Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn

Part of the problem of even discussing this topic is that the language of the discussion doesn't even make intellectual sense the way most people talk about it. The semantics of the way Mutt worded the question alone shows a huge bias in favor of religious belief built into the grammar. The way the question is usually worded exposes the lack of rigorous thinking about this subject by most people, especially Westerners who only believe in religion half-heartedly anyway.

There is no such thing as a generic idea of a "God" that many people- even atheists- commonly refer to in every day parlance. There are many specific religions with specific deities, only a few of which are mostly worshiped by much of the world population nowadays. So when you ask someone if they believe in "God", you should really ask which specific deity or mythology they believe in. Letting them say they believe in "God" as a generic supreme being is just a complete cop-out that doesn't really mean anything.

For example, even a supposedly monotheistic religion Christianity has a whole pantheon of multiple deities in it's mythology, not just one "God", most of them derived, borrowed and modified from earlier mythologies including Judiasm and ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Sumerian mythologies.

The historical evidence is clear that the major religions of the world today are derived from earlier mythologies from the dawn of civilization that have been supplanted by these modern religions and then turned into looser, more generic concepts of religion that most secular Western people have some kind of lukewarm belief in.