Welcome aboard Kevin. I liked your question: "Why do people who are more intelligent than me believe in god?"
In answering it I would want to look in depth into your "1. In the believer there is a need." What is the nature of this need, what adaptive value does it provide?
Personally I think atheists who dismiss it as a primitive hold-over from a time when we didn't understand what caused lightening aren't really interested in answering your question. But to the degree we avoid facing the best case possible, we are guilty of building straw men instead .. something we are all too familiar with on this site when theists do it.
Obviously believers who read the bible literally are encumbered by loads of cognitive dissonance and probably are not among the people who are more intelligent than me who believe in god. So at the outset, I would propose leaving aside the worse instances of god belief and focus instead exclusively on the phenomenon of god belief as it appears in the best cases.
When we finally have an adequate answer to your question I am quite certain it will not expand our understanding of physics or cosmology. Rather it will involve something we find out about our own psychology.
In answering it I would want to look in depth into your "1. In the believer there is a need." What is the nature of this need, what adaptive value does it provide?
Personally I think atheists who dismiss it as a primitive hold-over from a time when we didn't understand what caused lightening aren't really interested in answering your question. But to the degree we avoid facing the best case possible, we are guilty of building straw men instead .. something we are all too familiar with on this site when theists do it.
Obviously believers who read the bible literally are encumbered by loads of cognitive dissonance and probably are not among the people who are more intelligent than me who believe in god. So at the outset, I would propose leaving aside the worse instances of god belief and focus instead exclusively on the phenomenon of god belief as it appears in the best cases.
When we finally have an adequate answer to your question I am quite certain it will not expand our understanding of physics or cosmology. Rather it will involve something we find out about our own psychology.
