Ask HN: How can one be educated, smart, and believe in God?
I would like you to ponder over why you narrowed the issue to one of &quot;God&quot;. For me, I tend to wonder why people even narrow down to &quot;religion&quot;. When you start thinking of the level of &quot;faith&quot;, then you see much more in common with what we normally think of religion and other spheres of life. At that level, you realize that the notion of religion is nothing all that different, and even wonder why it has a special name - because people who cling to any ideology based on faith often will act in ways similar to what you see amongst religious folks.<p>Examples of other faiths: Environmentalism, capitalism, communism, socialism, all manners of diets. Many beliefs people have about the body and health are rooted in faith type thinking.<p>Note: This is not to say that if you are an environmentalist, or a capitalist, then you are necessarily indulging in faith based thinking. Just that many (most?) who do are that way. If you have any belief in your brain that you are not willing to abandon, that is faith based thinking. When you look at how such people approach the subset of the world involving their faith (e.g. when confronted with contrarian evidence), you&#x27;ll see behavior that differs little from religious folks.<p>Examples of faith based thinking:<p>&quot;I firmly believe everyone is born with equal mental abilities.&quot;<p>&quot;I believe anything humans have eaten for centuries is not bad for the body. And anything not tried and tested will cause problems to our health.&quot;<p>&quot;I believe as long as one follows X diet they will not have Y health problems.&quot;<p>&quot;I believe that as long as one follows X workout program, they will not have Y health problems.&quot;<p>&quot;I believe if we don&#x27;t interfere with the ecosystem, then the outcomes will be better for humans who live in this world.&quot;<p>&quot;I believe that without societal pressure, the normal state of a human is good&#x2F;evil&quot; (substitute specifics for good and evil, like kind&#x2F;greedy)<p>&quot;I believe that the most efficient health care is through a free market economy.&quot; In fact, based on my observations, most non-experts&#x27; views on economics and its impact on society is heavily faith based. People have passionate arguments about it with very little to back what they believe.<p>I spent over a decade in academia. Trust me: Even though many academics are atheists, they are definitely religious in other arenas of life, and generally are not willing to confront their beliefs. This is true even if you limit to the natural science&#x2F;engineering departments. From my experience, if many&#x2F;most scientists are atheists, it is mostly because of their culture (i.e. indirect peer pressure) - similar to how my friends who move to heavily liberal cities tend to become more liberal. It is not because of their training and introspecting about life and the universe. They&#x27;ll easily become atheists, yet not confront all their other non-fact based beliefs.<p>So with that all in mind: Smart, educated people can easily believe in God if they are not part of a community that has decided to shun God. They have many other beliefs, and a belief in God is merely one more unsubstantiated belief.