Why doesn’t everyone believe in God?: The skeptical brain may hold the answer

[cbayer]

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/05/why_doesnt_everyone_believe_in_god_the_skeptical_brain_may_hold_the_answer/

SUNDAY, JUL 5, 2015 10:30 AM EDT

Most Americans who grew up in religious households are still religious. But what about the ones who aren't?

LALA STONE


(Credit: akindo via iStock)

Christopher Obal used to be a Christian. He grew up in Queens, New York, and when he was 5 years old, his parents left Catholicism for a very different form of Christianity. While they didn’t claim a specific denomination, he said the churches they went to would probably be described as Pentecostal, evangelical and charismatic.

“We attended churches where people spoke in tongues, and believed in the gifts of the spirit as well as a God who spoke to his people frequently,” he said.

As an adolescent Obal was obsessed with discovering God’s plan for his life and doing God’s will. At the age of 18, he attended Oral Roberts University, a conservative Christian college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But while at college, he began to question his beliefs. Now, while he’s open to the possibility of “god, gods, goddesses, aliens, universal consciousness, or whatever,” he’s not affiliated with any religion. The rest of his family remains devoutly religious.

Obal is one of only a small percentage of Americans who grew up in religious households and are now religion-free. A 2008 report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that only 12.7 percent of people raised in a particular faith eventually become unaffiliated with any religious group. Why did Obal abandon Christianity, while his friends and family remained faithful?

more at link

[DetlefK]

1. I have a theory that belief is a social instinct that has misfired.

1. Social animals have the instinct to raise their social status. They do this with grands feats of heroism, by getting to know the right people, by showing off...

2. People are curious. They want to know how the world works. The scientific approach brings you tiny snippets of the world, as they are gathered by limited beings just like you. The pciture is always incomplete in some way. Belief connects you to a complete picture of the world, even if you don't get to see it directly. Belief connects you to an entity bigger than you.

I think, belief is rooted in this desire to be more, to be better. While science only reaffirms how insignificant you are in the grand scheme, belief satisfies your desire to stand out and be important. Even if everybody else in the social group disagrees with your view on your social standing, you still come to the conclusion that your social status is high (or supposed to be higher). But on the other hand, your illusion of high social status could give you the self-confidence to do things that actually increase your social status, leading to a beneficial situation "passing-on-your-genes"-wise. (Which brings us back to bodily reasons for belief.)




That's not limited to religious beliefs.
It works for all kinds of supernatural beliefs: You can read the patterns of nature because you have a special relationship with it that is far deeper than what other people experience.
It works for racism: I deserve better treatment because I am inherently better than you.
It works for being in love: "Our love is pure and perfect and so deep. Nobody understands that our love is special. Parents and teachers just don't get it."


I can't think of a belief right now that makes you feel less special and important.

[gcomeau]

3. I expect any time now...

"I can't think of a belief right now that makes you feel less special and important."

...we'll see someone posting something about how belief humbles you before God and tells you you're a sinner or something. While ignoring that it simultaneously declares you're so special and the most powerful being in the universe thinks you're so important that it's given you a get-out-of-being-a-sinner-free-and-oh-by-the-way-here's-some-immortality card.

[uriel1972]

2. Possibly because there is no evidence for divine beings...

And that rational inquiry and faith are incompatible.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. A more interesting question might be why a small percentage of us

Never developed any interest, longing, need for religion or supernatural concepts, and further still, the subgroup who are unable to understand why anyone else would.