Why people will believe despite the evidence.

The religious people I come across have certain traits.

God is their friend. He makes their life better in some way. They are happy to worship and praise him because of this. They feel that by knowing him their life is better, that he looks out for them and even talks to them. They are special.

God is on their side. His holy book sanctions their dislike of gays, commies, pinkos, muslims and pretty much anyone who isn’t like them. Few people seem to dislike god despite the many evil things he has done. I didn’t understand the term ‘Apologetic’ for a long time but I see no-one who ‘accepts the lord’ but really doesn’t like his policies. I expect they either stop having faith or find another faith that more suits their beliefs.

God’s representatives on Earth can rape and pillage and still command respect from the faithful. Look at the Catholics. Science continues to close the gaps. We no longer need god to explain crop failure, lightening, earthquakes, so what do people need god for?

He is their ticket to eternal life. Whatever happens in this life, we get another chance, we can meet up with loved ones cruelly taken from us and all of this will occur on a level playing field called Heaven. God won’t let the wool be pulled over his eyes by the evil man who fleeced you of your life savings and retired to the Bahamas, nor will he be so lenient on those bad (insert prejudice here) who will all be roasting in hell. Death is either meeting up with old friends or payback time for those who god saw fit not to punish on Earth. For many people, that is so comforting.

He also provides people with hope, that there is some purpose to existence, that the bad things that happen, lead us to a better place through his guidance. We will have a better understanding if we just pray hard enough or ask the right question of him. Of course, if this doesn’t happen, it is we who are not doing it right and not god who doesn’t give a shit. He helps us manage pain and suffering because he loves us, even when no-one else will. All we have to do is accept him into our lives and ask for forgiveness and the ticket to eternal life is ours.

No wonder that some people will lie to themselves to protect this hope and need to believe in something. Their faith is at the core of how they define themselves and to look objectively and rationalise would cause them to have to reboot, literally. I have seen it happen. If one belief is false, what else may be false? It is often easier to construct a defence to keep out reality rather than accept that we have been living a lie. Sometimes it is impossible to maintain the lie and I know of many people who arrived at atheism via this difficult and painful route.

To have found god in the first place one of two things is likely to have happened. Someone will have been born into a ‘god fearing’, religious family and been brought up to believe (brainwashed) or they will have had some kind of personal crisis and come to god for some level of comfort or pain relief. I am sure there are others who are preachers, priests and predators who maintain a ‘belief’ in God because it suits them to do so and either pays the wages or allows access to feed on vulnerable people.

And there are intelligent people out there who buy the whole bible, creationism, 6,000 year-old earth thing and will go to all lengths to defend their beliefs. What would they lose in accepting just a little bit of reality? They have to let it in to other parts of their lives. When they fill up their cars, do they think god created petrol on the 8th day but forgot to put it in his journal?