Bilge.

Why do we believe in God? One might take the wild leap of asking some believers. But instead, since the belief in a Prime Mover is so absurd as to be unworthy of the millenia of discussion men have engaged in regarding it, we'd better just chalk it up to some genetic advantage inherent in being wrong. Having posited the existence of such a gene, let's find it!

I'm more and more distressed to see each and every idea thrown into the sausage grinder of hard Natural Selection. Don't get me wrong: I am no Creationist, nor do I think I.D. has any demonstrable validity. But creatures have survived under rather greater difficulties than spending one day a week at rest. Societies have survived under some rather peculiar taboos. A brief study of history will show that not only do customs have more causes and effects than we know, but more than we can know.

Moreover, it is rather frightening to see that the search for truth has been reduced to the search for ideas which allow us to prosper. The test for truth must not be a test for an idea which provides an increased chance of survival, since the conditions for such survival (on a human level, anyway) change daily. To reduce it so is also to limit the permitted areas of inquiry rather astonishingly. Whether or not the non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part 1/2 has little to do with my projected lifespan. Presumably then this hypothesis has no possible proof.

Although this does give me an excellent idea for a new scientific method a la Emperor Frederick. Take two groups of children, indoctrinate each with one side of the hypothesis being debated, and release them into the wild. The group that survives is the one in possession of the truth.

And where does the gentleman get off using "religion" and "Christianity" as synonyms? Christianity is an astoundingly strange religion, as such things go; it claims that the infinite touched historical time in the form of a man, and has various records which support this claim. It is, shortly, a fact-based religion, in the empirical sense. If some evidence perfectly disproving the resurrection came to light, Christianity would crumble. Other elements of other religions, for example theism or moral assertions, would be unchanged. I can only think that the assumption is either that most Christians believe for reasons other than the evidence, and thus are essential identical with believers in other religions, or that such an oddity was simply ignored.

I've noticed, in fact, that all studies of religious belief with regard to modern science have been studies of Christianity (almost always Protestant), or, if the researchers are feeling charitable, Buddhism. Two of the strangest religions in the world (looking to their ontological claims) are the baseline? The most successful religions draw the most attention, naturally, but surely this same success indicates some significant difference between them and the failures. To lump them all together is evidence that one's conclusions on the matter are already formed.

I've said before that I think looking for a psychological cause for a belief is rude. Let me go a little further and claim that it is self-defeating. Unless one's opinion is that all men but oneself are mere meme-infected automata, to reduce all opinion to the product of environment and heredity, rather than conscious thought, is to invite that same reduction on oneself. And if one has decided against the existence of other minds, why is one discussing things at all?

In short, if you ask the wrong questions, you get a certain amount of nonsense back at you. You're apt to end up like Gunther in A Double Shadow, with a twenty-five volume attempt to define scientifically the term "aesthetic". "Religion" has not been so completely refuted that we need to investigate why a few silly people still follow outdated creeds.