50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy P. Harrison

2003.
    Weinberg, Steven. Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

     

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Believing in my god makes
me happy.

    -"I've Got the Joy" (Christian song)
    ven when faced with good reasons to doubt, many people continue believing in their god because it feels good. If belief in a
god makes them happy, why question it? This justification for belief
may not carry much intellectual weight in the eyes of some but it
deserves attention nonetheless. Simple as it seems, I find it honest and
far more defensible than most of the extravagant arguments for gods
that believers come up with. It feels good so they do it. It's tough to
argue against this reason for belief. So I won't, at least not directly.
After all, I want happy people and a happy world too. The last thing I
want is to rain on anyone's parade. However, because I am convinced
that people can be just as happy or even happier without gods, I won't
duck this common reason for believing.
    First of all, it is important to consider whether it is a real god that
is making believers happy or merely something about the act of
believing in a god that makes them happy. I certainly won't dispute
religion's ability to make some people happy. I have seen religious joy up close. I saw it in the glowing eyes of a worshipping Hindu man in
a temple in Nepal. I once found myself swept up in a whirlwind of
smiles and singing inside a small-town church in Florida. I was
enjoying it so much that I might have thought I was filled with the
Holy Ghost if I didn't know better. I watched a Muslim man pray in
Damascus, Syria. His expression was so intense and serious that I
assumed he was in pain or deeply troubled by something. When he finished his prayers, however, he smiled at me in a show of pure joy. At
that moment he might have been the happiest man in all the world. So
how can anyone challenge all this happiness linked to religion? How
can anyone deny that gods make people happy when the evidence is
everywhere in the form of grinning believers? The answer, of course,
is that none of this is evidence of anything other than the ability of
belief itself and the activities that go along with it to inspire happiness.
Happy worshippers prove nothing about the existence of gods. It could
be that believing and worshipping are the sources of the pleasure.
Believers may disagree but the most likely explanation for happy
believers is that socializing with friends during worship gatherings,
the relaxing process of prayer, singing and listening to music, and
imagining that a god cares for you are responsible for the happiness.
No real gods are necessary. Don't believe it? Then how do you explain
Buddhists?

    Orthodox Buddhists prove that religion can make people
happy-even without a god. Contrary to what many Westerners
think, traditional Buddhists do not worship Buddha as a god. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, never claimed to be a god. Therefore,
most Buddhists are atheists. However, they still may believe in other
unproven supernatural claims such as reincarnation. Futhermore,
Buddhism can be confusing because some versions of it have incorporated many gods and some Buddhists do revere and pray to
Buddha in a way that strongly suggests they think of him as a god.
This should not be surprising, however, as all religions branch out
and change, creating many different versions over time.
    So how do Jews, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims who credit their god for making them happy explain Buddhists who are just as happy
if not happier? And do not doubt that Buddhists can be happy. I can
personally vouch for it. I encountered many Buddhist monks in Nepal
and Thailand who radiated remarkable happiness. They were exceptionally warm and content people. Just being around them made me
feel happy. None of them asked me for money so I feel safe in
assuming that they were sincere and every bit as happy as they
appeared.