Jed Rothwell wrote:
Regarding the central tenet of religion, the existence of God, I have not studied this in any depth, but as far as I can tell, arguments for the existence of God are logical fallacies.
They are also irrelevant. Nobody, as far as I know, believes in God as a result of a logical argument.
Actually, this is a fascinating question. The belief in God is tenacious, but where does it come from? Jed has said it's because we're all pack animals at heart and and God is just the leader of the pack. But IMO there's something else going on here.
Most people believe in God, as far as I can tell, because someone they trust told them God exists. The rest believe in God as a result of a direct experience. And it's this latter group which makes it impossible to eliminate a belief in God from people as a whole.
This actually has been studied, but I can't give the reference off hand. In every generation some number of people experience "theophanies"; IIRC the number amounts to a few percent of the population. Whether you, personally, accept such experiences as being "really from God" or feel there's some mundane cause, such experiences can be very convincing to the people to whom they happen. Some of those who are so "touched" then tell others about what they perceived as a _direct_ demonstration of God's existence; such witnessing is likely to be quite convincing, since it's first-person. And so we have a ripple effect, and each such experience may convince several people that there is a God.
A rational person tries to integrate the aggregate of their experiences into a coherent whole, and they accept the picture which results as being "reality". Someone who has experienced a "theophany" must integrate that into their picture of reality, too; such people may be led -- quite rationally -- to have an absolute faith in the existence of a supernatural power.
(Then, of course, we have Phil Dick, trying to integrate a supernatural slide show into his picture of "reality". Just because you remember it, doesn't mean it happened.)
