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The god inside

© Francois Tremblay

The atheist position seems, at first glance, precarious. Most people throughout the history of civilization have believed in deities of some sort (especially during the Dark Ages, but let's put that aside). To say that gods do not exist is equal to saying that the majority of people of all times were deluded, at least on this one point. How can the atheist explain this universal belief ?

It may seem like a difficult proposition, especially more so since we have been trained to think, mainly by society, that intersubjectivity is the barometer of truth. If everyone thinks it is true, it must therefore be true. Or must it ? Logically speaking, the answer is no. This is called the fallacy from numbers, or argumentum ad numerum. Because reality is objective - that is, outside of our minds - there is no necessity that what we think, exists. The prime example of this is religions themselves. Because most religions are directly contradictory, most of them must necessarily be false even before we started examining their consistency with reality.

However, we must not fall in the opposite trap. It is not because most people believe something that it is not true. What popularity tells us is that there are compelling reasons to believe in the corresponding meme or meme complex. In the case of theism, its almost total universality indicates that it is either obviously true, or it is part of human nature itself in some way. Since there is no god, theism must therefore be part of human nature.

For example, we observe that almost all societies have family units. We know that the family is the basic grouping that evolution has favoured in order to insure the survival of the young. Of course nowadays we can transcend this instinct and, thanks to technology and civilization, have very viable and loving monoparental or homosexual families. However the fact remains that this has been one of the means behind reproduction and survival.

Can we therefore conclude that religion is instinctual ? Not directly. It would be unreasonable to believe that religion, as we know it today, has always existed. We know that, like all other meme complexes, religions have evolved over time, and has been much simpler than it is today. For example, during the Antiquity most civilizations believed in a pantheon of gods which each concerned themselves with one particular area of nature. Today's notions of egotheism, "life-forces" and "global awareness" are probably too subtle for somebody from these times to grasp, but I admit this is speculation on my part. What I do know, however, is that these relatively new notions are better adapted to our current philosophical outlook than traditional religions. You can see from the sheer variety of belief systems today that religions and religious beliefs come in many packages. As for biological evolution, this variety is a living testimony of the past.

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