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Belief in God

The vast majority of human beings have always believed in God. From the most ancient civilizations to the most primitive of modern societies, religions with God at their center haveformed the foundation of human culture. In fact, the denial of God's existence ( atheism ) throughout history was limited to a few
individual until the rise of communism in the 20 th century. Even today, in the secular societies of the West, where modern social scientists armed with Darwinian theories have argued that God is merely a figment of the human collective imagination, the overwhelming majority of citizens, laymen
and even scientists, hold steadfast to their belief in God.
Consequently, the overwhelming body of archeological data in support of God's existence has led some anthropologists to
conclude that belief in God (deism) must be in born and not
learnt. Although the vast majority of social scientists
proposed otherwise, recent scientific discoveries appear to
support the minority view that deism is innate. In an article
entitle " God Spot is found in the Brain, " Dr. Vilayanur
Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego
said that the phenomenon of religious belief in God is hard-
wired into the brain.
Despite growing evidence that man I hard-wired with a
"physical facility for belief," the fact that the concept of God
has varied greatly among human societies still leads some
thinkers, even those who believe in God, to conclude that
religions must be man-made. However, through research
reveals a common theological thread linking the various
religions. That link is the belief in a Supreme Being among the
various gods, a monotheistic foundation that can be found in
even the most externally pantheistic of religious systems. For
example, the concept of God in Hinduism exists as a single
example among many religions, which supports the view that
human beings were originally monotheistic and through
various degenerative processes became polytheistic. In spite
of its many gods and idols, Hinduism has a single Supreme
God above all, Brahman.
Traditionally, most anthropologists have concluded that
religion devolved from various stages of polytheism to
monotheism, beginning with early man's deification of the
forces of nature, then, eventually, devolving into ditheism to
consolidate all of the supernatural powers into two main gods
( a do of good an a god of evil), and, finally, simplifying into a
belief in one god, monotheism. Thus, religion, according to
anthropologists and social scientists, has no divine origin; it is
merely a by-product of the evolution of early man's
superstitions, based on his lack of scientific knowledge.
Hence, these same theoreticians believe that science will
eventually unlock all of the secrets of nature, resulting in the
disuse of religion to explain natural phenomena, and, the
consequential extinction of religion altogether.
Man's innate belief in a Supreme Being, however, seems to
support the opposite view, proposing instead that man began
as a monotheist, but in time, strayed into various forms of
polytheism. This view is further supported by fact that all of of
the so-called primitive tribes, which have been "discovered,"
have been found to hold a belief in Supreme Being. No matter
what their evolutionary stage of religious development is
found to have been at the time of "discovery," most were found
to believe in a Supreme God over all other gods and spirits. As
such, the concept of a single Supreme Being remains in most of
the religions as evidence that the masses strayed away from
monotheism by giving some of God's attributes to other
aspects of creation, which eventually come to be regarded as
lesser gods in some cases and as intercessors in others.
Nevertheless, a Supreme God, in whatever form He takes, is at
the core of most religions.