Religions appeared a long time ago, but even earlier people began to believe in various deities and the paranormal. Belief in such things and interest in life after death appeared when people became people: with their own feelings, thoughts, social institutions and bitterness over the loss of loved ones.
Paganism and totemism appeared first, then world religions were formed, behind almost each of which there is a great creator - God in different understandings and ideas depending on faith. Moreover, each person imagines it differently. What is God? No one can answer this for sure.
Let's look at the question of why people believe in God below in the article.
What does religion give?
There are different situations in a person's life. Someone is born into a very religious family, so they also become the same. And some experience loneliness or find themselves in such random dangerous situations, after which they survive and after that begin to believe in God. But the examples don't end there. There are many reasons and explanations for why people believe in God.
The power of faith in God sometimes knows no bounds and can really be beneficial. A person receives a charge of optimism and hope when he believes, prays, etc., which has a beneficial effect on the psyche, mood and body.
Faith and unbelief: the mystery of a person’s conversion to God
In 2009, 800 city buses in London carried posters reading: “In all likelihood there is no God. So don't worry and enjoy life." In response to this, Orthodox Christians in London placed the inscription on other buses: “God exists, believe me! Don't worry and enjoy life! " Whose side is the truth on? And why do some people turn to God, while others run away from Him? Why is the Lord God as obvious to some as our life itself, but not to others?
Photo: E. Gataullin
It would seem that in suffering people should turn to God, but many, when suffering, turn to alcohol and do not remember God at all. Already in the Holy Scriptures we see two opposing reactions to the calling of the Lord. Thus, the apostles John and James, simple fishermen, having heard the word of Christ, immediately left the boat, left their father and followed the Lord (see: Matt. 4: 21-22), and the rich young man to whom the Savior said: “Follow Me” , - as it is said in the Gospel, embarrassed, he departed from Him with sadness (see: Matt. 19: 16-22; Mark 10: 17-22).
Indeed, a person’s appeal to God is always a mystery. People seem to live in the same social and cultural conditions, but sometimes have completely different attitudes towards faith.
To understand the essence of this problem, let us first try to find out what unbelief and atheism are.
In general, in my personal opinion, there are two types of atheism. The first is forced disbelief, so to speak, atheism due to a misunderstanding, when a child was simply raised that way and therefore has no idea about the spiritual world. Such people are capable of acting in a Christian manner, although no one seems to have taught them this. At a certain moment, such a person can easily (in a sense, easily) find faith: it will be revealed in him as a treasure that was in oblivion, but was not completely lost. In this case, faith in a person has not died, but is sleeping, and it can awaken - when reflecting on the meaning of life, when contemplating nature, when paying attention to the example of the life of sincerely believing people, and in many other cases.
The second type of unbelief is ideological atheism: this is some kind of internal aggression, hostility towards the spiritual, so that a person turns away from God, like someone who has sore eyes turns away from the sun. Moreover, the atheist himself sometimes does not understand the essence of his atheism.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, in a dialogue about atheism and the last trial, talks about a former atheist who later became a clergyman. I find this story particularly revealing. The main character of the story, Alexander, was a smart, intelligent and educated man who lived first in Russia and then in Paris. Like many others of his time, he was an atheist and considered himself too cultured and advanced to even think about faith. Once he got into a conversation with a village priest who did not have any higher education. This priest listened to him for a long time, and then told him two truths: “First, Sasha, it’s not so important that you don’t believe in God. The wonderful thing is that God believes in you (that is, you are not yet completely lost to eternal life). And second: and you, Sasha, go home and think about at what moment and why you lost faith, at what moment it turned out that it was necessary for you that God should not exist.”
Alexander returned home puzzled. He was surprised at the very formulation of the question, at the very approach of the priest to this topic. Because at this chance meeting with the priest, he expected to hear a missionary speech or instructions to read some treatises, but instead he heard: go and try to figure it out yourself. For some reason he suddenly wanted to do this, he thought: “Maybe I should try? Well, let’s see what I had in my life before...”
At first he thought that the reasons for his unbelief were in his university education, then he began to look for them in earlier periods of his life. So he got to his childhood, to the time when he was 6 years old. What happened then? He lived in one of the cities of Russia, was a nice boy, went to church every Sunday, and stood in the middle of the temple in front of others and prayed to God. Every Sunday, his parents gave him 1 kopeck, which he had to put in the hat of a blind beggar, and he put it and went to church with the feeling that he had done a good deed, showed love, attention, and could now go to God with a clear conscience. One day before Christmas, he was walking around the city with his mother, and they went into a store where they were selling a wonderful wooden horse that cost 6 kopecks. Sasha asked his mother to buy it, but she refused, and he returned home very upset. And the next Sunday, when, on his way to church, he passed a beggar, he thought that if he didn’t give him a penny six times, he could buy himself a horse. And he didn’t give me a penny that time.
He did this four times, and on the fifth he thought: “What if I take one kopeck from a beggar, then I can buy this horse even earlier.” And this time he quietly stole a penny from a blind beggar. After that, he entered the temple and suddenly felt that he could no longer stand in front: suddenly God would notice him, and he went into some corner. Now Sasha felt that he felt somehow bad, that he needed to somehow hide from God. And then his older brother just returned from university, who had picked up godless teachings there and began to prove that there is no God. And little Sasha grabbed this thought like a straw on which he thought to be saved: “If there is no God, then it doesn’t matter at all that I stole this penny and didn’t put in five.” From that time on, godlessness began in him. He perceived the teaching that there is no God as the only salvation from reproaches of conscience.
The above story is very revealing. He clearly represents that unbelief, atheism is, first of all, an attempt to hide from God, to hide, as if to close your eyes with your hands and say: “There is no God,” just as we sometimes try to hide from our own conscience, and conscience is the voice God in man. It is known from the Holy Scriptures that for the first time such a thing happened in paradise, when people, having sinned, violating the commandment of God, tried to hide from the face of God - as if they did not see God, as if there was no God at all. The Lord, turning to Adam, says: “Adam, where are you?” And he answers: “I heard Your voice in paradise, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3: 9–10). It is this sinful nakedness, exposure from the grace of God that makes a person hide from God.
But this is not the only reason. Throughout history, atheism is also an attempt to convince oneself that there is no God, in order to justify one’s sinful addictions. This denial does not necessarily begin in the mind or intellect, but most often occurs somewhere in the depths of the fallen soul, in our heart. The atheist seems to reason: “If there is no God, then nothing will happen to me for my sins, because I live once, and it’s better to live for my own pleasure, and I’m not interested in what happens to the soul after bodily death. If there is no God, then what good does virtue benefit me? Material wealth can be touched, but virtue – what kind of treasure is this?” And, again, all this arises spontaneously in the depths of the fallen spirit, and only then can take shape in the form of a logically coherent materialistic worldview.
So, if unbelief is an attempt to hide from God to justify one’s sins, then faith is the opposite way, a return to God with the desire to be cleansed of sins. But to return, you need to know the way, and for this you need a search. And very often a person comes to faith because his soul suddenly feels a certain call, the need to search. Man does not yet understand that he lacks God, but he already feels that everyday life does not satisfy him. A kind of search for the meaning of life begins, since the meaninglessness of our earthly vanity is suddenly revealed. I would like to add to this that usually people search for the meaning of life not with the help of rational, logical reasoning, but intuitively, as some kind of internal need.
At the end of the 20th century, an article was published in the press about the sad fate of the son of an American millionaire. This article said that one successful young man in life, the son of a millionaire, in the prime of his strength and prosperity, committed suicide. A note with the following content was found on him: “I took everything from life, found nothing interesting in it, I am leaving this life voluntarily.” Of course, this young man had the best cars, expensive villas; he was surrounded by the most beautiful women. In short, he had everything a modern person could dream of. And suddenly such a sad result. This means that, with all the abundance, his soul was missing something, something most important. He simply got what most people strive for a little earlier, and saw that there was absolutely nothing special about these achievements. As the hero A.S. admits. Pushkin Evgeny Onegin:
I am young, life is strong in me, what should I expect? Longing, longing...
This often happens in our lives: it seems to us that having made a successful purchase, having achieved a profitable job, a high salary, a good position in society, etc., we will finally calm down and gain something important. But as soon as we achieve all this, it turns out that there is nothing special about it, and again we are missing something, we feel some kind of emptiness. We strive for an elusive good, for the fullness of life, as if for an alluring horizon that cannot be reached. Because the human soul is such that only God can satisfy it. Only the infinite God can satiate the infinite depths of our heart.
The Holy Fathers say that the human soul is like a sunflower, which always turns its flower to the sun - and the heart also strives for God, yearns and withers without spiritual light. In fact, there are no people who have never experienced an inner craving for the spiritual, whose soul has never hurt, so that they do not need God. We simply see many people only at a certain stage of their life path and, due to our limitations, we believe that they will never feel a thirst for the spiritual and will not change for the better.
Often what helps us turn to faith is a crisis situation in life, severe grief, contact with death, when it suddenly becomes clear that not everything is as we imagined it before, and a person wants there to be something that exceeds the framework of our material world.
Spiritual writer of the 20th century N.E. Pestov, whose son died at the end of World War II, cites the testimony of one of the signalmen who received combat reports from Russian military pilots by radio. This signalman said that many pilots who did not show their faith in any way, when they were shot down by the enemy and their plane, engulfed in flames, fell, suddenly began to pray: “Lord, accept my soul,” this was heard over the radio.
The fact is that a critical situation is an event in life when all the husks fall away and a person is left alone with himself. Everything superficial disappears, the mask that we put on ourselves, playing a certain role in life, is removed. The soul, having finally become itself, begins to see clearly. What is she seeing? That there is a spiritual world and that man is not the center of the universe, that we have a Heavenly Father, without whom our life will not be happy.
Of course, as many people there are, there are as many ways to God. Some people turn to faith through the study of nature. The Creator attracts some to Himself through obvious miracles: a person was threatened with death, imminent misfortune, an incurable disease, and suddenly everything was resolved successfully without apparent earthly reasons. In this case, it is precisely known that it was the Almighty who provided help.
But, be that as it may, if an internal revolution does not occur in a person, a revaluation of values, or rather, if there is no awakening of his soul, its rebirth, he will not become a believer under any arguments.
Why does not all people experience such spiritual insight?
Often a person’s faith is hidden somewhere in the depths of his soul, and since he is accustomed to living only on the external, he is always in a hurry, fussing, in a hurry and he has no time to be alone with himself, he does not notice faith. Modern man is accustomed to “functioning” somewhere; he wants to be drawn into “grand” earthly plans for arranging his destiny - there is no opportunity to think and stop for a single moment. And only when the debris of the earthly happiness that he tried to create falls in front of him, when he is finally left alone with himself, can faith in God awaken in him.
I really like this comparison. Imagine that on one side of you there is a musician playing the violin, and on the other there is a worker with a jackhammer. Can you understand the melody of the violin? Or will you only see the movement of the bow along the strings? So in a person’s life, all the external vanity, haste, impressions, worldly pleasures do not allow one to hear the sounds of spiritual life and the voice of one’s own faith hidden in the soul. Such people see temples, see the manifestation of faith in the lives of other people, but do not hear the voice of faith in their own hearts.
Anyone who stays in a closed, gloomy room for a long time loses the habit of light, his vision becomes dull, and he becomes unable to look into the distance. So, isolation on earthly interests alone kills the desire for God in the soul; For such a person, faith is something too distant.
However, even in the midst of the most external noise, a person can feel the calling of God. He himself does not even understand what he is missing, but he feels some kind of dissatisfaction, inner restlessness, the need for higher meaning and truth. And only after many years does such a person suddenly begin to understand that all this time he has been missing God.
In any case, faith in God is a special awakening of the soul when it becomes sensitive to a more sublime world. This is similar to how a child’s musical talent awakens and he suddenly discovers that there are amazing sequences of sounds, or an artistic gift when the child begins to understand the harmony of colors. But if the gift of a musician or artist is not given to everyone, then faith in God is the need of the soul of every person.
Blessed Augustine once said: “You, God, created us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You” (Confessions 1: 1). And in general, a person’s search for happiness, joy and fullness of life is actually a thirst for God. No matter what a person achieves, if he is without God, everything will not be enough for him and he will not be calm. And if he is with God, then he is content with little. It is faith in God that gives the soul that long-awaited peace that the human heart seeks.
Explanation of the laws of nature and everything unknown
What is God for people of the past? Faith then played a key role in people's lives. There were very few who were atheists. Moreover, the denial of God was condemned. Civilizations were not advanced enough to explain physical phenomena. And that is why people believed in deities responsible for various phenomena. For example, the ancient Egyptians had the god of air Amon, who was later responsible for the sun; Anubis patronized the world of the dead and so on. This was not only the case in Egypt. It was customary to praise the gods in Ancient Greece and Rome; even before civilizations as such, people believed in deities.
Of course, over time, discoveries occurred. They discovered that the earth is round, that there is vast space, and much more. It is worth considering that faith has nothing to do with a person’s mind. Many scientists, discoverers, and inventors were believers.
Nevertheless, even now, answers to some main questions have not been found, such as: what awaits us after death and what happened before the formation of the Earth and space as a whole? There is a theory of the Big Bang, but it has not been proven whether it actually happened, what happened before it, what caused the explosion, and more. It is unknown whether there is a soul, reincarnation, etc. Just like it has not been proven for sure that there is absolute and complete death. There are a lot of disputes on this basis in the world, but this uncertainty and unknown cannot be avoided, and religions provide answers to these eternal questions.
How does the brain work?
The main organ of the central nervous system is the brain. It is responsible for the performance of other organs, for complex processes such as memory, feelings, speech and thinking.
General principles of brain function. The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for movements, for example when we learn to walk or dance. The limbic system is responsible for our emotions; it is located in the very center of the brain. This system is closely connected with the body, because of it we have feelings of thirst and hunger, which are then transmitted through impulses to the brain and processed by the hemispheres.
Our “thinking, memory and speech”—the cerebral hemispheres are responsible for these processes. A big role is played by the frontal lobes, in which a person’s personality is located, it is best developed in people - this is what is called ours - I, goals and plans. When we observe or see something, this information enters the cerebral cortex, which in turn makes an interpretation.
What a person saw gets into the frontal lobe of the brain and answers the question: “what do I want to do with this?”, and if this information is interesting, then the frontal lobes of the brain give a command, and what exactly the person wants to do with this information - will be determined by the cerebellum.
The construction of faith. Where did faith come from and why, over such a huge period of time, people have not learned to manage their needs.
Environment, geography
As a rule, a person born into a religious family also becomes a believer. And the geographical place of birth influences what faith he will adhere to. For example, Islam is widespread in the Middle East (Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.) and in northern Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Libya). But Christianity with all its branches is widespread in almost all of Europe, North America (Catholicism and Protestantism) and in Russia (Orthodoxy). That is why in a purely Muslim country, for example, almost all of the believers are Muslims.
Geography and family usually influence whether a person becomes religious at all, but there are a number of other reasons why people believe in God later in life.
External and internal locus of control
I would like to ask you to familiarize yourself with the external and internal locus of control. This is a form of psychology that is responsible for success or failure only by internal or external factors. This concept was introduced by social psychologist Julian Rotter in 1954.
This method is based on the following example:
- The result of activity is inherent in external factors, its alternative name: “externality”
- The result of activity is inherent in internal factors, its alternative name: “internality”
For example, if a person complains that his phone is broken, so he was late for the train, because he does not have a clock at home and he did not quickly figure out how to get to work, based on this, he was not paid a bonus for this month, that's why he didn't fix the phone. Paradox.
This is the locus of control. If anyone has such a problem, I advise my readers to get themselves in order as quickly as possible.
We love to look for problems in everything, but not in ourselves. I associate the locus of control with faith, like a little boy who puts all the blame on the fact that he was not given something or “then it’s God’s way” - no!
These people are constantly looking for excuses for something, they think that by believing in something, they can solve a lot of problems, but these are only illusions that are responsible for negative qualities, the presence or absence of the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities.
Loneliness
Faith in God often gives people some kind of moral support from above. Lonely people have a slightly higher need for this than people who have loved ones. This is the reason that can influence the acquisition of faith, although before that a person could be an atheist.
Any religion has such a property that its adherents feel involved in something global, great, sacred. It can also give confidence in the future. It is worth noting that confident people are less dependent on the need to believe than insecure people.
Does believing in God make people happy?
One of the questions that ardent minds are raising concerns the relationship between faith and well-being. A number of studies report that among a control group of more than 160,000 Europeans, 85% of those who regularly go to church confidently said they were “very satisfied with their lives.” At that time, the percentage was slightly lower among atheists - 77%. Psychologists insist on three factors why this happens:
- social support. Faith is not individual and implies integration into groups of practitioners who provide each other with psychological and material assistance;
- finding the purpose of existence. The level of happiness and well-being increases when a person understands why he lives and what he strives for;
- feeling of emotional unity. Communication with God brings a person a sense of satisfaction and increases his personal significance.
Some cases
As mentioned above, a person can suddenly believe in God. This often happens after completely extraordinary life events. After the loss of a loved one or illness, for example.
There are cases when people suddenly think about God when they come face to face with danger, after which they were lucky: with a wild animal, with a criminal, with an injury. Faith as a guarantee that everything will be fine.
What changes if you realize yourself as an eternal soul, as part of the spirit of the Creator himself.
Firstly , you understand that nothing is yours in this world . Everything belongs to God. You only use everything temporarily.
Secondly , in your actions you are guided not by personal gain, but primarily by the benefit for your soul . And such actions will bring joy and satisfaction not only to you, but also to all those for whom you will do all this. Such actions make you truly better, when your soul grows and strengthens, and not your body, which exists today and is unknown tomorrow.
Thirdly , you calm down. You stop striving to change this world for yourself, to change people. What is good is good, what is bad, so be it. You learn to let go and not get attached to things, people, or events .
Fear of death
People are afraid of many things. Death is something that awaits everyone, but usually no one is prepared for it. It happens at an unexpected moment and makes all loved ones grieve. Some people perceive this ending with optimism, while others do not, but nevertheless it is always very uncertain. Who knows what is there on the other side of life? Of course, we want to hope for the best, and religions provide this hope.
In Christianity, for example, after death comes hell or heaven, in Buddhism - reincarnation, which is also not an absolute end. Belief in the soul also implies immortality.
We have discussed some of the reasons above. Of course, one should not discount the fact that faith can be groundless.
Healing magic
One of the most common manifestations of a miracle is healing. This is a cherished influence that can save a person from painful illnesses and suffering. Classic images of people cured of blindness have a tremendous psychological impact on the mind, which at this moment can completely forget about the importance of scientific justification and critical thought.
In a state of despair, when people do not find any recipes to combat a serious illness, this belief in miracle healing only intensifies. When it comes to loved ones, we are ready to believe a lot, just to ease their suffering.
Indeed, scientific denial also lies on the surface. But he is countered by specific examples of sick people being cured. This may simply be a coincidence of the ritual used and the completely prosaic reasons for the recovery, but the desire to explain what happened miraculously wins out.
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At the same time, from a scientific point of view, one cannot completely deny the placebo effect, which may well occur.
Outside opinion
Many psychologists and scientists suggest that it does not matter whether God really exists, but what matters is what religion gives to each person. For example, American professor Stephen Rice conducted an interesting study where he interviewed several thousand believers. The survey revealed what beliefs they adhere to, as well as character traits, self-esteem and much more. It turned out that, for example, peace-loving people prefer a good God (or try to see him that way), but those who think that they sin a lot, repent and worry about this, prefer a strict God in a religion where there is fear punishments for sins after death (Christianity).
The professor also believes that religion provides support, love, order, spirituality, and glory. God is like some kind of invisible friend who will support in time or, on the contrary, scold, if this is necessary for a person who lacks concentration and motivation in life. Of course, this all applies more to people who need to feel some kind of support under them. And religion can provide this, as well as the satisfaction of human basic feelings and needs.
But scientists from Oxford and Coventry University tried to identify the connection between religiosity and analytical/intuitive thinking. It would seem that the more analyticalism a person has, the higher the likelihood that he is an atheist. However, the results showed that there is no connection between the type of thinking and religiosity. Thus, we found out that the inclination to believe in a person is determined rather by upbringing, society, environment, but is not given from birth and does not arise just like that.
IQ and values of the country's population
The hypothesis about the influence of general intelligence on individual preferences and values can also be applied to differences in mentality, institutions of government and laws of states. A population with a higher level of intelligence may hold different collective preferences and values than a population with a lower level of intelligence.
If smarter people are more likely to be liberals and atheists, and if smarter people are more likely to value sexual exclusivity, then it follows that, at the societal level, those populations with higher intelligence levels are more likely to be liberal, to be atheists, and to practice monogamy. than those groups of the population whose level of intelligence is lower. The data fully support these macro-level conclusions of the Hypothesis.
Even after statistical predictions regarding such important factors as economic development, education and the history of communism, societies with higher intelligence levels are more liberal, less religious and more monogamous.
For example, the average level of intelligence in a society increases the maximum marginal tax rate (as an expression of people's willingness to invest their personal resources in the welfare of genetically unrelated people) and as a result partly reduces income inequality. The smarter the population, the more they pay in income taxes and the more egalitarian the distribution of their income.
The average IQ of the population is the most significant determinant of the maximum marginal tax rate and income inequality in a society. Each IQ point of average intelligence increases the top marginal income tax rate by more than half a percentage point; In societies where the average intelligence level is 10 IQ points higher, individuals pay over 5% of their personal income in taxes.
Likewise, the average level of intelligence in a society reduces the percentage of the population that believes in God and how important God is to people, as well as the percentage of the population that considers itself religious. The smarter the population, the less religious it is on average.
The average level of intelligence of the population is the most important factor determining the level of religiosity. For example, each IQ point of average intelligence reduces the share of the population who believes in God by 1.2% and the share of the population who consider themselves religious by 1.8%. Average intelligence alone explains 70% of the variance in how important God is across countries.
After all, the average level of intelligence in a society reduces the level of polygyny. The smarter a population is, the less polygynous (and more monogamous) it is. The average intelligence of a population is the most significant determinant of the level of polygyny within it. The average intelligence level of a population has a more significant impact on polygyny than income inequality or even Muslimness.
In an earlier post I suggest that there may be something in human nature that craves a hereditary monarchy, since we seem to want our political leaders to be succeeded by their wives, children and other family members.
If this is indeed the case, it means that some form of hereditary monarchy - the transfer of political power within families - may be evolutionarily familiar, while representative democracy (and all other forms of government) may be evolutionarily new.
Thus, the Hypothesis would predict that smarter people are more likely to prefer representative democracy and less likely to prefer hereditary monarchy. At the societal level, the Hypothesis would imply that the average level of intelligence in a society will increase the level of democracy.
From this point of view, it is interesting to note that the work of the Finnish political scientist Tatu Vanhanen supports this assumption. His detailed study of 172 countries shows that the average level of intelligence in a society increases its level of democracy.
The smarter the population, the more democratic its government. This suggests that representative democracy may indeed be evolutionarily new and unnatural for people. Again, don't make the naturalistic fallacy. Unnatural does not mean bad or undesirable. It simply means that humans have not evolved to practice representative democracy.
