# 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:** 27
### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2024, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/521 "2024-01-23T12:59:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> > [@Tibby](#):
> >
> > Quantum mechanics teaches us that the world we live in is weird, especially at the sub-atomic level. An underlying intelligence to the universe is no weirder than quantum phenomena like superposition, entanglement, uncertainty, tunneling, quantization, interference, and so on.
> >
> > However, a creator based on the Judaeo-Christian God (or other gods invented by humans) is too weird even for quantum mechanics.
>
> I’d say the opposite actually.
>
> The god of the bible isn’t weird at all; he’s a fairly typical ruler of the Bronze Age, but with extra powers, in a book of very typical mythology of the era.
>
> If it really were a divinely-inspired book, written by the guy who made all that crazy QM shit as the mere _lego blocks_ as part of _step one_ in creating an entire universe, I would expect a lot more weird stuff in the book. Stuff that only made sense to us centuries later. And stuff that we still would be scratching our heads about but will make sense to us at a future time with greater understanding.
>
> There’s none of that. It’s a violent soap opera.
I fully agree. To elaborate a bit further on the quantum mechanics part, the only thing it really teaches us is that as the scale of objects we’re examining becomes smaller and smaller, counterintuitive phenomena begin to manifest. A baseball has a wave function just as much as a photon does, but it’s completely negligible relative to its classical properties. The reason intuition fails us so completely at subatomic scales is just because that’s not the world we’re evolved to deal with, not because there’s anything magical about it.
> [@Tibby](#):
>
> I think some people believe in God because they want to make sense of the world they were born into, and God is a simple and familiar concept for humans to understand. Others believe because they think that life should be fair, and that being rewarded for good deeds, or punished for sins, is just and right. Yet others believe because they can’t imagine, or don’t want to face, that their consciousness will end - a state beyond sleep, where no dreams happen, and it lasts forever (i.e. they want an afterlife, and God offers that).
I agree with that, too, and it’s pretty much what I said earlier. Belief in God is comforting for many reasons. It’s comforting to know that there’s a Supreme Being that we can turn to in times of trouble (as per the cartoon below 😉 ) but I think the idea of an eternal afterlife is probably one of the most appealing inventions that religion has ever come up with, which is why it’s so common in all religions in one form or another. The reality is that when we die we’re going to exactly the same place that we came from; “dust to dust” is perhaps the only truly profound truth that religion has ever formulated, provided you ignore the “eternal soul” mysticism.
[ ](https://i.imgur.com/Ao7M1EL.jpg)
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### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2024, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/522 "2024-01-23T13:17:53Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> It’s comforting to know that there’s a Supreme Being that we can turn to in times of trouble (as per the cartoon below 😉 )
Hey, I’m an IT guy and I wish that just once someone would be so humble to approach me for advice in this way. 😉
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### Author:  [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2024, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/523 "2024-01-23T13:21:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#):
>
> I’d say the opposite actually.
>
> The god of the bible isn’t weird at all; he’s a fairly typical ruler of the Bronze Age, but with extra powers, in a book of very typical mythology of the era.
I mean _weird_ in the sense of the universe creating an underlying intelligence in the form of a god fashioned after future humans, not weird that humans would create God in the way (s) they did.
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### Author:  [@LegendHasit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LegendHasit)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2024, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/524 "2024-01-27T23:32:23Z")
To avoid an existential crisis. After years of believing, it’s difficult to regain equilibrium if the heavenly God-rug is yoinked from out under.
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### Author:  [@Mnemnosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mnemnosyne)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/525 "2024-01-29T21:21:43Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> 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.
This has always confused me when people bring it up. If one accepts that an uncreated thing can exist, why push that explanation any steps back? Why accept an uncreated creator, rather than an uncreated universe directly?
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2024, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/526 "2024-01-29T21:34:41Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> The only thing that makes sense, absent an uncreated creator, is that there should be _nothing_.
And to me “everything” makes just as much sense as “nothing”. What’s wrong with “anything that is not forbidden is compulsory”?
It’s any restricted set of things _between_ nothing and everything that seem _a priori_ impossible to explain. Zero universes or infinitely many universes, no problem. One universe - maybe, if there’s some way all others are forbidden. It’s any finite number larger than 1 where you’ve got some heavy lifting to do.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2024, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/527 "2024-01-29T21:56:56Z")
> [@Riemann](#):
>
> It’s any restricted set of things _between_ nothing and everything that seem _a priori_ impossible to explain. Zero universes or infinitely many universes, no problem. One universe - maybe, if there’s some way all others are forbidden. It’s any finite number larger than 1 where you’ve got some heavy lifting to do.
As an aside, Asimov made that a plot point in one of his novels: _“It could make sense to suppose that our own Universe is the only one that can exist or does exist, because it is the only one we live in and directly experience. Once, however, evidence arises that there is a second Universe as well, the one we call the para-Universe, then it becomes absolutely ridiculous to suppose that there are two and only two Universes. If a second Universe can exist, then an infinite number can. Between one and the infinite in cases such as these, there are no sensible numbers. Not only two, but any finite number, is ridiculous and can’t exist.”_
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### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/528 "2024-01-30T00:48:54Z")
> [@Mnemnosyne](#):
>
> This has always confused me when people bring it up. If one accepts that an uncreated thing can exist, why push that explanation any steps back? Why accept an uncreated creator, rather than an uncreated universe directly?
Because within the rules of our universe (as we currently understand them), nothing in our universe came into being out of nothingness. Everything in the universe required creation, and then transformation through other created forces to come into its current state of being. Moved movers, and all that.
As I said, perhaps our understanding will advance to see how something can emerge from nothing. Right now, nothing explains such an event. Hence, something outside our universe—an entity that is not subject to the need for a creator—had to trigger it all.
And, as I also said, this does NOT logically conclude in a Christian (or any) God, though that’s both possible and beyond evidence. It could be some uncreated, exists-outside-of-spacetime force with the power to kick the whole party off.
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/529 "2024-01-30T00:57:47Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> Because within the rules of our universe (as we currently understand them), nothing in our universe came into being out of nothingness. Everything in the universe required creation, and then transformation through other created forces to come into its current state of being. Moved movers, and all that.
I don’t follow this reasoning at all. The only observation consistent with the claim that everything requires a creator is that nothing exists.
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### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/530 "2024-01-30T01:29:14Z")
> [@Riemann](#):
>
> I don’t follow this reasoning at all. The only observation consistent with the claim that everything requires a creator is that nothing exists.
Not sure how else to explain it. I guess I’ll just reiterate, it’s astounding to me that there’s _anything_. The only thing that makes sense, absent some uncreated creator, is that there should be nothing. No background energy that would pervade an otherwise true vacuum. No force or object. Nothing.
“Creator” might be a word that implies something I don’t intend. How about “an externality to our universe, beyond our current observation and understanding, not subject to spacetime constraints”?
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### Author:  [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/531 "2024-01-30T01:49:59Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> it’s astounding to me that there’s _anything_
You still haven’t given any good reason other than personal incredulity why nothing is more likely than everything. Again, to me it’s only an _arbitrarily restricted_ finite set of things existing that is difficult to explain.
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> The only thing that makes sense, absent some uncreated creator, is that there should be nothing.
Right - and observation rules out “nothing”, so given that something does exist, something uncreated must exist.
And if _something_ exists without a creator, then no creator can arbitrarily constrain what exists. Therefore I think the fact that _something_ spontaneously exists is good reason to believe that _everything_ that is not forbidden spontaneously exists. Which begs the question what “forbidden” means, of course. Try this:
> **[Mathematical universe hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis)**
>
> In physics and cosmology, the mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH), also known as the ultimate ensemble theory, is a speculative "theory of everything" (TOE) proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark.
> Tegmark's MUH is the hypothesis that our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. That is, the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics — specifically, a mathematical structure. Mathematical existence equals physical existence, and all structures that...
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/532 "2024-01-30T03:16:23Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> As I said, perhaps our understanding will advance to see how something can emerge from nothing. Right now, nothing explains such an event. Hence, something outside our universe—an entity that is not subject to the need for a creator—had to trigger it all.
Your first sentence I agree with but “outside our universe” is really just another way of saying “something we don’t understand or know about”. If there is a “something” then since “universe” means “everything” it also covers that “something”.
It’s the same type of thinking that made ancients say that thunder and lightning was gods fighting - “we don’t understand so it’s something outside the natural and instead is supernatural”
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/533 "2024-01-30T06:43:36Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> Because within the rules of our universe (as we currently understand them), nothing in our universe came into being out of nothingness. Everything in the universe required creation, and then transformation through other created forces to come into its current state of being. Moved movers, and all that.
>
> As I said, perhaps our understanding will advance to see how something can emerge from nothing. Right now, nothing explains such an event. Hence, something outside our universe—an entity that is not subject to the need for a creator—had to trigger it all.
I don’t know where this nothingness stuff comes from. If you read Krauss’ book, even he doesn’t claim the universe came from nothing, even though the book got that title. (Perhaps to sell.) As far as I can tell, nothingness is impossible in our universe, since matter is actually a probability wave and true nothingness would have to be an area where the probability of a particle showing up is zero. Which is impossible.
It seems to me that most cosmological arguments for any god depend on cutting edge science from 1500 years ago.
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### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/534 "2024-01-30T12:01:06Z")
I bow to my learned opposition and skulk from the thread to contemplate my navel, having exhausted my meager ability to explain myself.
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### Author:  [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/535 "2024-01-30T13:01:11Z")
FWIW I found your conversation with @Riemann interesting. And I don’t think you’re alone. I think there’s an impulse in a lot of us that I think of as the Mulder style of thinking of “I want to believe” made famous by a poster at his desk in the _X Files_.
Believe in what, you ask? Something that provides answers to the Greatest of Great Debates. Where did this all come from, and what happens after we die are, IMHO, the two biggies. Personally, I’m confident that I know enough biology to be able to answer the second one. What happens after we die is that our consciousness ceases to exist. The first one, however, still seems to me to not have satisfactory answers. Yes, that means what we’re dealing with is a god of the gaps. But IMHO it’s a big enough gap that I personally think any study of religion should, ironically, be in the math and physics lecture hall (or in the neuroscience, physiology, and anatomy lecture halls and labs for those who haven’t yet studied enough biology), not in a church or bible study group.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/536 "2024-01-30T13:17:25Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#):
>
> Believe in what, you ask? Something that provides answers to the Greatest of Great Debates. Where did this all come from, and what happens after we die are, IMHO, the two biggies. Personally, I’m confident that I know enough biology to be able to answer the second one. What happens after we die is that our consciousness ceases to exist. The first one, however, still seems to me to not have satisfactory answers. Yes, that means what we’re dealing with is a god of the gaps.
I still don’t quite get how that satisfies the impulse.
If you ask me Where Did All This Come From, and I reply that, uh, that’s not really a question I have an answer to — yeah, okay, I get how you could be unsatisfied as an I-Want-To-Believe type, and could go looking for a godly answer, and, hey, could _Actually Find God,_ the Creator Of The Universe, wow! Even for a god-of-the-gaps type, that’s a _wow!_
And let’s say you ask, possibly while trembling in awe: Hey, Where Did You Come From? And let’s say the reply is, Uh, That’s Not Really A Question I Have An Answer To.
What then?
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### Author:  [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/537 "2024-01-30T15:58:34Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> And let’s say you ask, possibly while trembling in awe: Hey, Where Did You Come From? And let’s say the reply is, Uh, That’s Not Really A Question I Have An Answer To.
>
> What then?
I have said so myself. God or no god, it’s irrational.
Someone said upthread something to the effect that whatever isn’t prohibited is allowed. Why is anything prohibited. Why does anything act in a consistent, predictable manner? Why does time exist, why do things work on the atomic or sub-atomic level.
Now a god doesn’t answer that question because why god? And it doesn’t argue for any particular religion.
I do believe that there is no “point of indifference.” Simple existence itself, even of a rock or some small molecule, is a billion to zero probability of happening in an indifferent cosmos. Why all of that is something we will never have explained to us. Yet it exists.
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### Author:  [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/538 "2024-01-30T16:08:30Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> I still don’t quite get how that satisfies the impulse.
>
> If you ask me Where Did All This Come From, and I reply that, uh, that’s not really a question I have an answer to — yeah, okay, I get how you could be unsatisfied as an I-Want-To-Believe type, and could go looking for a godly answer, and, hey, could _Actually Find God,_ the Creator Of The Universe, wow! Even for a god-of-the-gaps type, that’s a _wow!_
>
> And let’s say you ask, possibly while trembling in awe: Hey, Where Did You Come From? And let’s say the reply is, Uh, That’s Not Really A Question I Have An Answer To.
>
> What then?
You’re asking, what if I were to find this creator and ask it where it came from, and it replied that it has no answer to that question?
To start with, those assumptions already imply all sorts of things. That this creator is the sort of thing that a human would be able to communicate with is a big one, which would imply that this creator isn’t something like a property of dark energy, or a black hole in a higher dimensional universe, or a fluctuation in the Higgs field, or something of that sort, since we can’t communicate with any of those things. Maybe it will turn out that the universe was created by one of those things, in which case I might (or might not, I probably won’t know unless I find the answers - which is highly unlikely) be disappointed that the existence of the universe is an emergent phenomenon of the Higgs filed in the same way that I have to accept that consciousness if an emergent phenomenon of things like sodium and potassium ion gradients across the lipid bilayer in neuron cell membranes and the transmission of information about the status of those gradients between cells by means of things like acetylcholine.
But compared to something like neuroscience, QM, relativity, and such seem so bizarre to our every day experience that I suspect any answers, for me at least, are bound to inspire some awe and wonder that the sodium and potassium gradients and acetylcholine and such don’t, even if we do someday come up with a good explanation.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/539 "2024-01-30T16:20:47Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#):
>
> You’re asking, what if I were to find this creator and ask it where it came from, and it replied that it has no answer to that question?
>
> To start with, those assumptions already imply all sorts of things. That this creator is the sort of thing that a human would be able to communicate with is a big one, which would imply that this creator isn’t something like a property of dark energy, or a black hole in a higher dimensional universe, or a fluctuation in the Higgs field, or something of that sort, since we can’t communicate with any of those things. Maybe it will turn out that the universe was created by one of those things, in which case I might (or might not, I probably won’t know unless I find the answers - which is highly unlikely) be disappointed
For the sake of completeness: what would your reaction be if you _could_ meet this creator, and communicate with it, and ask it where it came from, and it replies that It’s Not A Question I Have An Answer To — before adding a quick Because I Have Always Existed followup?
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### Author:  [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2024, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-people-still-believe-in-god/962965/540 "2024-01-30T16:26:11Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> For the sake of completeness: what would your reaction be if you _could_ meet this creator, and communicate with it, and ask it where it came from, and it replies that It’s Not A Question I Have An Answer To — before adding a quick Because I Have Always Existed followup?
It wouldn’t be disappointment, since that’s just one possible line of inquiry. IMHO there would be at least a human’s lifetime worth of questions in all kinds of other areas that I could ask this creator that would provide all sorts of interesting answers. Your question, at least to my way of thinking, is like asking “You find this magic genie that can answer any questions you have, except where it came from. Would you be disappointed that it can’t answer that one question?” And my answer to that is, of course not, because it’s unlikely I would ever run out of other things to ask it in the next however many years (hopefully 40 plus) I still have left to live. I’d start by asking it, “How is it possible that we can even communicate with each other?” and go from there.
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