How Can Smart People Believe in God?
Religion is an empty, mirrored box that reflects back the viewer’s narcissism, arrogance, and wishful thinking.
Being religious is different from being stupid. The many studies that appear to show that non-believers are on average slightly smarter than believers are neither conclusive nor impressive. There are plenty of brilliant Jews, Christians, Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists, and Taoists who can do physics at a high level and who also claim to believe in God (or reincarnation, nirvana, etc.). This strange state of affairs isn’t about intelligence or solely about intelligence. It must be about something else.
The answer is that a belief in God actually has no content. It is not like a belief in the sweetness of sugar or the hardness of concrete, where one actually believes something. A belief in God is instead a reflection and a projection. Picture an empty box that is mirrored inside, so that, while totally empty, it nevertheless appears full: in this case, of the observer’s wishes, desires, opinions, prejudices, hatreds, etc., all mirrored back to the observer. This is how religion works.
Religion is an empty, mirrored box that reflects back the viewer’s narcissism, arrogance, and wishful thinking. It is completely empty but feels full. What a wonderful box! If the believer is a racist, as so many believers are, the box is full of a white God who hates black people. If the believer is an elderly black woman, the box is full of a belief in a beautiful afterlife. If the believer is a misogynist, as so many believers are, the box is full of mighty punishment for the women who have abortions and zero punishment for their husbands who demand those abortions. What an excellent box!
All beliefs in God are exactly the same: totally empty of content and totally full of the personality of the believer.
God is a projection. To understand believers, we need to understand how religion and its mirrored empty box work. It will not pay to try to point out contradictions in their belief system, as the box is empty and there is nothing to contradict. It will not do to point out the more outlandish beliefs of their religion, as the box is empty and there is…
