{"id":26924,"date":"2021-02-08T13:02:06","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T17:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=26924"},"modified":"2021-02-14T21:14:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T01:14:26","slug":"why-do-people-believe-in-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-believe-in-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do People Believe in Religion? A Few Theories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Why do people believe in religion? What does it really mean to believe in religion, and where did religion com from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Religion is a huge part of life all around the world. But, why do people believe in religion? Author Richard Dawkins argues that believing in religion is backward, and society should progress without it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep reading to find out the answer to the question, &#8220;why do people believe in religion?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why Do People Believe in Religion<\/strong>?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Religion has been central to nearly every human society in history. It is difficult for many people to imagine a world without a supreme deity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what if faith in God represents a great error? What would be the possibilities for human advancement if we were to shed our religious faith and embrace reason and science as the ultimate arbiters of truth and justice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em>The God Delusion<\/em>, University of Oxford biologist and anti-religion activist Richard Dawkins argues <strong>that religion has exerted a harmful influence on human society since its inception and that we ought to abandon it in favor of science.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The unwarranted favor and deference granted to religion<\/li><li>The unlikelihood of God\u2019s existence and the weakness of the arguments in favor of it<\/li><li>How religion is nothing more than a by-product of other, unrelated evolutionary mechanisms<\/li><li>Why we don\u2019t owe our morality to religion<\/li><li>How religion promotes values that are distinctly <em>immoral<\/em><\/li><li>How humankind would benefit from the ultimate destruction of religion and a positive embrace of atheism.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So why do people believe in religion? Let&#8217;s dive in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Theist Position: Why Do People Believe in Religion? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Before we discuss the reasons <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/is-religion-dangerous\/\">why religion is harmful<\/a> and should be abandoned, we first need to explore two topics. First, we\u2019ll discuss what the claims of theists (and atheists) actually are. This is an important part of the question &#8220;why do people believe in religion?&#8221; Then, we\u2019ll discuss why it\u2019s appropriate to evaluate and challenge the claims of religion. <strong>Religious people often claim that their faith is under unique threat of persecution<\/strong>. Therefore, in their eyes, any criticism, mockery, or even the mere <em>expression <\/em>of skepticism regarding anyone\u2019s religious beliefs constitutes an act of bigotry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Why claims of an intelligent creator deserve to be evaluated on their merits, and not merely accepted as inherently unknowable<\/li><li>How religion commands an undeserved level of respect and reverence, even from non-believers<\/li><li>How any harmful or discriminatory action can be accepted\u2014as long as it is justified on the grounds that it is part of one\u2019s religious beliefs<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Claims of Theism<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Prior to delving deeper into our discussion of God and religion, we should clarify some terms. When we say \u201creligion,\u201d we are referring to the <strong>belief in a supernatural being who created the universe and who has the power to intervene in human affairs.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This supernatural being\u2014we will refer to it as \u201cGod\u201d from here on, for simplicity\u2019s sake\u2014can be prayed to, petitioned, and even called upon to punish one\u2019s enemies. <strong>This form of religion, which postulates the existence of an intelligent and omnipotent creator, is known as theism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The particular <em>form <\/em>of theism we\u2019ll be discussing in this summary is monotheism, the belief in <em>one <\/em>supreme God. While <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/belief-in-many-gods\/\">polytheism<\/a> (a belief in multiple gods) does exist, the vast majority of people in the West are far more familiar with the three major monotheistic or Abrahamic religions\u2014Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Deism and Pantheism<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>So why do people believe in religion in modern times? Defenders of traditional religion often like to make the claim that celebrated historical figures in philosophy, politics, and science were committed monotheists. However, these claims are nearly always exaggerated, if not outright false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, many of the American Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, were not monotheists at all. Rather, they were <em>deists, <\/em>believing that, while God did indeed create the universe, he played no role in the management or governance of its day-to-day affairs. These men were deeply anti-clerical in their writings and railed against the ignorance, superstition, and prejudice that they viewed as the natural byproducts of religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And while some scientific luminaries like Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, and Albert Einstein used the word \u201cGod\u201d in their writings (which have been subsequently cherry-picked and decontextualized by religious writers to provide \u201cproof\u201d that these figures were religious), they were almost certainly <em>not <\/em>using it in the monotheistic sense, but rather, pantheistically: as a metaphor for the totality of the universe.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Defining Atheism<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that we have an understanding of monotheism, we have to define its opposite number\u2014atheism. <strong>An atheist is someone who assigns an extremely low probability to God\u2019s existence and lives their life on the assumption that he does not exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Atheists reject the idea of an intelligent creator on the grounds that the only process that can produce beings capable of such conscious creation is evolution by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/natural-selection-in-evolution\/\">natural selection<\/a> (which we\u2019ll explore in greater detail later in the summary).&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do people believe in religion? What does it really mean to believe in religion, and where did religion com from? Religion is a huge part of life all around the world. But, why do people believe in religion? Author Richard Dawkins argues that believing in religion is backward, and society should progress without it. Keep reading to find out the answer to the question, &#8220;why do people believe in religion?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21,6],"tags":[210],"class_list":["post-26924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-philosophy","category-spiritual","tag-the-god-delusion","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Do People Believe in Religion? A Few Theories - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why do people believe in religion? In order to understand why people are religious, you have to define religion and know where it comes from.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-believe-in-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Do People Believe in Religion? A Few Theories\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why do people believe in religion? In order to understand why people are religious, you have to define religion and know where it comes from.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-believe-in-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-02-08T17:02:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-02-15T01:14:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/sapiens-history-of-religion.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"767\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"508\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carrie Cabral\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-believe-in-religion\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/why-do-people-believe-in-religion\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carrie Cabral\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/2ababb7c63a94ff5d2190f71dc417d56\"},\"headline\":\"Why Do People Believe in Religion? 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