Why Believe in God?

Why Believe in God?

    Many of my cousins, nieces, and nephews have friended me on Facebook, so I see snippets of their lives - in many cases stunningly uninteresting, as I'm sure my posts are to them.  But most of them are Christians, and all too often their posts are religious, asking me to pray for someone or praise Jesus for something.  Hundreds of these go by, and usually I just scroll past them with a mild sadness that my relatives - who are very nice people - not only believe this silliness, but want to tell me about it.  But often I feel a compulsion to reply - to point out how absurd their ideas really are.  I usually resist, for I know I won't convince them and will only get the whole family mad at me.
    But I feel sorry for them.  Of course we disagree on many points, but most don't matter.  Blood is thicker even than politics.  But religion is the defining principle of their lives.  They're proud of their beliefs.  They make big life decisions and political choices based on it.  They spend a large percentage of their lives involved in it - going to services, holiday activities, church social events, etc., as well as praying and talking and thinking about it.  Religion dominates their lives and colors and filters their view of the world and their place in it.
    I always come back to the same question: why do they believe in it so strongly?  How can they be so certain of a set of ideas that can never be proven or disproven?  What is the immense motivational force that makes them cling so tenaciously to this particular set of ideas, without an iota of hard evidence?
    And the answer seems so blindingly obvious: they want these beliefs to be true because they make them feel good.  There's a God who watches over you and loves you.  If you're a good person, He'll protect you and keep you safe.  He's even given you instructions that explain everything.  He tells you how to live and how to know what's right and wrong.  And best of all, you won't have to die and will live forever in some kind of perfect paradise with all your lost loved ones.
    What a wonderful thing to believe.  All the terrible things that happen - accidents, disease, war, cruelty, death - it's all part of God's plan.  It seems terrible, but it must be for a good end - to teach us, or to make us stronger, or as some kind of karmic payment for some wonderful result.  Who wouldn't want to believe in that?
   I would want to believe in that.  I don't want bad things to happen to me and mine; I don't want to die; I want to know why there's so much pain and suffering in the world.  But the fact that it would be nice if it were true is totally irrelevant to whether or not it is true.  I'd like to believe unicorns were real and magic existed, too.  I'd love to think that we could travel through time and voyage across the galaxy.  But no one's ever provided evidence for unicorns or magic, and the mathematics of physics say such travel is impossible.  Bummer.  And for me, that's the end of it.  Fun to think about that stuff, but it's just plain not true.
    But for believers, they somehow ignore the fact that the only reason to believe in religion is because it feels good.  My Christian relatives believe Jehovah is the only true God, although they know that if they'd been born in a Muslim country they would believe just as passionately in Allah.  There are thousands of religions in the world today, and no doubt millions more that have gone extinct.  They are mutually exclusive - if one is right, all the others must be wrong.  Believers think every single one of them is mere superstitious nonsense - every one but theirs.  Isn't it much more logical to not make that exception?  Isn't it infinitely more likely that people all over the world are confused about life and afraid of death and they've made up stories to help them face it?  Why believe, as Mark Twain put it, in something you know just ain't so?
    It's not just a philosophical issue.  People are using these myths as a basis for decisions and opinions.  They depend on these beliefs to determine their duties and responsibilities, their morals, their sense of right and wrong.  It determines their relations to other people, other species, and the larger world.  They judge others by their beliefs, and support or oppose those others based solely on those beliefs.  The world is all "us" and "them"; those who agree with our beliefs and those who oppose them.  This is a terribly simplistic and unrealistic view of the world, and an immensely dangerous one.  If we align ourselves with bigots and zealots of our religion and despise the good, kind, moral people of other religions, we are on the wrong side.
    If my Christian relatives are right, there's nothing to worry about - we're all God's children and He will take care of us.  But what if they're wrong?  If they're wrong, all the choices they make throughout their lives, everything they think and do, is based on false information.  To my mind, religion is just too dangerous an idea to believe in.