Where Should We Begin?

Personal experiences and observations show that people with religious faith may or may not follow the commands they believe have been given to them by a supernatural being or beings. Believers may perform rituals intended to bring them closer to that supernatural being or those supernatural beings, or they may not. They may engage in prayer and personal communication with them, or they may not. They may love a supernatural being or fear it.

They may believe that all events in the universe are under its control and result from its intervention, or they may accept the laws of science and not necessarily see that being as involved or influential in every worldly event. They may pray and ask that being or those beings to fulfill their wishes, or they may not believe in prayer. They may regard certain people and objects as being under the protection and approval of those supernatural beings and consider those people and objects sacred, or they may not believe in sacred people and objects at all.

It appears that, despite all these different forms of religious belief, there is one thing shared among believers: the belief in the existence of a supernatural being or beings—beings that cannot be seen or perceived through our ordinary senses, yet whose existence the believer considers certain. All the actions and experiences mentioned above, regardless of the extent to which they are practiced or experienced, arise from and depend upon this belief in the existence of those supernatural beings. If that belief collapses, the aforementioned practices and beliefs would lose their foundation and become impossible to maintain, and religious faith itself would disappear.

Therefore, I think the best place to begin is precisely here: to examine, based on the physiology of our brain and our psychological characteristics, how we come to believe in the existence of a supernatural being.