Why he thought most people believe in God

In Bertrand Russell's 1927 lecture, "Why I am not a Christian," he first defined what "Christian" means (not a whole lot by fundamentalist standards, just a belief in God and immortality and "some kind of belief about Christ"). Then he proceeds to review and, he thinks, dispose of various arguments for the existence of God, including the "first-cause argument," the "natural law argument," the "argument from design," and "moral arguments for deity." I may comment in future on Lord Russell's remarks on those arguments, but the first passage in his lecture that really catches my attention is the one titled "The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice." Indeed, I have frequently referred to this argument myself over the past few months. People believe in God because that doctrine promises that the injustices we see about us will be made right at some future time.

But first, to start at the end of Russell's remarks, he makes the disarming statement that

Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you [a society of secularists] about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason [emphasis mine].
      Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desire for a belief in God. [p. 9]

Note that the emphasized remark about why most people believe in God dovetails nicely with the separation of the various major types of such belief into geographical regions. That is, Christian indoctrination predominates in the West, Muslim in the Arab lands of the Near East, etc.

Anyway, here are Lord Russell's remarks on the "arguments for remedying injustice":

Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say: "After all, I know only this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue: "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say: "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment"; and that is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say: "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice and so far as that goes that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule in the world; and therefore so far as it goes it affords a moral argument against deity and not in favour of one" [emphasis mine]. [pp. 9-10]

Lord Russell doesn't seem to address the question how humans came by their sense that "there ought to be justice in the world," which I suppose might be proposed as another sort of argument for the existence of God (if it isn't simply a version of the ontological argument: "God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived [and must, therefore, exist]"). That is, how did man come by the notion of justice? Didn't God implant it in us? And would He do that if there were no possibility that injustice would be remedied? I suspect that Richard Dawkins (whose book, The God Delusion, is on my reading list) argues that such notions—even the very notion of God—arise through natural selection. But it's easier to believe that evolution could evolve the notion that I and the members of my gene pool should be treated fairly than to believe that it could evolve the notion that other people not related should also be treated fairly. Perhaps Dawkins addresses that (in addressing the question how altruism in general evolved).

Anyway, Lord Russell's statement of the most powerful reason why people believe in God (they're taught to do so) reminded me of what one of my sisters said to me after I expressed certain doubts or outright disbeliefs about God: "Didn't Mama," my sister asked me rhetorically, "teach you any better than that?" Actually, Mama taught me pretty well, for it has taken me a number of decades to argue and feel my way out of the orbit of her doctrinaire influence.

I don't suppose that Lord Russell's own mama taught him quite so well.