T22:57:20Z")
I could use the analogy here of agdogstics. They’re not quite sure whether dogs really exist or not, because they’re all blind and have never seen one. When they hear one bark they’re still sceptical because they think possibly cats could be capable of making a noise like that. When one jumps up in their lap wagging its tail, they’re still equally doubtful because they think cats could possibly grow to that size. So, they’re not convinced. Similarly, agnostics and atheists, despite being able to see and hear the evidence for a Creator all around them,
are all blind to the truth and therefore attribute everything to evolution instead, rather like the blind agdogstics who attribute a dog’s barking to a cat.
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### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/442 "2024-01-20T23:04:14Z")
I’ve seen, heard, touched and smelled a lot of dogs in my life. Never sensed a lick of any god. And I have never heard of anyone who denied the existence of dogs.
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### Author:  [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/443 "2024-01-20T23:06:20Z")
> [@philipdalton](#):
>
> Similarly, agnostics and atheists, despite being able to see and hear the evidence for a Creator all around them
What evidence would that be?
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/444 "2024-01-20T23:18:01Z")
One small problem. The situation is more like this. Someone claims they have a dog. But when you go visit him, there is no dog to be seen. Not only that, an examination of the house reveals no dog dishes, no dog food, and for certain dogs the clinching factor, no dog hair. (We had goldens.) The supposed owner says that he has had encounters with the dogs in various rooms, but never when anyone else is there. And the size, color, and shape of the dog varies between each encounter. So sorry, no dog in evidence.
Evolution, btw, came from the examination of the evidence, and it makes predictions which have been confirmed. New discoveries just have made our understanding better. No one should believe in evolution, they should accept it based on the evidence.
The argument that god is proven by the natural world is called the “what about the trees” argument. Trees exist, are beautiful, and flourish, so god must be the reason. But biology and evolution explain them quite well without resorting to anything supernatural.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/445 "2024-01-20T23:22:09Z")
> [@philipdalton](#):
>
> Similarly, agnostics and atheists, despite being able to see and hear the evidence for a Creator all around them, are all blind to the truth and therefore attribute everything to evolution instead, rather like the blind agdogstics who attribute a dog’s barking to a cat.
(italics mine) What type of atheist are you, exactly?
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/446 "2024-01-20T23:55:08Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> The situation is more like this. Someone claims they have a dog. But when you go visit him, there is no dog to be seen.
This would be a more realistic scenario if you were talking about a cat, rather than a dog.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/447 "2024-01-20T23:56:49Z")
…is this where we’re meant to wind up at Invisible Pink Unicorn?
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### Author:  [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2024, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/448 "2024-01-20T23:58:53Z")
Or [_Sagan’s Dragon_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World#Dragon_in_my_garage).
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/449 "2024-01-21T00:02:42Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> This would be a more realistic scenario if you were talking about a cat, rather than a dog.
I take it you’ve never had a Golden Retriever. We raised them for Guide Dogs, and our last became a breeder so we could keep her. Her hair blew out our first Roomba. We’re still finding it five years after she went to that great kennel in the sky. You find the true color of your rug only after intense vacuuming.
We know someone who uses Golden hair for weaving.
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### Author:  [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/450 "2024-01-21T01:49:06Z")
> [@philipdalton](#):
>
> According to Dawkins, all living beings must have begun to exist at a certain point in time, and God would be no exception to that rule, therefore He can’t exist, because He would have had to have been created in order to exist in the first place.
He was created. By us. Man created God in his own image, which is why God possesses the same petty jealousies, the same desires, the same loneliness we do. Because we created Him. Not sure where that takes your argument though.
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### Author:  [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/451 "2024-01-21T01:57:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> > [@philipdalton](#):
> >
> > It is a fallacy that the Bible teaches that creation began 6000 years ago, it doesn’t specify an age for the universe
>
> The Bible pretty much teaches you whatever it is you want to believe.
It teaches us that the only thing that matters is humans. That God existed for billions of years in total abject loneliness until He created man does not matter to us because, like most narcissists, we only care about the part where we come in. Well, maybe not total abject loneliness; the angels pre-existed us supposedly so maybe they kept the big guy company.
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### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/452 "2024-01-21T02:14:30Z")
> [@Biffster](#):
>
> Well, maybe not total abject loneliness; the angels pre-existed us supposedly so maybe they kept the big guy company.
I would have zapped myself out of existence after only a day of harp music…
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### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/453 "2024-01-21T02:34:07Z")
I suppose it’s because of the necessarily Americanocentric frame of reference of the Board, but I’ve observed that very often when we have a discussion about God or Religion in general, what we wind up arguing about/against is specifically the Christian Fundamentalist position.
…
Going back to the OP question about “Why do so many people still believe in God” – what’s that rhetorical device, called where I then counter-ask: Why _wouldn’t_ they? Or perhaps, why should it surprise us?
Given the propensity of the human psyche to seek some form of order in how the world works and to apply pareidolia to both physical and intellectual perception, the concept of either eternal, personal (G/g)od(s), or an emergent Universal Intelligence, or an animistic spirit world, etc. , and based upon that religion as a sociocultural construct of every known major culture, are so deeply embedded that what impresses me is actually how much is _non_ belief growing in the face of all that.
Remember, you are not going to reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into. “There has got to be Something Greater” is NOT something someone arrives at through reproducible experimental results.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/454 "2024-01-21T02:43:02Z")
Is there any particular reason _more_ to doubt the veracity of accounts of the Judeo-Christian God than say eighty years ago? Have any new smoking guns archeologically speaking turned up? If not then one would have to ask what convinced people in the early-middle 20th century to believe in God; such as C.S. Lewis started believing in the literal truth of Christianity when by his own account he previously hadn’t.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/455 "2024-01-21T14:25:46Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#):
>
> Going back to the OP question about “Why do so many people still believe in God” – what’s that rhetorical device, called where I then counter-ask: Why _wouldn’t_ they? Or perhaps, why should it surprise us?
Because it’s irrational?
I mean, I get what you’re saying, and I said much the same thing in my opening post too.
But it’s not like the question of why people still believe is itself irrational. There are many factors, many more than the ones you alluded to, even if we constrain it just to psychology.
(Also, ISTM that we’ve transitioned from the Information Age to the “Disinformation Age”, and it’s more important than ever to understand why people believe the things they do. But that’s a tangent)
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> Is there any particular reason _more_ to doubt the veracity of accounts of the Judeo-Christian God than say eighty years ago? Have any new smoking guns archeologically speaking turned up?
But why would we limit this to archeology? A large proportion of Christians (the majority in the US, if not the entire world) do _not_ believe in the literal truth of the Bible.
For this group, a lot of the developments of the last 80 years could well impact their beliefs and are probably part of why religiosity has fallen in the developed world, particularly among those with the highest level of education. For example:
1. The discovery of DNA…I guess someone could believe in evolution but still think God had a hand in creating each new human. After this discovery, not so much.
2. Developments in neuroscience and computer science took away a lot of the mystery of how matter can think, and make decisions…the bridge between physical and mental. This should have been more significant than it has been, but it helps that the concept of “free will” is completely nebulous (tangent 2).
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/456 "2024-01-21T14:31:06Z")
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> For this group, a lot of the developments of the last 80 years could well impact their beliefs and are probably part of why religiosity has fallen in the developed world, particularly among those with the highest level of education. For example:
To this, I would add, the widespread availability of a basic scientific education.
It’s not that evolution was unknown 100 years ago, but a much larger portion of the population can actually be fairly well educated about these things nowadays.
Of course, whether people actually learn what they are exposed to is a very different question; see this video:
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG8SwAFQFuU)
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/457 "2024-01-21T14:41:01Z")
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> Because it’s irrational?
However, thinking it over more… I knew about and accepted evolution (mostly because I was a dino nut as a kid) long before I stopped believing in God.
There was a lot of cognitive dissonance there, and I twisted logic into a pretzel to justify that to myself (I wrestled with these doubts for years). It wasn’t until I started thinking about philosophy that I realized what I was doing.
So maybe it is a question worth asking, but not particularly surprising.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/458 "2024-01-21T15:31:29Z")
FWIW, although C.S. Lewis believed in the literal truth of Jesus’s death and resurrection he was not a fundamentalist in the American sense of maintaining that the tribal myths related in Genesis were real.
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### Author:  [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/459 "2024-01-21T15:32:45Z")
> [@Biffster](#):
>
> He was created. By us. Man created God in his own image, which is why God possesses the same petty jealousies, the same desires, the same loneliness we do. Because we created Him. Not sure where that takes your argument though.
Exactly, why would man create a god that he was unable to comprehend or convey to someone else. I have never understood why some believe that evolution is evidence of no god. How else could god have created life that fill every niche on earth. If anything, evolution would point to the existence of God. I don’t believe in a magic God. I doubt that God has arms and legs and eyes. A person has to be very intelligent to understand physics, Maybe the physical laws of the universe are God.
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/460 "2024-01-21T15:48:15Z")
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> FWIW, although C.S. Lewis believed in the literal truth of Jesus’s death and resurrection he was not a fundamentalist in the American sense of maintaining that the tribal myths related in Genesis were real.
You don’t include the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection as a “tribal myth”? What exactly separates it from other tribal myths?
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