Why is Theism so much more popular than Atheism?

Question

Icarus, How can human nature be flawed.

Answer 1

Most want to take the road most traveled rather than the one less traveled. Both roads are fine for those who travel them.

Answer 2

Theism is more popular than atheism because in theism one has all the answers handed to you, its human nature for people to tend toward that which is easiest. However, in atheism one has to use ones brain and figure out what the answers are and in some cases do the very thing that so many humans hate most. That being, having to be satisfied with only the questions since not everything is known and therefore not every question can be answered in the relatively short lifetime of a given individual human.

Answer 3

Icarus has a good point.
It's easier just to take what your given (in this case society's most popular religion) than to think and accept an unpopular viewpoint.
As for human nature, we change our human nature to operate in a society. Can you imagine how much trouble you would get into if you actually followed your human nature and punched out every person that ticked you off during a typical day?

Answer 4

It's human nature. Some people feel the need to validate life. It's also an easier way of explaining things that can be seen as unexplainable. If you don't know how something came to be it's easier to say some higher power did it then to actually seek for an answer that might fit the puzzle better.

Answer 5

This is the exact same question that I've asked all throughout college and now graduate school. This is precisely what I want to devote my studies to once I get my PhD in Neuroscience & Behavior.

It is quite interesting that 98% of the world believes in some form of a higher power, and its even more interesting that parts of the temporal lobe seem to be responsible for "religious experience". Did this function evolve for purpose? or is it an evolutionary extra like nipples on a man?

Answer 6

I would profoundly recommend watching "A Private Universe," by the Annenburg Project on misconception theory by Harvard's Astrophysics Department.

Answer 7

Everyone is born with a sense that there is some higher moral authority, God.

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God -- evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, or a misdirection, or a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believer’s right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

Read more at:

See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ei=5090&en=43cfb46824423cea&ex=1330664400&pagewanted=all

God reveals Himself to everyone in the world around us.

This is explained from the following:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore, objective values exist. (Some things are really evil.)
4. Therefore, God exists.

Even pagans know “that what the law requires is written on their hearts” (ROM 2:15) if we honestly consult our hearts, we will find two truths: that we know what we ought to do and be, and that we fail to do and be that.

Answer 8

Human nature and the need to belong to an acceptable social group.

Answer 9

I bet if you were to do an absolutely anonymous poll of theists you'd find many more atheists or agnostics than you might think.
Just my thought. My bet is that the social stigma of being an atheist is very powerful to many people. I also think it can be very challenging to doubt when perhaps your surrounded by a family of believers.....However, I think the demonization of atheists is far greater in America than say England.

Answer 10

Because magical thinking is so much easier to use than llgic. Because following a herd is easier than checking facts for oneself. Because of many, more complicated reasons.

Answer 11

2,000+ years vs. ~150 years (science was needed to be an intellectually fullfilled atheist.) Now, give Atheists another 1,850 years and see where we are (and you)!

And not all countries are like the States - in some, Atheism out-does Theism... Sweden, Viet Nam, Denmark, Finland...
http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html