I think Freud, Nietzsche and Feuerbach do much better attempts at explaining why we believe in God. Check out Freud's Future of an Illusion of Feuerbach's the Essence of Religion.
Freud talks about wish fulfillment, about God being our uber-Daddy and the pscyhological need for this. Feuerbach talks about mankind creating God in its own image in the face of awe and dependence on nature. Nietzsche talks about religion as giving meaning to our suffering and to our lives, that it takes a rare person to affirm the meaningless of life and the universe and still go on living.
The major point? IMO it's that we have problems dealing with our finitude, with the fact that we will die. The second major point is that it gives us a story or bigger picture to fit senseless suffering and tradegy into. Religion gives us alternate accounts of why our lives are meaningful or why they will continue on after death. Religion can be seen as something to fulfill our desire for immortality and meaning.
But hey with Dawkins the latest crazy is to try and view everything in terms of genetics so this should have been anticipated. I find the idea of a God gene to be quite silly compared to the many psychological accounts of why we believe in God that have been offered up since the enlightenment. But it doesn't seem like the best texts are commonly read. I'd highly recommend checking out the Freud, Feuerbach and Nietzche, both the Freud and Feuerbach are quite short.
Last edited by Flames Draft Watcher; 03-05-2007 at 10:01 PM.
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