50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (37 page)

Never forget that anyone can say anything when no evidence is
required to back it up. When it comes to telling stories, it is easy for
people to lie, make honest mistakes about the facts, or to have even
hallucinated or dreamed up the entire episode. Consider the countless
millions of tales about gods, aliens, UFOs, ghosts, and so forth, none of which have any strong supporting evidence. Because of this lack of
evidence, most of these stories are dismissed by most people. For
example, most of us consider reports of Elvis sightings after his death
in 1977 to be untrue because there was no evidence. There are just too
many wild stories out there to safely accept all of them or even a small
fraction of them without demanding evidence first. Otherwise, one's
head might explode from the sheer volume of nonsense.

The late Carl Sagan promoted a simple but invaluable working
philosophy in his outstanding book The Demon-Haunted World.
Sagan encouraged people to see that extraordinary claims should
always be backed up with extraordinary evidence. This requirement
can make navigating through and around false stories much easier. For
example, if your neighbor says she saw a butterfly in her backyard you
might go ahead and accept it as most likely true based on her word
alone. That's not an extraordinary claim. It might easily be true. However, if she claims that she saw a four-headed turquoise dragon in high
heels, you probably should ask to see photos, footprint casts, and a
stool sample before getting too excited. The more unusual and
unlikely the story is, the more powerful the evidence needs to be. It's
the only safe way to fly in this wacky world of ours. Keep this simple
rule in mind and many stories, including those about trips to heaven
and talking to gods, whither and die as nothing more than unproven
tales. Sure, it is possible that some of them might be true, but which
ones? How could you ever choose?

It is important to add that refusing to accept an extraordinary story
about ghosts or gods from someone is not necessarily a negative judgment on the story or an insult to the storyteller. Anyone can get facts
wrong. Smart people make mistakes recalling events all the time. Witnesses are notoriously unreliable in courtrooms. Memory is now
understood to be more like a mental retelling of an event, rather than
an accurate snapshot. Everyone is vulnerable to misinterpreting sensory input and even to experiencing hallucinations. It doesn't mean
that the person making the claim is mentally incompetent or dishonest.
Look at it like this: asking for evidence is just a smart way of doing business in life, nothing personal. It's not rude. It's safe. If you don't
want to risk having a bunch of nonsense take up valuable real estate
in your head, then consistently ask for evidence when confronted with
unusual stories. Every tale that involves something outside the bounds
of normal existence, such as magic or a god, should be approached
like a used car for sale. Kick the tires, check the odometer, and look
under the hood. Most importantly, always apply Sagan's rule: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Eller, David. Natural Atheism. Parsippany, NJ: American Atheist Press,
2004.

Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
New York: Random House, 1995.

He that is not with me is against me.

-Jesus, Matthew 12:30

Kill those who join with other gods ...

-Koran, Sura 9:5

Religion is intensely tribalistic. A devout Christian or
Muslim doesn't say one religion is as good as another.

-E. 0. Wilson

ne of the most unlikely justifications for belief is the claim
that a god unites people. Some believers see unity within a
religion as direct evidence for their god's existence. They also claim
that belief in a god is able to make positive and lasting connections
between people from different backgrounds.

This idea of unity proving the existence of gods is so obviously
wrong that I was reluctant to include it in this book. Yes, religion
might succeed at uniting people to a limited degree but it clearly does
a far better job of dividing people. One would think that this would be
clear to anyone, regardless if they believe in a god or not. I worry
readers will see the inclusion of this reason for belief as an attempt to
create a soft target for no other reason than to take a cheap shot at religion. However, I have found this idea to be surprisingly common among believers around the world and therefore felt obligated to
include it.

Believe it or not, many people really do think that their god is real
because their religion is so good at bringing people together. So, let's
analyze this claim and see how well belief in gods has done in uniting
humankind. It is important to make clear up front, however, that the
question of whether or not religion promotes more unity or more division does not necessarily have any direct bearing on whether or not
gods exist. Who knows? Maybe there is a real god who wants us to be
divided and in constant conflict. In fact, many people do believe in just
such a god. On the other hand, humans are social beings and naturally
join together in tribes, villages, cities, and nations. So far as we can
tell, however, our tendency toward some level of unity is natural, not
supernatural. So the bottom line on this justification for belief is that
it is not really proof of anything, even if it were true. Still, it is worth
addressing because so many believers see "religious unity" as justification for belief.

There are nearly seven billion people alive around the world today.
I would love to cite the number of religions that currently occupy the
minds of some six billion of these people, but I cannot. No one can
because the number of active religions is so high and so volatile that
it is impossible to keep an accurate count. But even if that number
were available it would not provide the whole picture. Many more
religions have existed in the past than do today. So the total number of
religions that have ever existed must be incredibly high, probably
exceeding one million easily. This high number of religions is the first
indication that belief divides for more than it unites.

In addressing the claim that religion brings people together, one
could make the case that there is nothing on earth that humans disagree about more than religion. Nationalism might seem like a contender for the most divisive force of all, but there are barely more than
two hundred nations. Anyway, despite the challenges of politics,
nationalism, and international wars, nations still find a way to come
together in the United Nations building and talk. Sometimes the UN even manages to bring about tangible and positive progress for the
world. The world's religions have nothing comparable. No major religion today, for example, would likely be able to even agree on a representative if something like the UN existed for religions. Who, for
example, would represent Christianity in a meaningful world forum?
A Catholic? A Protestant? A Baptist? A Mormon? A Rastafarian?
Somebody's feelings would be hurt. Who would represent Islam:
Sunni or Shiite? What about Judaism? Should the single representative
be Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist? Is there any
doubt that holy wars would break out all over the world during the
process of choosing a single representative for each world religion?
And, no, there couldn't be a representative for each branch of each
religion, not when Christianity alone has thousands of denominations.
No meeting room could hold so many people for such a gathering.

Not even economics carves up the world as sharply and deeply as
religion. Yes, the gulf between the rich and poor is monstrous, but a
world population divided by economics into two, three, or four classes
is far less divided than a population that is splintered by countless religions. It is likely that we will see the world's poor people and rich
people unite before we see the world's believers unite.

Even the terribly destructive concept of race fails to match religion's mischief across the centuries. No matter how misinformed,
deluded, or obsessed one may be about races as meaningful biological
categories, the number of religions available to pit neighbor against
neighbor is far greater than the number of traditional racial categories.
Depending on how you define them, Christianity alone has thousands
of variations active today. Most get along just fine, but not all. Christianity has a bloody history of internal conflict. But perhaps this
should not be surprising to anyone given Jesus's own words as quoted
in the Bible: "Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell
you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house
will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will
be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter
and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law" (Luke 12:51).
This doesn't sound much like the unifying force for the world that
many believers tell me it is. Yes, Christians are united in their belief
that a man named Jesus was a god but this is just about the only thing
the world's Christians agree on. To a non-Christian the differences
between denominations might seem unimportant. Even some Christians probably think they do not matter. But this view comes from a
lack of awareness about how seriously many Christians take their rituals and their interpretations of the Bible. Some Catholics, for
example, tell me that Protestants will find themselves in a lot of
trouble one day for abandoning the one true church and for not
respecting the authority of the pope. Some Protestants, on the other
hand, seem very confident that Catholics have made a tragic mistake
by obeying popes and "worshipping idols." Meanwhile, the Eastern
Orthodox version of Christianity thinks both the Catholics and the
Protestants have plenty to be worried about. In public, many Christian
leaders speak about the harmony and the common path they share with
all forms of Christianity. Their warm words are attractive and portray
a religion that seems more interested in unity than division. When
speaking frankly to their own congregations, however, many
preachers and church members can be quite open about how their specific brand of Christianity is the real truth and all others are a one-way
ticket to hell. I have heard such comments myself loud and clear many
times inside of churches.

Hinduism appears united to outsiders because it is one of the
world's most flexible, open, and accommodating religions by far.
Hindus have told me that everybody on earth is born a Hindu. That
attitude may explain why practicing Hindus are not so concerned with
converting everybody to their religion like many other religious
people are. However, there is still plenty of division within Hinduism.
There are the Veerashaivas, the Vaishnavites, neo-Hindus, the
Shaivites, and the reform Hindus, for example. And they do not
always get along.

As a result of the fighting in Iraq, more Westerners than ever are now aware that Islam is not one big happy family. The Shia and Sunni
sects are deeply divided, for example, and the costs of that split have
been high. Sometimes, in some places, they live together, intermarry,
and overlook their religious differences. But not always. Many thousands of lives have been lost over the centuries directly due to prejudice and hatred between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Much like the split
in Christianity between Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church,
and Protestantism, the Sunni-Shia divide seems to be a lot more about
human politics and power struggles than any divine plan by a god.

Although there are some differences between the two groups, such
as how most Sunnis wash their feet before prayer and many Shia feel
that merely wiping them is sufficient, they still share the bond of
Allah, the Koran, and Muhammad the Prophet. Shia and Sunni are not
the only versions of Islam, by the way. There are Wahhabis, Sufis,
Kahrij ites, Ismail is, Nation of Islam, Ahmadi, and many more. An outsider might think that their beliefs in common would be enough to
bring them together. Clearly it is not enough, however. Islam-like all
religions-is so flexible, so easy to interpret in different ways, that it
can transform a neighbor into an enemy with ease. This has been
demonstrated repeatedly throughout history.

When Catholics and Protestants hurt and kill each other, and when
Sunnis and Shia do the same, they may or may not have a god on their
mind when they strike. What is undeniable, however, is that belief in
a god is the crucial step that sets the stage for the bloodletting. Is religious belief the only reason we keep killing one another century after
century? Of course not. Killing for a nation has been and continues to
be popular too. But for that at least combatants almost always require
a patch of land that actually exists for their motivation. Killing for race
is fairly convenient as well because people can team up based on the
exaggerated importance of superficial but observable physical characteristics and get on with the hating and the killing. Religion, however,
provides the easiest route to violence of all. This is because nothing
has to be real when it comes to belief in gods. There are no limits to
the absurdity of religious motivations and justifications for war and murder. Someone with nothing more than a little bit of confidence and
charisma merely has to say a god wants those people over there killed
and some number of believers are likely to go along with it, so long as
they have sufficient faith, of course.