It's all a matter of perspective. One could also claim that those who don't acknowledge God are deluding themselves with a lack of theology. I'm not trying to start a debate, but dismissing the beliefs of billions as simply delusion/deception is painting with broad strokes.
Why, evolutionary psychology and the philosophy of mind, comparative history and some sociology offers a comprehensive explanation of the mental and social forces, so to speak, which makes religions possible. It is social phenomena of language-possessing species, if you wish, misinterpretation of the instincts, co-evolution and other causes and laws, to which humans are subjected, like any other species.
This is where I interject & mention this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
People don't want to feel like they wasted time & resources over something that doesn't exist.
Religion can just be relegated to a construct for social activities. There's so many of them which sprung up independently. People should really ponder whether they have accounted some belief for interplanetary travel.
If you bring up opportunity cost, I think it's also worth mentioning Pascal's wager[0]. I don't believe in this argument, but it's an interesting point to consider.
Which god? The argument you make could also be made for all people following all the religions aside from the one whose god actually exists. The religions can't all be right, if in fact even one is right.
So sheer quantity of believers doesn't work for making a point.
I have used an argument like this and the answer I got(which left me dumbfounded) was like "Everyone believes in some sort of divine power or entity or whatever and the other religions just got their wrong."
They're basically saying that sheer quantity of believers in anything proves that their God exists!
The statement as quoted does not make the argument you claim it does. Perhaps the person who were speaking with elaborated in order to make that point though.
Coming from a Christian perspective however, I would agree in general people have evidence to believe in God. I don't intend the quote from the Bible below to serve as an sort of evidence. This would not be a logical line of reasoning for someone who does not believe in the truth of the Bible. However, it may serve to further clarify my position.
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." -- Romans 1:20
Fair point although I wasn't intending to argue that number of believers is any sort of proof. In any case, at least Christianity and Islam each have over one billion believers globally.
> I wasn't intending to argue that number of believers is any sort of proof.
It definitely doesn't provide any proof, but I didn't say that. I said "sheer quantity of believers doesn't work for making a point", as in, how can the number of people in any way support the validity of any beliefs held by those people?
There's plenty of concrete historical evidence that beliefs held by many many people turned out to be wrong. It's basically the story of science. I.e. we have clear evidence that the fact that a lot of people hold a belief does not mean anything about the truth of that belief.
> In any case, at least Christianity and Islam each have over one billion believers globally.
