re: Why to believe in God?

Faith is a very personal thing. People often fall in and out of it as they move throughout their life. I know I have.

A lot of people will hit you with the big picture stuff, but there are a lot of 'smaller' things that draw me towards faith.

The Bible when interpretations of it aren't warped by man is a great foundation for a society to live by. When you look at it from the perspective of people who lived long ago, the principles in it not only serve the purpose of being a field manual on living a godly life, but those principles often go a long way in helping you and your community keep existing in the first place. A small village of 5-6 families could be devastated by infidelity that's discovered by one of the parties, for example.

I also think there is some kind of 'power' or whatever you want to call it in embracing traditions that people have done for thousands of years. I'm not Catholic, but I'm drawn toward Catholicism a bit for that reason. And just the act of joining together and communing with people in your community who generally share a similar value set contributes to that as well, but its also just a logical thing to do.

Another thing for me is the lessons and power of individual stories in the Bible. I don't think he is the world's greatest mind or anything by any means, but Jordan Peterson's series on Exodus was great. There are a ton of themes in that book that repeat themselves all over the Bible and all over other stories we love ever since.

Also on the point about polytheistic religions, I think for people back then that weren't as connected as we are now, and even not as much as some other cultures were even in the times that polytheism was prevalent, you had more of a sense of isolation. Even Rome for instance thought it was the center of the universe, and were traveling to the far reaches of the wild north to tame savages and such. So there is this sense that you're the focus of everything and all of these conflicting forces are happening to you and your environment... just seems like it would be harder to imagine one force controlling all of that. Several different forces, sometimes in conflict with each you (and at times YOU) just makes more sense within the world view.