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From my point of view, religion fills an important societal need. People like to feel that they belong, and religion allows them to belong to something infinitely greater than themselves.

The single most disappointing thing is when uninformed posts like the parent get modded up.

theism - from Greek theos; belief in a supreme being.
atheism - a- (without) + theism; a lack of a belief in a supreme being.
antitheism - anti- (against or opposite of) + theism; a belief in the nonexistence of a supreme being.

agnosticism - a- + gnosis (knowledge); the belief that we cannot prove the existence of a supreme being.
ignosticism - (from ignore and agnosticism); the belief that the question of the existence of a supreme being has no verifiable consequence and thus it should be ignored.

Note that agnosticism is compatible with theism, atheism, and antitheism: it is entirely possible to believe that the existence of a god cannot be proven and concurrently hold an opinion on the matter. Conversely, ignosticism is only compatible with atheism; it makes no sense to believe that the existence of a god should be ignored while believing in its existence or nonexistence.

Also note that antitheism is generally considered a subset of atheism. This is why many theists seem to think that atheism is a belief in the nonexistence of a god. Just as we atheists mostly hear the loudest of the theists, the theists hear the loudest of the atheists, who are nearly always antitheistic.

Lastly, proof has nothing to do with any of the above categories (read: belief), with the exception of agnosticism, which only deals with the lack of proof surrounding the existence of a supreme being. Please don't claim that theists or antitheists do anything without proof, because both belief systems are founded on faith. There is no proof to go either way.

Actually, I think evolution presents a very strong argument against a (purely) genetic basis for religion.

Namely that no other animal exhibits religious tendencies. I'm not talking about superstitions -- these are actually logical for most animals. My grandmother had a cat that thought that whenever it went into the supply closet and banged around, food would appear in its plate (she'd hear it, and then pop open a can of cat food). It's simply false causation (or true causation as the case may be, since it did cause my grandma to open the cat food). I mean honest-to-G-D religious behavior. Where are the monkeys worshiping shamanistic totems? Where are the dogs praying late at night? Where are the animals crossing themselves before they engage in mortal combat? Animals turning down sex because it is "morally wrong"? Answer: there aren't any. Humans are unique among all animals in this regard. Which should be a red flag for people trying to make this claim.

If you're going to hypothesize evolution as the source for religion, you have to actually consider evolution. If all you have to work with is the (modern) man, you're ignoring the fact that all genes have to come from somewhere. Royal Jester Richard Dawkin's claim that religion is the result of a wanting-to-follow authority gene is ridiculous, as if such a gene existed, it'd be more present in the orderly Germans and less present in the iconoclastic Americans. But half of Germany is Atheistic, and only 8% of Americans are.

In fact, the differences by culture, alone, discredit this theory. If there was a gene, that was presumably more prevalent in some populations than others, that gave people an inclination to believe in God, then you should see correlation between genotype and Atheism rates, whereas the opposite is true. The same descendants from Europeans in America still have high theism rates, whereas their cousins in Europe have very high atheism rates.

Nurture, not nature.

And, honestly, I think the article is insulting to the rational theists out there. It removes personal decision from the equation. (If you are an atheist, consider someone telling you that you're only an atheist because you have this one gene, and through no personal decision of your own.) It really is insulting.

You can't "disprove" theism scientifically because it does not deal with the physical world. It doesn't provide any testable theories. Same thing (almost) with atheism. I say almost, because if God *does* exist, then he *could* reveal himself sometime and disprove all atheists.

You can't use empirical data to answer metaphysical questions. It just doesn't work.

This is the most honest and insightful comment on this story so far. I was not going to bother with yet another pointless Slashdot discussion on religion but you changed my mind.

You can never prove or disprove anything by explaining why people want to believe it - otherwise you just get pointless name calling: "you only say that because you are a Christian/Buddhist/communist/capitalist/liberal/co nservative". You are completely correct that this evidence does not get us anywhere.

Now, from the point of view of someone who is a Christian, I would say that for most people being an agnostic is the most rational belief on the available evidence. Without having personal experience of God (i.e. direct revelation), all you can know is:

1) Lots of perfectly rational people claim to have experienced God's presence. The phenomenon covers a huge range of cultures, historical periods, etc. Lots of "eyewitnesses" is evidence for.
2) On the other hand, people interpret the experience differently (different religions) and it is very hard to be convinced by evidence that you apparently cannot see for yourself.

I think that God shows himself to people when they need it. I remember an article by an agnostic journalist in Catholic magazine. He was sympathetic and would have liked to believe but he did not. He is probably progressing towards God as well as many of us who do believe.

Belief might actually make things harder for some people, by making choices between God and the world too stark. I use the phrase "the world" in the traditional Christian moralists sense of the pressures by society to do things that clash with what God wants us to do. In the modern world this primarily means the greed induced by consumer capitalism.

Are you saying that there are acts which are either right or wrong, regardless of your culture, or are you saying that every culture will have taboos and moral values? The first can probably be debunked, given the tendencies of some cultures to kill and eat people, and the second seems obvious, given that that's a component of culture. If you don't have things you aren't supposed to do, whether that's displaying genitalia in public, or showing your teeth when you smile, then you don't have a culture, you have a collection, and a short lived one at that.

It's an argument, but one that seems to go against hard line monotheism. There are relatively few things that most people worldwide feel guilt and remorse for. I've seen devout christians do things that seemed to be perfectly fine with them, but that I find immoral.

Given that not everyone has the same, or even a similar moral compass, it is either not given to all of us by the same god, or it doesn't start from a god at all.

  (Assuming for the sake of argument that God can and does work through evolution and genetics.)

  Then he's a really shitty engineer.

  He should have engineered us with predisposed mass intentions to *reach* the stars, not worship them.

  It's more like something dumbed-down by a committee.

SB

Evolution is not a proven fact ... and that's a fact ;)

There are things in the fabric of this universe that we as human beings will never be able to understand.
There's no theory, proven or not, that can explain how this universe was created ... and we will never have one.
And that's a proven fact ;)

Being an atheist is as implausible as being a Christian.
But you just keep believing otherwise, I don't care.

This is essentially Descartes's argument from the "Meditations"

"I have the notion of perfection, but nothing around me is perfect. Therefore, the idea of perfection was instilled in me by a higher being. Ergo, God exists." (I believe it was in the 5th or 6th meditation).

Many philosophers have responded to Descartes, but to me his argument is incorrect. In addition to the notion of perfection, we have the notion of "redness". However, there is nothing around us that is perfectly red, in the sense that you can take two red things and most likely they will have different shades of red. So where does the "redness" notion come from? How do we know what is red if we cannot have a basis for comparison? The answer that I can give is that we abstract from multiple instances of things being red to a general notion of being red.

Now apply the same reasoning to perfection. There are good and bad things and we simply collect all the good ones and based on those we abstract a notion of superior goodness, or perfection. No God necessary. As further support, my notion of perfection is probably different than yours, so this necessarily means that they were either instilled by different Gods, or we just arrived at them through individual (and different) processes.

Umm you do realize that what you just described is empathy, yes? The people who can't empathize are called psychopaths, it's an evolutionary mutation. My opinion on religion is that it's just people being people... gullible and ignorant. Thankfully religion is on a rapidly declining trend[1]:

* 23% of 18-34 year olds label them self's as "Secular" or "Somewhat Secular", compared to 10% of people 65 years old and up.
* 43% of 18-34 year olds label them self's as "Somewhat Religious", compared to 34% of people 65 years old and up.
* 27% of 18-34 year olds label them self's as "Rligious", compared to 47% of people 65 years old and up.

Also interesting to note:
* Women are more likely, than men, to describe themselves as religious.
* Black Americans are least likely to describe themselves as secular.
* Asian Americans are most likely describe themselves as secular.

[1] http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_studies/ar is.pdf

...before his move to theism ? Can I laugh now ? ;)

So, the reason some people would choose to believe in a god is that they'd prefer to live in a world with a moral absolute. Otherwise their decisions and actions are fairly meaningless beyond their own gratification.

This is as good an explanation as any for why a European might accept Christianity, but does nothing to explain how a Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Muslim, or Jew is supposed to find it a good idea. After all, if you've already got a pretty good idea of how the supernatural or natural world works, what's one more contradictory explanation worth? Picking moral absolutes is a function of human society, and if they have to invent monsters to torture the nonbelievers until science discovers personality disorders and effective behavior adjustment so be it. Notice that we haven't solved our social behavior problems, so until we do religion will still find some use in keeping some of the people too scared to misbehave.

the concept of God is entirely implausible

Why? How is God more implausible than Pluto? Or string theory?

evolution is a fact

a) Why?
b) More of a fact tham, oh, Newtonian mechanics?
c) What the hell (no pun intended) does this have to do with the existence of God?

As a matter of fact, If my God weren't powerful and smart enough to be able to design a system as elegant as evolution that would eventually result in the creation of advanced species, and instead had to brute-force the design of every single species, even though a lot of them are obviously very similar and would benefit from the ability to adapt, I would have real problems calling Him omniscient and omnipotent.

Once you accept the basic premise that there is a god, there's so many properties you can put into it. I'm sure I could find a full page of different needs people have in god. Anywhere and any time you wish there was a power greater then yourself at work, you can insert god. And if it still doesn't go the way you want, well then god didn't agree with you. God brings meaning to everything - including the things that don't have meaning. "God works in mysterious ways" is another way of saying "Anything and everything is god's doing".

I think three key words are important: Meaning, reason and fairness, and god brings all three. If your child dies, it's probably meaningless, coincidental and unfair. Some people deal with that, they're atheists. Some need to find what isn't there, they are religious. And for some it shatters the illusion they've built up, they lose faith. I wouldn't mind if I could keep the illusion, to see a world where things have so much more meaning and logic than in my world. But I can't create that illusion no matter how much I try.

I was raised a Christian. As a teenager I went deep into being an agnostic but never went across into an atheist, afterall how can such a concept be disproved?

As a Scientist I have been amazed at the depths of knowlege we've obtained about Nature and wondered why it is that Universe is so knowable. I started to reularly attend church again and found teachings of Jesus to be thoroughly unplausible within the context of the culture in Palestine at his time. Despite being very counter-inuative, those ideas worked and still resonate around us and form the basis of Western Humanist secular society.

The tiny sects they founded were outstandingly successful because their members actually followed the teachings of Jesus and found new ways to cooperate and live fuller lives.

But in the end, reglion is fundamentally a subjective experience. I personally feel calmer and more at Peace with the world after attending church. It is definately a beneficial experience.

[1] See: Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

Dawkins is not a philosopher of religion and both theist and atheist scholars see him as something of a crank, with a few thought-provoking comments two decades ago now having gone downhill into diatribe that doesn't respect rules of academic debate. An atheist looking for something to recommend from his side of the argument would do much better with something by Mackie or by Flew before his move to theism.

Show me the 'God' gene.

I doubt it's that simple looking at things cross culturally. There are religions without Gods, as well as religions with lots of gods, most gods aren't creator gods, then there are a wealth of godlets in religion, supernatural entities which aren't tops on some sort of god scale... quite a lot of diversity, something I'm not sure North Americans always fully appreciate, focussing on the Abrahamic religions as being somehow definitive of religion.

Personally, I prefer to define religion in terms of function, rather than cast of characters. Religion is a filter through which the individual makes sense of everything. Just about every -ism can be a religion as well, by this definition. You can debate which filters are the healthiest, but any filter is probably better than no filter, wandering about uncertain of everything. Monotheisms are a just one filter family.

Um... Actually 'the basic compass' is very much the same over the all cultural boundaries. This has been studied. [1] And that points strongly towards genetics, not god, as these ppl are atheists, theists, buddhists, agnostics, polytheists... - and they all have the same hardware programming.

We all have the same genetic basic morality hardware package apart from the 2-3 % of population who are sociopaths. Culture adds on top of that.

[1]
Find references in Richard Dawkins's: `The god delusion'

That's called "God of the holes". God explains what one doesn't understand. That's - of course - redicilous. On the other hand, science is making the holes less every day. Dawkins says that it wasn't really easy to defend atheism before Charles Darwin, but after him it was quite possible to do so. Darwin moved one of the most significant holes w/the theory of evolution.