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Why do YOU believe in God? Religion is just a way of satisfying 16 basic human desires, scientist claims

New theory claims religions are an attempt to satisfy basic human desires
Psychologist says it helps to explain the many contradictions in religion
He says the basic desires include curiosity, family, power and status
Atheists also tend to be people seeking to fulfil a desire for independence

Published: 03:32 EST, 13 October 2015 | Updated: 10:06 EST, 13 October 2015

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The history of the Christian church, the pursuit of personal desire has been frowned upon and at times even fervently discouraged.

But a new theory of why people believe in God has claimed that religion is simply an attempt to satisfy 16 basic human desires that afflict all human beings.

Professor Steven Reiss, a psychologist at Ohio State University, claims this may also help to explain why many of the world's major religions are so wracked with contradictions.

Religious belief is more about meeting a complex mix of 16 basic human desires than an attempt to find a greater meaning, according to psychologist Professor Steven Reiss. He says people will seek out religion to help them feel part of a family, for example, such as during Catholic mass (pictured)

He insists it's impossible to boil religion down to a single motivation and that to be successful a religion needs to appeal to the various of human nature.

So while people who are humble may find the idea of an all-powerful God appealing, those who are status seeking will find the idea that God made humans in his own image attractive.

THE 16 DESIRES THAT MAKES RELIGION APPEAL TO MAN

Curiosity

Acceptance

Family

Honour

Idealism

Independence

Order

Physical activity

Power

Romance

Saving

Social contact

Status

Tranquility

Eating

Vengeance

Professor Reiss said: 'It doesn't matter whether God exists or not as religious belief is aimed at fulfilling our basic human desires.

'If you want to build a religion that will have a lot of followers, you have to address all of the human desires in strong form and weak form.

'If you insist the only way to reach God is through mediation and study then extroverts will stay away while if you teach the opposite then introverts will stay away.

'You have to have a religion that will support the values of all these people.'

Professor Reiss argues previous attempts to explain religion in terms of psychology have been too narrow by focusing on its ability to provide a moral framework or a way of coping with death.

Writing in a new book The 16 Strivings for God, he says religions instead address all 16 of the basic human desires at once - curiosity, acceptance, family, honor, idealism, independence, order, physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, eating, status, tranquility and vengeance.

He said that while everyone has these basic desires, they experience them in different levels and so their motivations will be different.

His conclusion looking at motivation after surveying 100,000 people about how they embrace different goals.

Psychologist Professor Steven Reiss (left) claims religion can be boiled down to an attempt to fulfil the 16 basic desires that afflict humans in his new book (right)

Professor Reiss said: 'We have looked at about 270 different religious beliefs and practices and how they connect to basic human desires.

FLOODS AND FAMINE MAY HAVE KICKSTARTED WORLD'S RELIGIONS

They often form a central part of most biblical stories, but it appears that floods, famines and plagues may have also helped to start belief in some gods in the first place.

Researchers at North Carolina State University found that belief in all-powerful and moralising gods tended to appear at times of hardship in human history.

They claim that believing in such a supreme deity helps to ensure people within a society live by certain moral rules that are necessary when living in harsh environments or in times of hardship.

The researchers studied the origins of 583 religious societies around the world.

They compared these to climate, rainfall and plant growth data for each area to build up a historical picture of the conditions each society was living in.

The findings may help to shed light on how religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam first emerged and why stories of hardship play such a central role.

'I think just about everything in religion is an expression of one of the 16 basic desires or a combination of them.

'For example, if you are extremely ambitious, you will value achievement much more than the normal person. God is seen as the creator of the universe, which must be the ultimate achievement, so that will appeal to you.

'If you are a penitent person, then in the wrath of god in the bible will have value to you. But if you are the opposite personality type – a peacekeeper – you will be turned off by a wrathful god.

'They instead have the God of turning the other cheek.

'Religion comes in opposites to be attractive to different personalities of the population.'

Differences in individual desires can also help to explain why certain people will embrace one particular religion over another.

The tradition of unity within the Catholic Church and the idea of its followers being part of a 'flock', for example, is a major draw for those who have a strong desire for family, says Professor Reiss.

In some cases it can also help determine whether someone believes in a religion at all.

Professor Reiss claims that certain practices like Holy Communion in the Catholic faith may be part of an unwitting attempt to fulfill basic human desires

Professor Reiss said: 'A strong desire for independence pushes you towards self-reliance. You don't really want to rely upon anything and these people are more likely to be atheists.

'On the other hand people who want very low amounts of independence will be attracted by the interdependence of religion and the organisation of the church.

'Religion also needs to compete with secular society so if people find they can satisfy their desires more effectively in a secular way than through religion they are more likely to turn to this.'

THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

The creation of the universe

According Gerald Schroeder believes time when the universe was created was about a trillion times slower, due to what he calls the 'stretching factor' in Einstein's equations.

Einstein's model of 'general relativity,' the faster things go, the slower time moves. And Schroeder says because light moves so fast, it affects time.

Schroeder argues this might explain how God could have created the universe in six days - each of the creator's days lasted 24 trillion hours. This would be about 14 billion years.

Life on Earth came out of clay

The Bible, Koran and even Greek mythology claim that all life on Earth came from clay.

A study in 2013 attempted to back up these claims. It said clay acts as a breeding laboratory for tiny molecules and chemicals which it 'absorbs like a sponge'.

The process takes billions of years, during which the chemicals react to each other to form proteins, DNA and, eventually, living cells, scientists told the journal Scientific Reports.

Biological Engineers from Cornell University's department for Nanoscale Science in New York believe clay 'might have been the birthplace of life on Earth'.

Adam and Eve

In his book River Out Of Eden, the atheist Richard Dawkins set out to take us back to one common ancestor - a black woman who lived in Africa a quarter of a million years ago.

He used a complicated mathematical model to work backwards through our DNA genealogy.

Last year a study found most common male ancestor, 'Adam' existed 9,000 years earlier than scientists believed.

UK researchers claim that 'Adam' walked the earth 209,000 years ago, contradicting a recent study that suggested the Y chromosome predated humanity.

Their findings puts 'Adam' within the timeframe of his other half 'Eve', the genetic maternal ancestor of mankind.

Parting of the Red Sea

Another event in the Bible that has been targeted by scientists is Moses's parting of the Red Sea, in time for the Israelites to cross and escape the Pharoh's encroaching army.

In 2010, Carl Drew, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), transformed the Exodus's story of the Red Sea parting into a computer model.

He changed the 'strong east wind' into ones that were 63 miles per hour, applied it to a reconstruction of a spot in the Nile Delta,

He concluded that this could indeed have 'divided the waters.'

The Burning Bush

This is a pivotal moment in the Passover story, in which God speaks to Moses from a burning bush and tells him: 'I am come down to deliver [the Israelites] out of the hand of the Egyptians.'

Scientists believe the bush was either growing over a natural gas vent, or could have spontaneously combusted because of local volcanic action.

Norwegian physicist Dag Kristian Dysthe has studied the subsurface combustion of organic material in Mali, West Africa, and concludes such events do happen in the natural world.

As for the voice of God, Hebrew University psychology professor Benny Shannon proposes that Moses was taking a local hallucinogenic substance derived from leaves of the ayahuasca plant found in the Negev and Sinai deserts.

Noah's flood

In the book of Genesis, God despairs of human corruption and decides to flood the Earth, instructing Noah to build an ark to save himself, his family and a pair of each animal species.

Researchers have suggested that, during a warming period in the cycle of the Earth's temperature around 5600BC, melting glaciers caused an onrush of seawater from the Mediterranean.

This cascaded through Turkey's Straits of Bosporus - dry land at the time - to the Black Sea, transforming it from a freshwater lake into a vast saltwater inlet.

In the 1990s, drawing on archaeological and anthropological evidence, Colombia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman claimed that 'ten cubic miles of water poured through each day', and that the deluge continued for at least 300 days.

More than 60,000 square miles of land were flooded, and the lake's level rose by hundreds of feet after merging with the Mediterranean, triggering mass animal migrations across Europe.

The researchers, whose findings have been backed up by carbon dating and sonar imaging, claim that the story of Noah's flood had its origin in this cataclysmic event.