PZ Myers linked to a study done in Britain that shows that 62% of people over there consider God to be male, which itself is not surprising at all (perhaps unexpectedly low). He goes on to discuss the absurdity of such a belief:

Some day, they’ve got to ask people some other details of god’s physical attributes. What shade is his skin color? What color eyes does he have? At his age, does he get regular prostate exams?

However, he does not delve into the implications that such a belief is so common: it is just further proof that every individual person makes up their own god and own religion.

What is god? What does he do? How does he interact with the universe? How does he treat us? What god is and what he/she/it does is something that every theist has a different answer for. Many of them claim to belong to a certain religion with certain holy books that say what god is, but they all have their own conception of god and they pick-and-choose from the dogma for things that support their own ideas. Many people have a preconceived view of a strong authority figure as male, and so god is male.

I hear all the time that America was founded on “Christian values.” What does that mean? Are the values of the Inquisition values of Christianity? Freedom and individual liberties, values which this country actually was founded on, are all but absent in the Bible and the history of Christianity (and in fact antithetical to them). The values of early Christians were completely different from the values of most modern Christians, and so were their moral beliefs on what is right and wrong. Even if you take “Christian values” to be what the majority beliefs at the time, it is a standard which has changed dramatically, over and over again, for thousands of years.

It was not because any particular change in dogma; the Bible is still the Bible. It is because people at different times had different cultural upbringings, and their beliefs are based on that. People thousands of years ago had their own values and preconceptions, and they formed their religion in that image.

People who are raised Christian tend to be Christian; people who are raised Muslim tend to be Muslim. People’s on cultural upbringing gives them preconceptions which are hard to shake off, and most people never do. But not only will they have similar cultural beliefs, more than likely. Their own individual view of those values and beliefs will shape that cultural perspective into an individual belief. A person is not just Christian, but has their own individual concept of what Christianity is and means.

The fundie Kirk Cameron once said in a debate I watched a long time ago (which is unfortunately not available on youtube anymore) that religion is not a part of culture, and that a belief in god formed from your own values is a “delusion.” I actually laughed at the computer screen.