"If there were gods they would have made people smart enough to realise that there are no gods". This is hardly worthy of rising to the level of being called a paradox.
If what we call, G.d, exists as a First Cause, or some such, then one would imagine there being purpose and will embodied in physical reality to produce an outcome. If a being sentient to the extent of a human were to emerge in such a system then that would be even more interesting, because such a state of sentience is totally unnecessary and a serious overshoot by natural order. For this being to then evolve abilities to manipulate the very natural order it came from would be an absolute freak-out for natural order. I mean, if natural order alone created us then surely it also had the capacity to keep us constrained within all its naturally occurring boundaries. But we got well and truly out, didn't we?
And the fact that in the last 10% or so of our existence we find every race, tribe, culture to have ever existed, as far as we know, has evolved into a belief in some kind of First Cause is at least interesting and neither scientific, religious, nor worthy of a reasoning mind to just dismiss as a relic of the Dark Ages, a state of gullibility, or fear of death. These are cliches without any substance. Remember how many people were destroyed because of their beliefs, not as some protection from fear of death. Belief caused their deaths.
In this scientific age it's so very easy to forget that science has not penetrated one of the big questions of how a universe began, how life arose from matter, how a being can be as conscious as we are or what consciousness is. Then we have a universe that is 100% contingent, that being that every aspect of this universe is the effect of a cause. One might then suggest that the universe itself is contingent and is also the effect of a cause and as far as science is concerned, no cause has yet been found inside the effect it caused, so we can say with a degree of safety that whatever caused this universe, order, limitations, immutable natural laws, life and sentience will never be found inside its cause, nor will it be understood by anything that might arise within its cause.
The fact that every gathering of humans has a religious belief and science has not cracked any of the great conundrums, suggests that something we call G.d might very well have caused us and then enabled natural processes of evolution to develop us to the point whereby were able to recognised ever so dimly, that we are the result of a Cause beyond our capacity to ever understand. So we were made and whatever it is that made us has enabled every gathering of humans on earth to recognise the Cause. Not to mention that every known ancient civilisation that arose did so on a foundation of religious belief. Not bad going for a mass delusion.
Now I understand that fundamental religion inoculates most people away from ever considering what this Cause might be. The god of religion we can be sure does not exist, but don't be too sure that science won't one-day get all woke on this. They have been busting a nut to eliminate religion for ages now, just as religion is trying to call evolution a religious belief so that it gets contaminated with the same mould and idiocy as religion. Neither side owns the absolute truth, but one thing we do know is natural order did not cause itself and then come to rest inside itself.
