Can you share a link to the relevant posts in these other threads? Would be interested in reading what you experienced.
This may be better suited as a standalone question, but I think it relates to this thread.
Why is it that many thousands of years ago, a new animal comes to the scene (humans), they see the real world around them, experience the sun, the sky, the land, the animals, and think: “This is not all of reality. Someone created all of this and when I die I’ll get to the same plane of existence as the being who created all of this”
It seems strange to me that humans even started having thoughts of beings not belonging to this physical reality.
Some possible reasons:
- Having these thoughts enabled some humans to build long-lasting societies, so the trait survived
- Having these thoughts is a random side effect of having the kind of brain we have, and since it doesn’t kill us, the trait survived
- There is indeed a creator, and we were indeed built with the ability to conceive of things beyond this world
- Other?
Does anyone else find it strange that humans even started having these beliefs to begin with?
As to the OP’s question itself: I think the answer is related to the answer to my question of how these beliefs came to be.
That is a very good question . I think the numbers are very high like 80 percent of the population . It bewilders me that these people believe in some thing that is supernatural and that they will never see . Because it doesnt exist? I myself cant answer that . I need to see , feel have data etc to believe someting is true. Do the majority of these people need an answer to why , why here . why us . who did all this i think so . I am unsure if we will ever have the answers to theses unknowns. DO the majority of these people need guidance and a rule book to how to live there lives an dhow to treat others ? yes the bible the fables all coming to at the times that civilations had become and hunter gathers no more. Humans able to be idle with out spending the whole day for the days survival equates humans having the time and resources to commit crime and treat others unkindly. Never read the bible dont plan on it but thats what i have been told it says . My opinion religion is still responsible suppressing knowlegde suppressing freedom and free thought . Formula for trouble AMen .
I suspect that the OP is tying in “Young Earth Creationism” along with “why do people believe in God/Jesus?” Young Earth Creationism is a popular belief among fundamentalist Christians, particularly in the U.S., and it entails incorporating the idea that the Earth is only between 6,000 and 10,000 years old (depending on whose math you choose to use).
I’ll just state that there are many Christians – myself included – who actually do believe in science, and who feel that YEC is a load of nonsense.
But, various surveys suggest that something like 40% of Americans ascribe to the belief that the Earth is no more than about 10,000 years old.
You do not need to be a YEC believer to be a Christian. But, it’s clearly become closely tied to fundamentalist Christianity, at least here in the U.S.
The question kind of implies an Abrahamic view of religion / God.
Eastern religions (like Hinduism an Buddhism) have emphasized the pursuit of the truth / or exploration or seeking before settling on belief. This has been documented in books going back a lot before Christ. But to many, the path to belief comes natural.
Eastern religions have their own set of problems but unlike Abrahamic religions, disbelief in God is perfectly acceptable.
Yes, kenobi_65, that is part of it. However, not just YEC, but there are still a vast number of people (I can only speak to experience in the United States) who not only don’t believe in evolution, but fight hard to prevent it from being taught in schools.
If you’re in the Southern US, you’re getting a pretty skewed view of what “people” believe. According to this, 90% of China is either not religious or atheist, followed by Sweden and the Czech Republic, in the 75% range. Even in Ireland, more than 50% of the population is not religious or atheist.
There’s a graph on that site that shows the US is a huge outlier when it comes to religion and wealth.
I can’t help you with why people still believe. Probably mostly because it’s what they were taught to believe when they were very young.
That’s a very interesting article, thanks.
IIRC, Nietzsche figured that people had dreams about ‘beings not belonging to this physical reality’, and then, y’know, rolled with it.
The devil makes them believe.
I find it far more comforting to think the perplexing and disturbing shit is random. If this is a plan, I’m going to be quite salty about it. 
tribalism
I suppose many of us believe in God because we draw different conclusions than the OP does. As morally wrong that is.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be opaque or anything.
I meant that “believe in God” is not the same thing as “believes in the doctrinal / orthodox Official Belief System handed out by the institutionalized religious apparatus”.
Even my conservative 87 year old Dad, with whom I was on the phone yesterday for an Easter call, was expressing dismissive contempt for the notion that the almighty God somehow “had to” have a sacrifice before he could (“could? be allowed to?”) forgive the humans. There are oceans of notions that just don’t parse as making the faintest bit of sense but are embedded in the catechism of bullshit that you’re supposed to believe if you’re to be deemed an okay, proper, religious person. I’ve addressed why so many people believe them anyway, but it’s really not the same thing as asking why so many people still believe in God.
Who said anything about it being morally wrong?
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.
Well, some folks just cannot quite understand how people believe things they do not. They find it upsetting and start yelling and calling people names. I am just trying to be polite preclude all that.
In any case, many of us believe in God because we see evidence of God and find such a belief both useful and comforting. But of course I am sure we are all stupid.
I would not be surprised if there’s a high degree of overlap between those two particular beliefs. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the Bible is infallible, literally true, and historically accurate. Since they believe that the Bible states that God directly created mankind in their current form (more or less), as well as all other plants and animals, that puts such believers directly at odds with evolution.
The human species is pattern-seeking and social. It should be no surprise that we anthropomorphize patterns we pull out of our experiences. Religions are our first attempts at trying to know the world.
Now we have science. Scientific inquiry allows us to organize our experiences into replicable patterns. It is our best system for generating knowledge. But it is limited–only patterns that can be replicated can be used.
Not all of human experience can be categorized in this way. Science can describe how things were, how things are, and how things will be, but doesn’t tell us how things should be. That is, science can only describe moral values, but cannot give a reason for choosing them. Moral values aren’t necessarily religious, but they are necessarily non-scientific. Religions are non-productive at describing the world that is, but productive at prescribing how things ought to be.
Religions are, in part, cultural traditions used to teach moral values. There are other methods of choosing moral values, of course, but religions are the most commons.
(If my perspective matters to anyone, I am an agnostic theist. That is, I believe in a God that is inherently unknowable. My religious heritage is non-dogmatic Christian.)
I can’t read this type of thread any more, but I do want to point out that asking people who don’t believe in God why other people believe in God is bound to just continue the self-congratulatory atheism love-fest which sheds no light at all upon the subject.