In response to my paper on possible phylogenetic divergence in the case of theistic percepts, Gallup and Maser argue that an alternative — and more heuristic — approach to studying religious phenomena can be found in neuroanatomical mapping of cognitive functions that seem to play some role in this category of thought. On the one hand, the argument is sound and will probably come to be prescien...

The need to belong can motivate belief in God. In Study 1, 40 undergraduates read bogus astrophysics articles "proving" God's existence or not offering proof. Participants in the proof-for-God condition reported higher belief in God (compared to control) when they chronically imagined God as accepting but lower belief in God when they imagined God as rejecting. Additionally, in Study 2 (72 unde...

Mormons claim that God the Father has a “body of flesh and bones.” Nowhere is this statement made in the Bible, so they support this idea through the statement that God created man in His own image, which requires that God look like a man. However, there are many problems with this interpretation. First, the Bible says that God created both males and females in His image. Unless God were a herm...

items “unreal” leaves out something important. I have suggested that God is, at bottom, one of these abstract objects. You can be a skeptic about the traditional picture of God as a quasi-material, ghostly being, and still believe the idea of God I presented in this book. 3. There can be a God even if no one created the universe. If God is the supremely good being, then there could be a God eve...