THE GOD ENGINE: How Belief Develops

I have been subscribing on and off to Skeptical Inquirer for decades, and stumbled across a copy from last year with the cover to the right.  By the magazine title you get a sense of their philosophy, but here is a Wikipedia summary of its purpose:

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason in examining important issues. It encourages the critical investigation of controversial or extraordinary claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community, the media, and the public.^[2]

The article on The God Engine was written by James Alcock, who is a Canadian professor of psychology and a noted critic of parapsychology.  He is a member of the Executive Council for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and on the editorial board.  One of his quotes:

Many of our beliefs are created and shaped by what other people tell us, and so when we are misled, deliberately or not, we are left with beliefs that do not reflect reality. Worse, research shows that once we have come to believe something, the influence of that belief is not completely erased even if we later find out that it is distorted or false."^[26]

From the article on The God Engine:

• There are 10,000 religions in the world today.
• 2.6 million Zoroastrians place the body of deceased loved ones atop tall towers to be devoured by birds.
• 150,000 Christian Scientists do not believe that diseases are caused by microorganisms, but rather, by lapses of faith.

• 500,000 Scientologists believe that humans are descendants of omnipotent gods.
• One billion Hindus worship a god with the head of an elephant.
• 2.7 million Shintos take their new car to a shrine to be purified.

• 14 million Jews and 1.6 billion Muslims snip away the foreskins of baby boys.
• 15 million Mormons believe that Joseph Smith, Jr., with the help of Angel Moroni (the symbol blowing a trumpet at the top of LDS temples, usually facing eastward--son of Mormon), found  and translated golden tablets written in Egyptian in a hill close to where Smith lived in New York (buried by ancient Hebrews, who came around 135 AD, and are said to have discovered America way before Columbus),  resulting in The Book of Mormons.

• 7.1 million Jehovah's Witnesses deny lifesaving blood transfusions to their dying children.
• 2.2 billion Christians celebrate one's faith by eating the flesh and blood of one's heavenly savior through a spiritual transformation of bread and wine.

I guess he wanted to catch your attention or  perhaps later use these bizarre aberrancies  to underscore a point.  Mind you, he does not quite say that every member of those religions actually go through the process of anything like the above, but such practices are part of their beliefs.

Historically, gods come and go.  Very few today worship Zeus, Jupiter, Incan Apocatequil or Aztec Huehueteotl.  No doubt, gods and religion in general helped Homo sapiens (us) become what we are today, as fear of some deity--and here is where, it is said, in the beginning, Man created God--resulted in social solidarity, cooperation, trust and self-sacrifice.

Alcock goes on to say:

• Belief in the supernatural is a natural consequence of the way our brains work.

• Supernatural belief is an automatic default.
• We are born magical thinkers.
• We are born agency detectors, and an epidemic of HIV/AIDS can in some religions be interpreted as God's punishment for homosexuality.
• Further into theory of the mind and reality testing, where he explains how we overcome our belief in Santa Claus, but not a Deity, or tries to, as his arguments were not at all compelling

• He delves into the beginning of time, and indicates that all Creation stories, even the scientific one, has obvious flaws

• Why do so many in this educated world today believe?

• religious beliefs receive continuous reinforcement from family and friends
• reduces existential anxiety (in other words, death can mean heaven, so why worry about it)

• there is a higher sense of control
• having a Deity means you're never alone
• you feel good about yourself
• religion is shared and you're part of a group

I  thought Alcock would explain why some continue to have faith, and others don't, or at least why so many continue to believe in various paranormalities:

Nope, he sticks to his comfort zone and uses terms like ontological violation, promiscuous teleological intuition and normal cognitive development to mostly lose me.  But, after all, he is a professor of psychology.  What did I get out of this article?  Nothing much, but that could be because there is something inexplicable and transcendental about God, faith and religion that defy any kind of normal logic.

Perhaps that is why religion just doesn't seem to go away.  While throughout the world the younger generation is less religious, Muslims, who tend to be more resistant to change, will soon outnumber Christians.

With the following trend, you would think there would be a decline in religion in the U.S. with:

However, something unexpected is occurring:

While the number of atheists and agnostics is rising in the U.S. and Europe, the fact that on average non-religious people tend to have fewer children is contributing to the overall decrease in numbers. 

Yes, religion is perplexing and enduring.

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