They say two heads are better than one. What about five and a half billion?
Let's look at Britannica's chart of world-wide adherents to different religious categories. I have always liked it for its concise overview and because it lists the Baha'i Faith.
According to this list there are roughly five and a half billion people who follow some sort of religion as of the middle of 2006. Here is a rough breakdown:
Atheist - 155 million
Non-religious - 785 million
Total population - 6,540 million
Subtracting non-religious and atheist, which leaves all the other categories of religions, from the world population that they list, we get the following:
Religious - 5,600 million
I am loosely translating "follow some sort of religion" as "believing in some sort of higher power" even though they may disagree as to the definition of that higher power. So there are 155 million atheists and thirty six times more theists or deists or whatever you want to call them. Even when you subtract those that have abstained by not choosing a religion, there are six believers for every one non-believer. Even if you subtract religions who you would argue don't profess belief in a higher power it would be at least two to one.
I personally find this significant because of the principle of group intelligence. My thinking at the time went something like this:
I don't know one way or the other if there is a God.
I have had this experience that makes me think so.
There are millions of people who believe in God and millions who don't.
There are more that believe in God than don't.
Many of those people have had some clue or experience one way or the other that led them to their decision, a clue or experience that I don't have. (I know many are religious because their parents are, or because they grew up in a religious society, but I am assuming equal proportions of those who have chosen their belief.)
There are people both more and less intelligent than me in each group.
The odds are that there are equal ratios of more intelligent people in each group. (I'm not ready to say that intelligence is inversely proportional to belief in God, though I think many would say that. I am saying that at the time I valued the opinions of highly intelligent people more.)
According to the calculations above (which I never did numerically until today) there are somewhere between 6 to 36 times more intelligent people who believe in a God than who don't.
If I was to have access to all the knowledge of all these people, I would be more likely to believe in God than not assuming those that are more intelligent than me would make decisions as least as good as I would make.
I'm not saying this is proof of the existence of God. I'm saying that in my rational analysis of the world around me, this is one tick-mark in the God column. I would also be open to arguments about the faulty reasoning and the bias towards intelligence over spirituality. That is exactly where I was at the time - biased towards intelligence. Like any argument, opposing views are valid.
This exercise reminds me of one of the things I enjoy most about the Baha'i Faith - consultation. You can search the web to find out about it, I won't try to describe it here. I will just say that it is a form of group decision-making and I look at the world as having been engaged in an ongoing asynchronous consultation about the existence of God. God is winning in the marketplace of ideas, if you will.
Not being one to leave my salvation in the hands of others I would certainly need more proof. Especially now that my salvation is of vital importance to me.
Next stop - belief by Bulova, rationale by Rolex.
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2 comments:
Regardless of what non-Pagans may think it is hard for me to play Devil's Advocate when I in fact believe the initial premise, not that it isn't fun though.
Popular thought is not proof of something, although it may be a reflection of society and it's education system. For many years the popular thought was the world was flat, turns out that isn't the case. Popular thought seems to be that homosexuals are evil, turns out that isn't the case. Popular thought was that the earth was the center of the solar system, wrong again.
Humanity has tried to explain things from it's earliest days. Thunder was a sign of Zeus' displeasure, why do people die, and so on. Some things science has been able to find answers to, like the moon's affect on water causing tides, others like the reason we are here have proven more elusive.
Looking forward to of watches, believe and rationale .
You make a good point that popular belief does not make something true. I agree that there are large numbers of people that have given no thought to whether God exists, or whether the earth is flat. But determining whether the earth is flat requires quite a bit of work for someone who is not a scientist and who is living in poverty as a peon or serf. On the other hand, a personal experience with the spiritual is certainly a possibility and therefore anyone can have an opinion based on their own understanding rather than adopting someone else's. Also, the earth being flat or not can be scientifically proven while most people would disagree that the existence of God can be. Who can choose to believe the earth is flat now?
As for belief in Zeus, why people die, etcetera, I wouldn't say necessarily that it is true that everyone is wrong at first and then finds the truth. I would describe it as being as right as they could be at the time and becoming more correct as our understanding grows. We refine our understanding with more evidence and as we increase in capacity to know. That is why we don't teach calculus in kindergarten.
You are absolutely right that this isn't proof. Just tendency, and enough tendencies in favor of believing in God without any tendencies counter to that idea are what give me the circumstantial nature of these "proofs."
Thanks for the comments.
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