Why Do People Believe In God?

Why do people believe in God?

We live in a mass-communicative society. There are lots of thoughts and opinions with lots of space for them to move, with platforms like Twitter. We’ve never lived in a society that forces us to interrogate our own ideas, compare ourselves to others and feel like we need to have our own say to feel a sense of validity to this extent. Amongst all these ideas, why are those that regard religion treated so differently? Well, of many reasons one really stands out to me, being that it can just be a bit of a taboo. A religious faith can be a man’s ultimate truth, essential to how they conduct their lives, essential to their mentality about so many things; lifestyle, human relationships, morals. So to bring to question the value of those beliefs is simply a touchy subject for those people and can definitely alter their mentality concerning you as an individual. Reflecting on the actuality of that just doesn’t sit right with me however. Faith is blind; you can’t see God and you can’t prove his existence, so why do so many people orientate their lives around him? Why aren’t people comfortable just saying ‘I don’t know’?

I’m about to try and conjure some answers as to why people are religious, and I’ll be speaking quite generally based off of my own observations and understanding so take what I say with a pinch of salt. One of my first thoughts when wondering about this was that whilst religion is depicted as a deeply spiritual, introspective thing (something that’s inside of you) the religious beliefs of a person are ironically often influenced by external factors. One of these factors that screams at me is cultural influences. In 2019 I’m not going to throw any nationalities out there, but let’s just say I’m definitely thinking of much more than one example, in fact it applies to pretty much all widely recognised faiths across every continent. The nature of it is simple, someone is parented by fundamentalist religious ideas and in their years of early development have these ideas embedded in their own nature. Of course when they become older they gain to ability the question to these ideas but often either don’t have the freedom to do this or don’t want to do this due to their comfort and settlement in their beliefs. This cycle will in turn repeat, and when it’s so deeply cultural, these ideas will scope across an entire family tree, making the ideas even harder to question. In these families, religion is as much a part of the lifestyle as what they eat together and their social etiquette. It quickly becomes a part of their life and then it always will be. To them, this is the natural way of life, but it’s far from it. My parents were religious, and I was exposed to these ideas rather than manipulated by them. However, these parents moulding the ideas of their children are only doing it because it was done to them. Religion is how they come to understand their own morals and way of life and by nature our responsibility as parents is to guide our children with these ideas. Religion in this sense is very much a trap. Children should be guided with as much open-mindedness as possible; you can govern a sense of morality without religion to hold your hand. But looking deeper, why is religion so deeply embedded in culture? It’s not culture specific, religion is so culturally vast and common; doesn’t this mean it’s a part of human nature, to question these ideas, questioning the idea of the deeper consciousness that made this all happen?

We sway to these ideas naturally for a reason. I believe our struggle to accept death is potentially the bigger factor, consciously or subconsciously. It’s not even a matter of not wanting to just return to a non-existent state with nothing to feel or experience, it’s an inability to fully comprehend it. A quantity of us, many I know included, just can’t accept the idea of not living and breathing. Existence is all we know and all we can understand but for us it is everything. We can only comprehend our own non-existence before we were born because it’s already happened; in the future there’s hope, the possibility of what to many truly makes sense, the continuation of our existence. Because how can we not exist? How can there be nothing? How can we go nowhere when nowhere doesn’t exist? I believe humans have a natural incomprehension of the death and use the afterlife and the idea of something other than the universe as a secure answer.

It’s also a matter of feeling purposeful. What is the point of life is there is nothing other than life. People sway to spiritual explanations to avoid the pure nihilism that they subconsciously recognise (yes that definitely does make sense) as the alternative. Due to some natural mentality, people feel like they need a logical and definite answer as to why they’re here to feel like there’s a reason for sticking around, being nice to people and actually caring about themselves and their lives. Why do you think gang culture and knife crime is so heavily on the rise? And no, it’s not because those in the gangs are non-religious (or maybe they are), it’s because that lifestyle grants them a purpose. These are often people that are socially deprived, with a lack of money and career options looking for validation; something to do and something to strive for (of course there are other linking and underlying factors, it’s a whole other debate after all). Our lives need to be fulfilled because they’re all we have. These points definitely confuse my argument slightly; so are the factors external or internal?

As much as Western society is becoming growingly secular, religion is still fundamental to societal views, people will have religious views much like we have social and political views. Again, we live in a mass-communicative society, there are so many opinions and we always feel like we have to have one of our own to feel equal to others. Religion’s relevance means that people would rather say they’re sitting on the fence, holding somewhat of a placement in the argument, than saying they just don’t care. This leads a lot of new-age Christians and others to initially regard religion and come to their answer. We live in a society where we think too much about what we think.

A lot of these new-age theists will genuinely believe introspectively however, and regard their faith as guidance in their spiritual journey, possibly helping them with any personal struggles or development. It’s a thing that genuinely concerns them as individuals and nothing more, no etiquette or weight. Without delving too deep as I might want to talk about this another time, it’s a spirituality I truly admire.

So why do people believe in God? Religion is and always has been deeply embedded in our social matters, and for this reason there will always be social influences. Whether that is an established culture, or our societal climate, there will always be those influences. But there’s a reason for this, a reason for religion’s omnipresent relevance, and I believe that’s because of our philosophical nature as human beings. We’re self conscious and we deal with this by deriving purpose from ideas we create, or vice versa. Some of us need those concrete ideas to believe regarding the reason we live through every day. Or maybe God embeds these ideas in our subconscious to meet us with his almighty presence. Nah, just kidding.