The reason why religious people believe in God is that, they are communicating with it and perceiving evidence of its involvement. Worldwide, there is about 16 percent of people who don’t believe in one or are not religious. In actual figures, it is roughly 1.2 billion people who can’t fathom the concept of religion. Rather, they easily follow other things in the world such as social media, doing their own marketing campaigns with the help of, and so forth.

Should You Believe in God?

Why people have faith in God made a lot of great thinkers of our time wonder for years. For instance, Karl Marx referred to religion as “opium of the people”. Sigmund Freud on the other hand felt that God was just an illusion and its worshippers were reverting to childhood needs of forgiveness and security.

According to science, there’s a psychological explanation for why people believe in God. It is related to man’s evolution that gave us metaphorical “god engine” or made a “god-shaped hole. Either these two things is what makes us believe in a deity.

In essence, this hypothesis somehow concludes that religion is a byproduct of social and cognitive adaptations which played a critical role in human development.

It’s Faith that brought us Here

Naturally, humans are social creatures who love to communicate and interact with each other in a supportive and cooperative way. Thus, we inevitably developed stronger attachments to some people than others.

According to British psychologist John Bowlby, he demonstrated the attachment influence among children’s social and emotional development. He showed how these could suffer whenever they feel threatened through abuse or separation. We keep on depending on these attachments as we grow, when making friends or falling in love. It can even form strong attachments to inanimate objects and non-human animals. Such strong attachments may transfer to religious messengers and deities.

Behavioral Benefits

Aside from psychological aspects, ritual behavior could be seen in collective worship brings enjoyment and makes its believers repeat the experience. Singing, achieving a trance-like state and dancing are all common in most of our ancestral societies. These activities are increasing the levels of dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin in the brain. Such chemicals are making us feel good and push us to do things again and again. Thus, creating closeness to other people.