# 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:** 24
### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/461 "2024-01-21T16:09:52Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#):
>
> Maybe the physical laws of the universe are God
For most people, “there is only the physical laws of the universe” would be a reasonable way to define atheism.
---
### Author:  [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/462 "2024-01-21T16:12:16Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#):
>
> why would man create a god that he was unable to comprehend or convey to someone else.
In order to spin that god’s wishes into whatever man wanted, to give some explanation for the things in the world to comfort people who need to cling to something, but to remain ambiguous enough to apply to nearly all situations.
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#):
>
> I have never understood why some believe that evolution is evidence of no god.
Because at least with the god of the Bible, which is what we mostly deal with in America, evolution has no room whatsoever for things like a literal Adam and Eve, Noah’s arc, and Genesis. It’s like saying “I have never understood why going to the Moon is evidence of a non-flat Earth.”
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#):
>
> How else could god have created life that fill every niche on earth.
Why is a god needed to do that? Life fills whatever niches it can, not the other way around.
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#):
>
> Maybe the physical laws of the universe are God.
If you want to call it that, fine, but then you’re just defining god into existence. It’s also not the way most people define gods. The physical laws of the universe don’t have any agency, desire, jealousy, or vindictiveness that we know of to invoke wrath and smite those who don’t obey it.
---
### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/463 "2024-01-21T16:39:21Z")
We may be around here in a bit of denial about how for a plurality if not a majority of the population, all that “we” supposedly “know” about _the belief itself in the reality of_ a God or of gods or a spirit plane or whatever (as opposed to specific doctrines of a denomination) being unnecessary and having no foot to stand on, _has never been relevant to their everyday_ – that is, to them, “believing in God”, by itself, has _ **not** _ been a problem for them. It did not create in them a cognitive dissonance or an existential paradox. Now, they may have had issues with some act or some doctrinal teaching of the tradition they were brought up in, but then what a huge number of those people will do is _switch religions_, not go atheist. They conclude the problem is with the specific religion, not with there being or not being gods.
---
### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/464 "2024-01-21T16:41:32Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#):
>
> 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.
This is true. I think it’s a function of the fact that more moderate Christians are (a) less vocal about their beliefs in the public sphere, and (b) less likely to attempt to influence public policy and others’ behavior based on their (the Fundamentalists’) own beliefs.
---
### Author:  [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/465 "2024-01-21T17:38:15Z")
> [@Riemann](#):
>
> For most people, “there is only the physical laws of the universe” would be a reasonable way to define atheism.
But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why are we here.”
My opinion is that the existence of the universe is irrational, god or no god. If you don’t like the god explanation, at some point we have no answer for why matter exists, why the laws of the universe exist, why the world functions. I do tend to have some sympathy for the existence of order in the laws of the universe to encourage seeking out more order. Because frankly, the only rational universe is no universe at all. That answer requires no origin story. All existing universes require an origin story, one way or another.
---
### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/466 "2024-01-21T17:43:24Z")
All these people who all agree everyone on earth is really really stupid but them. What will they discover? Gosh I am on the edge of my chair here.
---
### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/467 "2024-01-21T17:48:07Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#):
>
> But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why are we here.”
Nor does goddidit, of course - not that _you_ were suggesting that alternative.
> [@Jay\_Z](#):
>
> All existing universes require an origin story, one way or another.
But I think the idea of an _ultimate_ origin explanation in any restrictive specific sense is incoherent. If (for example) we come up with a set of laws that fully explain the origin of this universe, that just begs the question of where those laws came from.
> [@Jay\_Z](#):
>
> Because frankly, the only rational universe is no universe at all.
Why not “everything that is not forbidden is allowed”? That seems equally valid _a priori_, and it certainly has the advantage of not being ruled out by the fact that something does, apparently, exist.
---
### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/468 "2024-01-21T18:02:43Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#):
>
> Because frankly, the only rational universe is no universe at all
Not even that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing “Nothing is still something” which is little more than a word game rather than a concrete empirical description.
But even if nothing existed there would still be an explanatory gap; still the question of _why_ nothing exists.
But of course no one around to ask that question 😄
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/469 "2024-01-21T18:28:16Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#):
>
> But that still doesn’t answer the question of “why are we here.”
I’ve always thought it presumptuous for a species of sentient primates to believe that all of existence must be in some way comprehensible to them.
There is no reason to believe that the universe was created/developed in a manner such that it could be understood by/would make sense to humans.
---
### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/470 "2024-01-21T18:31:18Z")
> [@Babale](#):
>
> You don’t include the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection as a “tribal myth”? What exactly separates it from other tribal myths?
The accounts we have in the gospels aren’t written in the form of tribal myths.
However, Lewis did call the story of Jesus a “true myth.”
> [@](#):
>
> Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself . . . I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.
>
> **Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it _really_ _happened._**
See also:
> **[J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis on the True Myth of the Gospel » Transpositions](https://www.transpositions.co.uk/tolkien-lewis-true-myth-of-the-gospel/)**
>
> On 30 January 1945, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher about the ‘beauty’ of the Christian story. Regarding the ‘Eden “myth”’,...
> [@](#):
>
> A man who disbelieved the Christian story as fact but continually fed on it as myth would, perhaps, be more spiritually alive than one who assented and did not think much about it.
---
### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/471 "2024-01-21T18:48:12Z")
> [@Babale](#):
>
> > [@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?
I did specify “Genesis”; i.e. the accounts of a supernatural creation.
---
### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/472 "2024-01-21T18:48:51Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> There is no reason to believe that the universe was created/developed in a manner such that it could be understood by/would make sense to humans
Agreed, though I’d phrase it slightly differently:
There are lots of things we don’t understand yet, how/why anything can exist being just one of them.
It would be nice to know, but we don’t. It would be like claiming to know how many planets have life just because we really, really want to know.
The only difference I guess is that existence itself also seems _intractable_…something that will always leave an explanatory gap. But we do not know if it will always seem this way, perhaps there are ways of conceptualising this that are currently beyond us.
---
### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/473 "2024-01-21T19:43:46Z")
> [@Riemann](#):
>
> But I think the idea of an _ultimate_ origin explanation in any restrictive specific sense is incoherent. If (for example) we come up with a set of laws that fully explain the origin of this universe, that just begs the question of where those laws came from.
Yes, but that just pushes back the logical need for an uncaused creator. You could push it back a billion times, a trillion times, and the universes both need and do not permit an uncaused trigger. An infinite regression of moved movers is illogical.
Granted, even if this makes sense, it does not argue for a particular type of creator. Maybe the Spaghetti Monster guys are right after all.
---
### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/474 "2024-01-21T19:46:50Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#):
>
> Because frankly, the only rational universe is no universe at all.
This has always seemed intuitively accurate to me. The only thing that makes sense, absent an uncreated creator, is that there should be _nothing_. The fact that there’s something, anything at all, is astounding.
---
### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/475 "2024-01-21T22:22:57Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> However, Lewis did call the story of Jesus a “true myth.”
Sure, so _his_ myth is true, but everyone else’s isn’t.
---
### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/476 "2024-01-21T22:24:22Z")
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> I did specify “Genesis”; i.e. the accounts of a supernatural creation.
Accounts of a supernatural creation are very common in “tribal” myths, whatever that means. So are accounts of Gods knocking up mortal women and their divine children going on adventures and defeating Death.
---
### Author:  [@philipdalton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/philipdalton)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/477 "2024-01-21T22:53:26Z")
> [@](#):
>
> What type of atheist are you, exactly?
What makes you think I’m an atheist?
---
### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/478 "2024-01-21T23:05:39Z")
**Modnote** : Actually, drop this line. It is a hijack of the thread. Your beliefs and what **Czarcasm** thinks they are are not important to this thread.
---
### Author:  [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/479 "2024-01-21T23:12:01Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> > [@Jay\_Z](#):
> >
> > Because frankly, the only rational universe is no universe at all.
>
> This has always seemed intuitively accurate to me. The only thing that makes sense, absent an uncreated creator, is that there should be _nothing_. The fact that there’s something, anything at all, is astounding.
Which appears to be the case for everywhere in the known universe today, save for our little pocket of civilization. Well, at least as far as life goes anyway. Nothing/no life seems to be the consensus everywhere else.
---
### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2024, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/480 "2024-01-21T23:33:17Z")
> [@Babale](#):
>
> > [@Lumpy](#):
> >
> > I did specify “Genesis”; i.e. the accounts of a supernatural creation.
>
> Accounts of a supernatural creation are very common in “tribal” myths, whatever that means. So are accounts of Gods knocking up mortal women and their divine children going on adventures and defeating Death.
The tribal myths of the Hebrews; which pointedly do not include ascribing any divinity to Jesus.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965.md?page=23)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965.md?page=25)