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Why so many people retain a belief in a supreme being, given that the human mind is
at least somewhat capable of rationality, and given the general state of
knowledge at this time in history. Of course, human cognition and
perception contains numerous types of data filtering, simplification, and
distortion, in order to process the input from an extremely complex world.
Most areas of psychology deal with how the brain's processes diverge from
pure objective rationality. Clearly, there is an inherent predisposition
for many people to have blind faith in, and obedience to, some type of
authority figure, even when this directly contradicts rationality. So the
question could be, why do so many people believe in God?
I think one answer to this lies, somewhat ironically, in our evolutionary
history. Up to the past few hundred years (and even, to a lesser extent,
today) there was survival value in a predisposition toward blind obedience
to authority. For example, picture a small mixed-age group of hominids
after the advent of language. Let's say there are two juveniles walking
with some adults, and they see a rabid raccoon. One of the adults issues a
command to stay clear of the animal. One of the kids blindly follows
authority, and the other is a rational thinker who sees this cute,
apparently friendly animal approaching. You know whose genes are most
likely to be passed on.
In a world of many dangers and high mortality rates, people who were
predisposed to blindly follow authority were more likely to pass along their
genes with those predispositions. In the past few thousand years, social
institutions called churches have thrived by taking advantage of this
predisposition. Of course, within the context of theism and our current
state of knowledge, such a predisposition is no longer beneficial to the
individual, but still it persists as part of our evolutionary legacy.
(There are many such predispositions that are no longer beneficial, such as
the tendency to put on weight when food is plentiful.) Some of us are more
successful at overcoming such harmful predispositions, than others.
Intelligence, however you might define it, seems to be part of the story:
The proportion of theists drops with higher educational achievement, and is
especially low among members of the National Academy of Science. It's an
interesting area to look into. Good luck!
Ray Smith
(from the humanists@lists.uua.org email list)
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