In this first episode of a new series within Psyche Podcast, I begin a deep dive into Jon Mills’ Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality by reflecting on the introduction and the enduring psychological power of the God idea.

I explore why human beings seem so drawn to ultimate explanations, how desire and imagination shape belief, and why spiritual hunger may tell us as much about the structure of the psyche as it does about theology. I also make clear that, although my own position in life is a kind of agnostic atheism, I am not interested in mocking faith or reducing religion to something simplistic.

Many of my clients are deeply religious, and we often find deeply meaningful ways of relating to each other across those differences. This episode opens the series by asking a philosophical, psychoanalytic, and deeply human question: why God at all?