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God Fails The Test
Why our imaginary deities are so fragile
Most people in the world believe in at least one invisible magical creature to which they ascribe various supernatural capabilities. Although today most of these invisible magical creatures tend to be monolithic, until quite recently most people believed in pantheons of such creatures, so that we had the polytheisms of the Greek, Roman and Norse gods in Europe and indeed Hinduism is still polytheistic although the process of condensation has commenced even here, albeit barely.
As evolution has shaped us to believe whatever we’re told by purported authority figures, conform automatically to group norms (whatever they may be), and accept our local group norms as inevitable and proper, it’s hardly surprising that few people ever question the beliefs they hold so dear. For all that deists imagine their particular deity to be “the one true god” the fact is that they’d feel precisely the same way about some other supernatural creature if they’d happened to have been born elsewhere, or at some other time.
Religion is not the only domain in which unfounded beliefs are abundant. We have arbitrary and evidence-free beliefs in every area of our lives. People believe in political systems, economic ideas, cultural values, lucky totems, conspiracy theories, and all manner of other unsupported notions…
