Topics Religion

Question How can an atheist possibly make sense of a world in which the vast majority of people adhere to a religious tradition? If atheism is correct and at the basis of all these religions lie mistaken facts and historical inaccuracies- for example that Jesus was risen from the dead, that Muhammad was visited by an angel, etc.- then the majority of humans who have ever existed have based their actions and beliefs upon a lie.

Accepted:
December 2, 2010

Comments

You say that as if it's implausible -- but it strikes me as very plausible. The "majority of humans who have ever lived" have rarely been very careful about what they believe, have generally been illiterate, uneducated, deeply superstitious, etc. -- and given how painful the human condition is, and how unbearable it might be to acknowledge that there's simply no point to the existence of this condition, it strikes me as perfectly intelligible how many people would accept religious stories at face value -- even when (as has been amply demonstrated) the face value rendition of those stories (eg in scriptures) invariably contain numerous contradictions .... If you want some really good analysis of these issues you might check out the history of philosophical theology -- thinkers such as Aquinas, Maimonides, and Avicenna, to name representatives of the three major western religions -- who clearly understood (eg) that scriptures cannot be understood/interpreted literally, at face values, that they are filled with imaginative stories (that play important fucntions to be sure, generally to make religion appealing to people -- most people -- who are not capable of really grasping the deeper, more difficult truths) .... My point, in brief, is that very often the philosophers of the major religions -- deeply devout in their own right -- AGREE that "the majority of humans" are not capable of grasping the deep truths and thus accept the not-literally-true renditions of things ... ie the vast majority base their beliefs on a lie, to use your phrase ... (my own recent book "The God Question" summarizes some of the ideas of those thinkers ...)

hope that helps --

Everybody, not just an atheist, has to make sense of a world in which billions of people have false religious beliefs. That simply must be the case, considering that there are lots of different religions, and they contradict one another. Billions of Christians are wrong about the divinity of Jesus OR billions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists are wrong about the non-divinity of Jesus. No matter what your own religious beliefs, you've got to admit that in the domain of religion, people are especially fallible. Why is that? We could entertain lots of different theories, but atheists don't have the explanatory burden here. Everyone does.