do religious people really believe?

[Nobody]

I think those who claim to believe do so largely because they're afraid not to.

Project much? Maybe you don't want to believe because you're afraid of how that might have to change your life to accommodate religious convictions.

If I wanted to set aside the intellect, assume a posture of self-deprecation, and worship a malevolent psychopathic imaginary friend who's credited by mens writings to have committed global genocide by drowning the whole world because he didn't approve humans behaved like low life humans after he created them that way, after he created his own adversary whom he consorts with to tempt those same humans toward his damnable judgment, you might be right.

Then again, you're not.
So there you go.

[iameatingjam]

I've always suspected that some religious people don't actually believe but just act like they do because that's how they were raised or that's what their friends do. Maybe they are so afraid of death they pretend to believe just in case it is true. I find it hard to believe that the majority of people on this planet in this day of knowledge actually wholeheartedly believe these fairy tales.

[Ryantology]

The point is we hear it all the time on these forums: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I'm saying that is simply not a good way to conduct an honest inquiry.

If you make a habit of making extraordinary claims and never provide any evidence to support them, even of the most ordinary kind, it's not surprising you would not like it. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it dishonest.

'Evidence' which is 100% subjective is of no value to anyone because it is impossible to tell it apart from invented fiction or hallucination.

[Nobody]

I've always suspected that some religious people don't actually believe but just act like they do because that's how they were raised or that's what their friends do. Maybe they are so afraid of death they pretend to believe just in case it is true. I find it hard to believe that the majority of people on this planet in this day of knowledge actually wholeheartedly believe these fairy tales.

It's not so hard to fathom I don't think. People need to feel they are in control and have at least a half way plausible answer to even the most minute questions.
Where did everything that is come from? Is the ultimate question. And in lieu of an absolute answer that goes even beyond the big bang theory, answering in the name of faith with an invisible creator of it all and that bears the characteristics of humanity while being a supernaturally empowered invisible one who serves as parent,dictator, and prosecutor when we're naughty, fills the gap.

Very often people can't bear to imagine they're responsible for their actions and have to answer for them as well. If they paint boogymen as cause for bad behavior, and saviors for the good, they can remove themselves from being the sole cause for everything they experience.
While humans are fallible, fickle, moody, egotistical, it's easier to imagine something invisible but trusted to be there, cares about them when people may not.
While nature, the great and powerful, is wholly indifferent to the human condition.
So basically, an imaginary friend for some seems to be far better than cold indifferent reality, where one has to face themselves as either their worst enemy or best friend. Along with over 7 billion other people doing the same exact thing.

And besides, if for instance bible god carried all the scriptural characteristics as a regular mortal, he'd be either incarcerated, medicated in an insane asylum,or making headlines as a serial killer. However, one thing is certain. He wouldn't be worshiped and adored.
If anything bible god proves the real undercurrent of the mentality that cleaves to man made religion; people see what they need to see, so as to fill the holes they can't face in themselves.

[EGross]

I think that the requirement for extroadinary proof is not given in an impartial way, but is based on the speaker, listener, the relationship between them, and the level of evidence based on the prior criteria.

For example, when Oral Roberts said that god spoke to him and told him that god was going to "take me home" (kill him) unless he raised a specific amount of money for some godly project of his, a lot of people believed him. They respected and felt they knew him, and so they did not need any more evidence than that. Those who doubt that god would even care to speak to a scumbag like him wanted something more tangible. Maybe a taped message that god left on the answering machine would have been enough.

When your parent tells you that there is a guy named Santa, and you get up on christmas morning and see a load of presents under the tree with "from santa" on it, that's enough evidence for you. And the fact that you are being bribed into such a belief isn't hurting either.

Or when you student tells you that his dog ate his homework, or that his father was abducted by an alien which is why he was late, you may want more evidence. But if he has a black eye and his face is puffy and he tells you he was late because his father was in a bad mood after a night of drinking, what stands before you might be enough. And it could also be a lie (some shool bullies beat him up and he wants to get even with his dad), and you may want to get one more bit of verification before you ruin a family.

As rational people, we all have our lines. If someone tells me that he shook hands with the US President, and I know that the US President is in this country visiting, I'm ok with that. If someone tells me that he was out by the mount of olives and Jesus spoke to him, I will certainly require more than his word. Since there is a web cam there, I will ask the other person to find the footage and play it for me. I won't waste my time with something that exists outside of my experience as being a possibility.

We have a crackpot "prophet" here who claims that god told him where gold is hidden. When asked where he replied that god said that His people don't deserve it yet. And people believe him, like those who believed Oral Roberts. If you want us to beleive you, show us the gold!

Now, these may not seem like extroadinary requirements to you, but to the true believer they are extroadinary. One will define extroadinary based on the persons belief (or lack thereof) of the other person. The more he believes, the less is needed. The more absurd, based on ones life experience, the more proof is needed.

I would suggest that the true believers should applaud those who require extroadinary proof, because it will make the non-believers believe! (Not all, obviously. Some have a higher bar for "extroadinary"!) I mean, if god is having regular talks with you, ask him to make a public appearance or maybe write a note. How busy could he be, given that he apparently only talks to a handful of people anyhow. Or the person who claims that he can predict what will happen in 24 hours - just show me one simple thing, a winning lottry ticket. And if you cannot use your powers for persona gain, then buy it for me!

I will not only believe, but I will be your biggest fan and promoter!

[Angrboda]

I think Daniel Dennett is right in his supposition that people don't so much believe in religious claims anymore, they simply believe in belief, that belieiving itself is a good thing in and of itself. His comments on the matter are probably more informative than my explanation, and are likely readily found on youtube or the web.

Beyond that, I'm persuaded that the explanation of religion lies in what is known as the "by-product" theory (or cognitive/neurological approach). Religious beliefs themselves aren't sought on their own merits, but perceptions and mental cognitions that can readily be given a religious or supernatural interpretation commonly populate the human mind as by-products of the ways the mind solves natural problems, such as understanding the behavior of agents, using schema to simplify categorical reasoning, and so on. It isn't that people believe the metaphysical claims in their nakedness. They believe in the reality of perceptions and cognitions which, themselves are cobbled together by the parts which make up useful cognition, much of which is devoted to essential social behaviors; the belief in the stories and metaphysical foundations is built upon the confidence in those "supernatural friendly" cognitions, and accept the implications that follow from a religious framework that is consistent with them, uncritically. They don't justify their beliefs from the top down, from theology to religious behaviors; the justification is bottom-up in that the beliefs are justified by the immediate sense-cognitions. Thus the question of specific beliefs and such, doesn't really appeal to external evidence, but rather is justified by self-generated internal evidence. The specifics of the entailed and subscribed beliefs are then secondary, and never need independent confirmation or support, and likely escape scrutiny as a result of cognitive dissonance for the same reason.

[paulpablo]

They believe in the reality of perceptions and cognitions which, themselves are cobbled together by the parts which make up useful cognition,

What does it mean? The reality of cognitions which are cobbled together by parts which make up useful cognition?

[Angrboda]

They believe in the reality of perceptions and cognitions which, themselves are cobbled together by the parts which make up useful cognition,

What does it mean? The reality of cognitions which are cobbled together by parts which make up useful cognition?

Meaning that individual cognitive components which are normally useful if combined in the right combination and proportion, give rise to independent cognitions that apart from their utility in the proper combination, are essentially cognitive errors; it is theorized that it is these cognitive errors that give rise to religion, and, seeing as they are composed of parts that are otherwise adaptive, they aren't selected against evolutionarily or socially. (An example might be the ability to attribute mind to objects in our environment [like people or animals] gives rise to attributing mind to things that don't possess a mind. For more on this, see for example Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer, Why We Believe In Gods by J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., The Belief Instinct by Jesse Bering, or, one I haven't read, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion by Scott Atran.)


This is a rather lengthy quote for such a short book, but somehow I rather suspect that Dr. Thomson would not object. (You may also be interested in a powerpoint slideshow for a presentation he gave last summer, but my recollection is that it's missing a lot without his narration. download here) This is from Why We Believe In Gods: A Concise Guide To The Science Of Faith by J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D. (Which is only $10 at !)

Decoupled Cognition

Imagine that the only way you could think about what might be going on in another person's mind was for that person to be sitting in front of you. Human relationships as we know them would be impossible, and the same was also true for our ancestors. We need to evaluate the likely thoughts and feelings of others, even when those others are nowhere to be seen.

For this reason, human beings are uniquely adapted to accept the presence of disembodied entities and to assume they will behave in certain ways. Most of us do it every day.

Have you ever thought of a perfect response to a conversational challenge when it was too late to use it, and mentally replayed how the conversation could have gone? Lain awake at night agonizing about fixing a social or career misstep? Mentally rehearsed a marriage proposal, or a request for a raise?

We humans have the remarkable ability to create and implement a complex interaction with an unseen other — boss, spouse, friend — in our minds, regardless of time or place, in the past or in the future. You had an argument. You were wrong. You want to apologize but you need to plan how. You mentally rehearse it, envisioning how the other person will respond. And all of this occurs while you go about your daily life. This is called decoupled cognition, and it is key to religious belief.

We can decouple our cognition from time, place, and circumstance. This ability arises in childhood and is seen vividly in play. A child might say a bottle cap is a flying saucer. The child knows what it really is but can choose to ignore the reality and think of it as a flying saucer, with the attributes imagined and related to as such. The child is decoupling his or her cognition.

Theater and filmgoers use such "suspension of disbelief" all the time. They know that what is happening on the stage or screen is not real. Yet, when watching, they choose to believe that the people on the stage or screen really exist, that they live in another place and time, that the car really was blown to smithereens, that a character came back to life.

As adults, this mechanism is crucial to memory and planning. We can go back and forth in time, place, and circumstance as we think how to manage the relationships in our lives. We remember the meeting with the boss. We plan a conversation for the future. All this interaction is with others who are not there at the moment.

Interacting in our minds with unseen others is natural. Many people mentally converse with recently departed loved ones. A natural extension of this — a leap of faith, if you will — can become ancestor worship and belief in gods. Our mind's ability to create a complex relationship with unseen others simply expands.

Theory-of-Mind Mechanisms

Closely related to decoupled cognition is an amazing mental capacity, systems in our brain called theory-of-mind mechanisms, an understated name for an amazing gift. Before we can imagine how someone might react, we have to somehow understand what and how that person probably thinks. And, for the most part, we are able to do that. We have an innate ability to "read" what another person may think, believe, desire, or intend, in remarkable detail and with remarkable accuracy, and make assumptions based on that.

Think of people you know well. You can probably fairly accurately imagine what issues they might be considering at this very moment. You can make an educated guess as to what they think of you. This ability likely helped our ancestors determine who was friend and who was not, interact socially, and plan accordingly for survival.

This ability for joint attention may be the key to human uniqueness. Alone among the apes, we engage in complex cooperation with others, not only reading others' minds but also reading others reading our minds. We take it for granted because it seems so simple. But it is not.

For example, you and I plan to meet at a theater for the 9 p.m. movie. We have constructed a plan to cooperate in a joint venture. Each knows of the other's commitment to the task. But you know I can be late. So you told me to be there on time, and I know you are frustrated with my tendency to be late. And you know I know of your displeasure with my tardiness. When I arrive in plenty of time for the movie, you smile. I know you are pleased at my punctuality, and you know I see and understand your pleasure. Not a single word need be said. It is just one small step to imagining an amorphous humanlike mind with ideas, feelings, and intentions about you and your fellow man. We can imagine this humanlike mind and engage in a joint venture. We'll build a cathedral with and for him. He'll be pleased. We'll know he's pleased if good fortune comes our way.

Intensionality

A closely related phenomenon is intensionality, spelled with an "s" This is another extraordinary, taken-for-granted mental capacity. It goes like this:

• First Order: "I think."
  
• Second Order: "I think you think."
  
• Third Order: "I think you think that I think."
  
• Fourth Order: "I think you think that I think that you think."
  

Let's try it this way:

• First Order: "I hope."
  
• Second Order: "I hope you like this book."
  
• Third Order: "I know you are aware that I hope you like this book."
  
• Fourth Order: "You can be certain that I know that you are aware that I hope you like this book."
  

These can, of course, be colored by circumstance.

Imagine a social situation. A woman is talking to a man she thinks is boring. But the man thinks the woman considers him very attractive. In a corner of the room, watching, is the woman's husband, who suspects that his wife is flirting with the other man, because he knows she is angry with him and believes she is retaliating — which, in fact, she may be doing, knowing that it will annoy her husband.

This kind of awareness of what other people think, and what other people think about what we might think, is something that is utterly indispensable for social relationships.

Religions easily utilize intensionality.

• First Order: "I believe:'
  
• Second Order: "I believe that God wants:'
  
• Third Order: "I believe that God wants us to act with righteous intent:'
  
• Fourth Order: "I want you to believe that God wants us to act with righteous intent:'
  
• Fifth Order: "I want you to know that we both believe that God wants us to act with righteous intent.”
  

Psychologist Robin Dunbar notes that third-order intensionality is "personal religion." But, for you to be convinced, there must be fourth-order intensionality — someone else adds to your mind state, asking you to believe. That produces "social religion.”

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yes, I read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I lack the time to provide much of an intellectual response. Emotionally, I find condescending the whole endeavor to explain away religion as some mal-adaption or mental flaw. Most of the other atheists, just rant about that. At least you have provided reasoned support for your opinion that believers are deluded.

Interacting in our minds with unseen others is natural. Many people mentally converse with recently departed loved ones. A natural extension of this — a leap of faith, if you will — can become ancestor worship and belief in gods. Our mind's ability to create a complex relationship with unseen others simply expands.

Here I think the author gets the cart before the horse. Imagining the thoughts and expectations of others who we cannot currently see is natural. And it is of course possible to imagine a conversation with someone that does not exist. But does if logically follow that just because you cannot see that person, that person does not exist, and therefore your natural mental process has gone hay wire? No.

Because the author assumes there is not God, he concludes that believers misinterpret a normal mental function. But that need not be the case. Suppose God does exist. Then such a mechanism would be necessary, not only for people to forecast human behavior, but also so God could interact with His creation.

[Angrboda]

Yes, I read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I lack the time to provide much of an intellectual response. Emotionally, I find condescending the whole endeavor to explain away religion as some maladaption or mental flaw. Most of the other atheists, just rant about that. At least you have provided reasoned support for your opinion that believers are deluded.

I think, before you do, I want to suggest to you that you are putting words in my mouth. I for my part, don't generally think in terms of deluded or not deluded. (Though I am human, so I may at times.) I think it's natural, and political, to cast those whose beliefs radically differ from ours as stupid, deluded, or dishonest. I think at the end of the day, that's more defense mechanism than anything, and I have argued at length that the term "deluded" is irresponsibly used if applied to religious belief. Nor do I, despite my earlier phrasing, view these in a judgmental light. Our reality, the reality we all live, is a bath of emotion and ideas and images that we didn't structure, whose structure has its own internal necessity, and which is molded and developed by social processes that are what make us the particular animals that we are (such as teaching our children what we consider to be the most important life lessons, whether that lesson is to be an independent thinker, or that lesson is to love one's god). All these cognitions are natural, and there is nothing inherently good or bad about any of them. We are born, to use a metaphor I've expanded upon elsewhere, on a river of belief, lazily floating downstream with little actual control over where we are ultimately headed. (Things like where we are born, to what parents, in what economic class, how our minds work [as a species], with what talents and traits we are born — these and other facts, shape our religious journey, the channel of the river, more powerfully than any of the factors which we view as nominally within our control.) This is just the human condition, and I try to avoid placing judgements on any expression of it, though as a human filled with biases and emotions for which "hating and demonizing the other" comes naturally and pays off as a social/political strategy, I'm well prone to having some of those same thoughts myself. I'm not looking for reasons to consider the religious to be defective; I'm simply trying to find powerful and adequate explanations for things in my world that are consistent with what I believe about that world; the same as you do from your perspective, only from different assumptions, beliefs and goals. To me, explanations of religion that have focused on social or political aspects of human behavior, while perhaps having their place, do not sufficiently explain the power and durability of religious belief. Believing in God is fundamentally different from believing in the Democratic party in terms of the experience, and I don't feel those other explanations adequately explain the power of religious cognitions to move and shape us, all on their own. As a materialist, physicalist, and one who accepts the theory of evolution (and finds that it explains a great many things), I simply find the so-called by-product explanation to be both of sufficient power and scope to capture the reality of religion, while at the same time building on simpler parts which we have good, if not conclusive, reasons to believe are sound foundations. You, having different assumptions and beliefs about things, including the nature of God and the mental, are going to find aspects of such explanations unpersuasive, inadequate, incomplete, and even perhaps perniciously prejudicial. I ask that you try not to view it as simply a tool invented to combat religion, and just examine it as nothing more than a scientific hypothesis. Does it account for experience? Is the explanation of sufficient power and scope? (Does it yield understanding and cover all the bits that need covering?) Is it a parsimonious theory? And so on. Not everything has to be framed in terms of a battle between dark and light. Of course, not believing the fate of my soul to be hanging in the balance, perhaps there are explanations for why I take it in such an impartial light which are a product of my own prejudices.