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the points were rewarded. Most of the subjects in the first group found the pattern of point scoring and accurately described it. Interestingly, most of the subjects in the second group also found “patterns” of point scoring, even though no pattern existed and the points were rewarded randomly. We seek and find patterns because we prefer to view the world as orderly instead of chaotic, and it is orderly often enough that this strategy works. In an ironic twist, it would appear that we were designed by nature to see in nature patterns of our design. Those patterns have to be given an identity, and for thousands of years many of those identities were called gods.

In his 1993 book, Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko suggests that belief in God may be something similar to what we see when we look at the pattern in the Kanizsa-square illusion. The experience, Kosko suggests, is not unlike “our vague glimpses of God or His Shadow or His Handiwork … an illusion in the neural wiring of a creature recently and narrowly evolved on a fluke of a planet in a fluke of a galaxy in a fluke of a universe.” The neural wiring in our brain creates “neural nets,” or the sequence of neurons and the gaps between neurons called synapses, that together operate in the brain to store memory and pattern information. “These God glimpses or the feeling of God recognition,” Kosko intimates, “may be just a ‘filling in’ or déjà-vu type anomaly of our neural nets.” The Kanizsa square works to create the illusion of a square that is not really there. The four little Pac-man figures are turned at right angles to one another to create four false boundaries and a bright interior. But there is no square in this figure. The square is in our mind. There appears to be Something There, when in actual fact there is nothing there. As pattern-seeking animals it is virtually impossible for us not to see the pattern. The same may be true for God. For most of us it is very difficult not to see a pattern of God when looking at the false boundaries and bright interiors of the universe.

The Kanizsa-square illusion works by fooling the mind into thinking there is a square. All that is seen are four figures turned at right angles to create four false boundaries and a bright interior. Perhaps God is an illusion of the mind, generated by the false boundaries and bright interiors of the universe.

Do people see the pattern of God in the world and in their lives, and therefore believe in God for perfectly rational reasons? And if they do, does that pattern represent Something There or nothing there? Or are there other reasons people believe, such as an emotional need, a fear of death, a hope for immortality, an explanation for evil and suffering, a foundation for morality, parental upbringing, cultural influence, historical momentum, and so on? To find out I decided to do what I always do when I want to know why people believe something—ask. I started off by asking skeptics—defined simply as readers of Skeptic magazine and members of the Skeptics Society—if they believe in God, why or why not, and why they think other people do. I then asked a random sample of the American population (defined by a professional polling agency, which provided the database) the same set of questions. The results were most enlightening. But first we must consider another issue: Is the propensity to believe in God hard-wired, either genetically or in the brain?

IS BELIEF IN GOD GENETICALLY PROGRAMMED?

The renowned British psychologist Hans Eysenck, not noted for timidity in commenting on controversial issues, rang in on the God Question with this quip: “I think there’s a gene for religiosity and I regret that I don’t have it.” Is there a gene for religiosity? No, any more than there is a gene for intelligence, aggression, or any other complex human expression. Such phenomena are the product of a complex interactive feedback loop between genes and environment, where many genes code for a range of reactions to environmental stimuli. The relative role of genes and environment would be impossible