ABSTRACT
A belief in one God or in many gods is almost universal in mankind, but there are individuals—and worthy ones—who live full, kindly and creative lives without, apparently, any such belief. So a belief in God, though widespread, is not a necessity in Man's life, as are oxygen and food. Without these last, no one can live for long; without a belief in God, some people can develop harmoniously—indeed, it is sometimes difficult to tell from their behaviour, even under stress, whether those people believe in God or not. The idea of God comes gradually, and is built up partly by the child's own phantasies and partly by what its parents tell it. The idea of a loving God is derived from the relation to the parents, but it is not at all a simple evolution: it is a representation in the child's mind of what it pictured its parents to be—usually a very different thing.
