Man created God

[quoting]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

[Atrus]

I think that the idea is likely true, demonstrably so depending on the God in question.

As to why, it's called rationalization and everyone does this to a different extent. The only difference is that primitive humans didn't have as accurate a definition of reality as modern humans do, and so erroneously assumed the Supernatural.

If I came in last in a 100m race, I may try to rationalize the loss to the wind, what I ate that morning, stress, the competitors, friends, or any number of reasonable and unreasonable conditions as my frameset of reality allows. I don't assume Zarbog the god of losing 100m races into existence. Nor do I assume that winning in some manner is related to Gefel, Barsto, and Unma, the gods of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

Primitive humans simply did not have the frameset of reality to rule such things out as I do.

[RAFH]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

Yes, men created god(s).

For many reasons. To explain the world about them. Why did things happen. They didn't understand their world.

It probably started with ancestor worship. The older people in a clan die, the older people were often their leaders, the wisest of the clan, the ones they looked to for advice, decisions, when to leave the high pastures, when to go to everything. They didn't understand dying. They see people sleeping and figure death is like sleeping, only much more profound. Plus dying isn't exactly what anybody wants, especially when death often accompanies trauma or disease and is usually unpleasant. They didn't want the older ones to die and lose that store of wisdom. They didn't want to lose loved ones. As you grow up and mature there is always the adults, parents, grandparents ahead of you. You do what they tell you to do. And, of course, there is the tendency of those in power to want to stay in power, even after death. So they easily buy into the scheme. Meanwhile, they can claim access to previous dead leaders and healers. They can use this power to control the clan, even to threatening to exact revenge from after death upon whomever kills them. The practice grows.

Humans are naturally curious and we do have a curious intellect. We are very good at asking why. Its one of our most successful survival traits. People who figure out why and how tend to survive better. And not just survive better, but live better. They have more food, less difficulties, fewer sicknesses, fewer injuries, suffer fewer environmental depredations. After a several thousand generations the trait has been selected for. God(s) gave man a way to attempt to bend reality to their benefit. Humans are like that, perhaps its a character flaw, we are always looking for an 'in'. And we are always looking for an easy way to get by. So people are prone to believe in 'powers', if you can get them to believe you can influence the 'powers' then you can skate. Free food, less work, more respect, more influence, easier access to sexual partners, more security, more ability to bend the rules.

The corrupt leading the gullible. And they all like the system. Face it, a lot of people don't like to think. They don't want responsibility. They don't want to risk anything. Take the easy safe way. There are also those that like to think, those that like to make decisions, whether or not they are good at it. The sheep like being sheep. The wolves like being wolves. Sheepdogs like being sheepdogs and running, protecting the sheep, whether or not they are good at it.

All this contributes to creation of imaginary friends.

Once humans settled down, somebody had to tend the fields and, of course, somebody had to live in the big house and drink the wine and eat the produce and enjoy the efforts of the working class. Fact is there is a huge benefit to maintaining that whole setup.

[Biff the unclean]

Man created devils and evil sprits to exploit the actual fears that others had of wild animals (leopards and such) in the dark. He would “drive away” the phony devils and gain status in the tribe. However these early conmen were powerless against real problems though and that failure cause them to loose status. So they invented god as a protection and appointed themselves as god’s intermediary.
They drive away fake devils they get offerings.
They fail to drive real problems away, then they blame the victim for not being right with god…and they get more offerings.
Since these god inventors had no morals to worry about they had a deal where they could not lose. They would profit no matter what the outcome.

[RareBird]

In the ancient world where the nature of the Earth as a spinning orb was not know, weather--the most imposing force upon the common folk for better or for worse, had no apparent natural reason. Since weather was not understood but still mattered as to whether there would be feast or famine, comfort or extreme hardship, the notion arose that the weather must be "sent" by a governing force. After all, to them it simply came out of nowhere and went away to nowhere--they didn't perceive the actual dynamic of solar convection upon the oceans in a global ecosystem. In as much as the weather had no obvious reason except to "provide" for the people, it was natural for a culture to develop around hoping to influence the "provider" of weather to treat the people favorably. With a few coincidences of having good weather follow rites or sacrifices and/or having bad weather follow some scandal or indiscression, it was deemed that people can influence the provider of weather--the very fulcrum upon which the direction of the immediate future balanced.

IMO, it was not about "ancestor worship" to start off with but much more likely about not understanding the nature of the systems that shaped reality. Man thus invented god as a fairly reasonable assumption under the knowledge levels of the time.

[Gawen]

It is my belief the Old Testament is a tribal book. The imaginary supreme authority in the Old Testament is an entity particular to early Hebrew tribes in the beginning and to Israel later on; and Judaism is a tribal belief system merging Babylonian-Mesopotamian and Egyptian-Palestinian elements. It has nothing to say to the other peoples of the earth, unless these other peoples accept it as one of the origins of their belief system, like Moslems.

In the light of the research done, there is no doubt that parts of the Old Testament, which do not deal with the actual history of the people, are inventions or copies of other people’s writings by the people writing it. It is mainly a compilation of the regional myths and legends of various peoples, and an adoption of certain aspects and attitudes of regional cults, gathered and edited to facilitate the progress of a certain group of people into a religious pseudo-nationhood.

Deutero-Isaiah was the first one to have a statement on the universal one God. Here the concept of the false Gods is introduced for the first time. Declaring all the other Gods as 'false' is fundamental for monotheism. Hebrews were polytheists, Israel were polytheists. They had their own local Gods, and the implant of monotheism has resulted in a contradiction between these local Gods of a chosen people and their omnipotent God excluding all the other Gods. The pre-exilic God was a bloodthirsty, vengeful, jealous, anthropomorphic tribal God, mostly spreading fear. Post-exilic God is completely different. This God is so far away, so high up, so removed from this world that he needs go-betweens or messengers to communicate. This is not the tribal God YHWH anymore. He is now the perfect universal supreme creator.

Tell me this isn't imagination.

Oh, I forgot. What about after the Babylonian Exile?
• Polytheism came to an end and monotheism took over.
• The anthropomorphic tribal God has left the scene and the perfect universal God took his place.
• The dead went to ‘sheol’ to join his/her family, and there was no afterlife; but after the exile both immortality and paradise replaced this gloomy prospect.
• The political Messiah, which was thought to have been coming to establish the kingdom of God was replaced by the trancendent Messiah.
• There were no angels or demons before, but they took their place in the post-exilic belief system together with the 'holy spirit.'
• Primitive laws were replaced by elaborate and complicated code of moral and secular laws.

God sure like to keep on perfecting, doesn't he?

[GenesisNemesis]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

Hell, when I was a New-Ager, I lied to myself all the time to make myself feel better.

[Cheerful Charlie]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?


Near Death experiences, lucid dreams, hallucinations, temporal lobe epilepsy, out-of-body-experiences, the Aha! effect, deja vue effects, oceaning feelings, peak experiences and a million other brain fart effects.

Cheerful Charlie

[Mageth]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God?

Yes.

If so, Why would he make it up?

Could be many reasons. For example, one thing about us humans is that we have a natural tendency to project intentionality onto more than just other humans - onto the weather, for example. If you don't believe this, just think of the times you've cursed your damned car, or slapped your TV or computer monitor out of frustration. So when Oop, way back when, was struck and killed by lightning, Oola may have raised a fist and screamed into the clouds, "Why, why, cloud-thing, did you kill my mate? You bastard!" Or maybe she shouted thanks...who knows? In any case, our tendency to project intentionality onto things lends us to a vulnerability to spirit-belief, and thus to god-belief.

To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

That might be one reason, but there could be others. I suspect that god(s) were invented more than once, and for a variety of reasons.

And it might not have been a case of 'lying to yourself', but perhaps a case of 'lying to the people':

One interesting and plausible hypothesis on how God came to be created is that shaman-like magic came first. Shamans would invoke various "magical" objects or perform various rituals to bring the rain, promote good crops, heal the sick, etc.

Only it didn't always work. Probably not very often. And the people, naturally, blamed the shaman. This shaman doesn't work, he's no good; let's get rid of this one and find another one. Sometimes, they'd kill him (or her).

So some enterprising shaman finally said, "Fuck this. I've got to find someone ELSE to blame when my magic doesn't work. I know; I'll invent this God thing (Sky-God, or Sun-God, or Moon-God, or Thunder-God, or a bunch of gods, etc). Then, when the magic doesn't work, I'll tell the people it's because God is capricious, you can't always make her do what you want, or that they've done something to displease God."

So the shaman became a priest, and the blame for the failure of "magic" was laid on the people.

[ecco]

RAFH:
Yes, men created god(s).

For many reasons. To explain the world about them. Why did things happen. They didn't understand their world.

I agree completely with the above. Where did we come from? Why did my mother have to die? What happens to us when we die? Where can we find better hunting or farming grounds?

Times, and people really haven’t changed much. Some among us still answer these questions as they were answered before there was writing. God created us all. Mommy died because god had better plans for her. Good people go to heaven, bad people to hell. God told our Leader to invade Iraq to help us get cheaper oil.

[Chuck Rightmire]

quoting "Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?"

I suggest that man created gods out of the primitive sense of spirit. Early humans learned very quickly that the world was a dangerous place. They also realized that when a being (human or animal) died, the breath left it, sometimes with an audible sigh, sometimes just with an end to breathing. But there was something that ceased. From there, I suspect it was an easy path to develop the concept of spirit in every sense. They were probably the first to realize that there might be motion even inside rocks which had mana or spirit as did obviously living creatures.

Each human would have stepped carefully to avoid angering the spirits of the rocks, the mountain that could toss rocks down on them (and lava), the storm that could drown, freeze or otherwise devastate them; and the animals that could make them prey. They took this concept of spirit into the early villages where they would pray to the spirits of corn and of animals to make them available. But it was primarily a spirit world according to the likes of Joseph Campbell and others. If a man treated the spirits right, then he could send them to do the dirty on someone who had treated him badly, or he could use the spirit(s) to help him survive and get what he wanted.

Then came the development of cities and the primitive spirit tokens of the earlier human concepts of spirit became the enforcers. The gods of Akkad and Sumer and Babylon acted in two ways: to help keep the populace of these cities in line; and to help the city in the wars against rival cities. They became the enforcer of morals and ruled the cities with a hand stronger than kings. It becomes evident in the development of the god images from the shaped, stylized forms of early homo sapiens to the human headed beasts or beast headed humans of the early cities, until they developed into the idealized forms of the Greeks, a Samuel Kramer, the discoverer of Ur of the Chaldees posited.

So, yes, humans created the gods to serve their own purposes and the early spirits and first gods developed into the sky images we have today.

[Atheos]

Man came up with the ideas of unicorns, vampires, elves, faries, imps, leprechauns, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the fountain of youth, the cyclops, fire breathing dragons, mermaids, zombies, the Wizard of Oz, Paul Bunyan, Popeye, Superman, myriads of possible space aliens and thousands of other mythical creatures.

Mankind came up with hammers, nails, saws, wrenches, vises, presses, photography, the telegraph, radio, motion pictures, television, x-ray imaging, magnetic resonance imaging, spectrography and thousands of other real tools and technologies.

Mankind came up with novels about love, war, horror, the future, the past, mystery and suspense, comedy and thousands of other subjects.

Mankind came up with myriad art forms, from simple drawings, pottery and beads to complex symphonies, statues and murals.

Surely this is not a question about whether or not man has the ability to create the concept of gods. Considering the thousands of gods (http://www.godchecker.com) mankind has created over the centuries the question seems moot.

[c davis]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

And what do you believe?

[quoting]

And what do you believe?

I believe each generation has to create its own imaginative conception of God. During Axial Age (800 B.C. to 200 B.C.), political and economic changes led to new religious ideologies throughout the known civilized world like Taoism and Confucianism in China, Buddhism and Hinduism in India, the rational philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in Greece, differing concepts of monotheism in Israel and in Iran. But a personal God could easily become no more than a projection of humankind's limited hopes and fears; in short, an idol. But that still doesnt mean God doesnt exist or that God was first made of Man. You could say than what we see are mans ideas about God. Not that man created God but they were what man thought out God to be and thats different from saying man created God out of imagination.Really it comes down to we dont have out right facts that man created God. So either man created the idea of God or mans' idea of God evolved to what it is today from something that we cant explain.

[Gawen]

Really it comes down to we dont have out right facts that man created God. So either man created the idea of God or mans' idea of God evolved to what it is today from something that we cant explain.Then it makes no difference whatsoever. The only thing for it is for god to come down and show us where we're wrong.

[Mageth]

So either man created the idea of God or mans' idea of God evolved to what it is today from something that we cant explain.

So either we have ideas about a god that doesn't exist or ideas about an extant God we actually know nothing about.

[RAFH]

I believe each generation has to create its own imaginative conception of God. During Axial Age (800 B.C. to 200 B.C.),

Hello?

political and economic changes led to new religious ideologies throughout the known civilized world like Taoism and Confucianism in China, Buddhism and Hinduism in India, the rational philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in Greece, differing concepts of monotheism in Israel and in Iran.

Oh goody!

But a personal God could easily become no more than a projection of humankind's limited hopes and fears; in short, an idol. But that still doesnt mean God doesnt exist or that God was first made of Man. You could say than what we see are mans ideas about God. Not that man created God but they were what man thought out God to be and thats different from saying man created God out of imagination.

Really?

Really it comes down to we dont have out right facts that man created God. So either man created the idea of God or mans' idea of God evolved to what it is today from something that we cant explain.

Could have been Spiny Norman created the concept and told it to Dinsdale while Doug was sleeping.

[I_Can_See]

Hi all,

Brand new here. I currently believe in God but am questioning why. So be gentile with me. I came to this site at the direction of my wife who has gone through a deconversion over the past couple years. I admire her courage and would like to do my own research to get answers to questions that I have always ignored or simply just accepted out of conformity.

My problem is that although some of what you guys discuss seems logical most is just flat out over my head. I suppose it is similar to a nonchristian visiting a charismatic church for the first time. The lingo and content of the message is foreign to me.

Anyway. I will continue to read and keep my dictionary close so I can not only sponge from your ideals, views and opinions but so I can have intelligent conversations with the woman I adore.

Thanks!!

[RAFH]

Hi all,

Brand new here. I currently believe in God but am questioning why. So be gentile with me. I came to this site at the direction of my wife who has gone through a deconversion over the past couple years. I admire her courage and would like to do my own research to get answers to questions that I have always ignored or simply just accepted out of conformity.

My problem is that although some of what you guys discuss seems logical most is just flat out over my head. I suppose it is similar to a nonchristian visiting a charismatic church for the first time. The lingo and content of the message is foreign to me.

Anyway. I will continue to read and keep my dictionary close so I can not only sponge from your ideals, views and opinions but so I can have intelligent conversations with the woman I adore.

Thanks!!

Hey I_Can_See, welcome to IIDB.

Glad you are willing to open your mind and attempt to see reality for what it is.

Any time you have questions, ask. There only dumb question is the one that doesn't get asked. If there is anything you don't understand, ask, the only stupid question is "Why didn't I ask about ... ...?"

Just a small note, gentile means a non-arabic, ie - western european versus middle eastern. Gentle is being soft and easy. No biggie, just trying to help out.

[Mizled]

Hi all.
Welcome. I'm happy to see you're open minded and reasonable. And the lingo here is fairly easy to pick up on, it just becomes a chore to write the entire names of arguments or positions so they're abbreviated (IE - "Transcendental Argument for God" becomes "TAG").

[Gawen]

Hi all, Hiya and welcome.

I currently believe in God but am questioning why.This is refreshing. Christian theists are not really supposed to 'question'...you know.

So be gentile with me. I actually thought that was a pun and gave a little snicker.

I came to this site at the direction of my wife Smart girl. Hold on to that one!

who has gone through a deconversion over the past couple years. You may wish to read the deconversion stories, but I am embarrassed to say I can't find them at the moment.

I admire her courage and would like to do my own research to get answers to questions that I have always ignored or simply just accepted out of conformity. It won't be easy and most likely take some time. Be patient. Personally, I came here to find out why I'm an atheist.

My problem is that although some of what you guys discuss seems logical most is just flat out over my head. This is exactly my thought when I started here.

The lingo and content of the message is foreign to me. This shall soon pass. But also remember the lingo and content of the Bible's message can also be foreign and easily misunderstood.

Anyway. I will continue to read and keep my dictionary close I have two book dictionarys and an online one at hand. I have a bible (KJV) and an online one at hand.

so I can not only sponge from your ideals, views and opinions Sponge away.

but so I can have intelligent conversations with the woman I adore.Gotta love that.

[I_Can_See]

Just a small note, gentile means a non-arabic, ie - western european versus middle eastern. Gentle is being soft and easy. No biggie, just trying to help out.

Ha!! Darn spell check only works when you don't spell another work correctly!


Okay guys,
As I read some of your thoughts on why man may have created God I am puzzled.

I suggest that man created gods out of the primitive sense of spirit. etc...
I believe each generation has to create its own imaginative conception of God.

So are we suggesting that as our world has advanced technologically, socially and intellectually that so too has our creation of God and what fits our world today? I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable. But your thoughts point to religious foundations such as these as though they were and will continue to be fabricated and manipulated differently for every generation. Am I off base here?

[RAFH]

Ha!! Darn spell check only works when you don't spell another work correctly!


Okay guys,
As I read some of your thoughts on why man may have created God I am puzzled.




So are we suggesting that as our world has advanced technologically, socially and intellectually that so too has our creation of God and what fits our world today? I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable. But your thoughts point to religious foundations such as these as though they were and will continue to be fabricated and manipulated differently for every generation. Am I off base here?

Yeah, you'd be surprised at what you can write and not bother spell check in the least. Its a good aide, but no replacement for self check.

I don't know if you could say each generation fabricates its own documentation, for most major religion their holy book remains static. Its one of the greatest strengths as well as one of the greatest weaknesses of religions. But those books are constantly being reinterpreted and how they are manipulated often depends on their interpretations. I don't usually find much difference in those interpretations but I am also coming from a very different place, to me the issue is not the details but the basic question of the supernatural in the first place. I simply don't see how that which is insensible, which cannot be sensed by any means in the sensible world, can have effect in the sensible world. The supernatural becomes irrelevant. The short and simple to understand example is how can ghosts affect something if they are able to transit walls. It would seem their hands would simple pass through whatever they would attempt to grasp the same as they pass through walls.

[kennethamy]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

Doesn't Man create all ideas? (Remember, you are not talking about God. You are talking about the idea of God).

[Gawen]

The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable. {{bold mine}}Try this thread.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=205919

[Bobinius]

Doesn't Man create all ideas? (Remember, you are not talking about God. You are talking about the idea of God).

Well, then, is God more than an idea? If yes, how can we tell?

[Atheos]

...

So are we suggesting that as our world has advanced technologically, socially and intellectually that so too has our creation of God and what fits our world today? I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable. But your thoughts point to religious foundations such as these as though they were and will continue to be fabricated and manipulated differently for every generation. Am I off base here?

Speaking strictly in terms of Christianity are you not aware of the vast amount of backing and filling "christianity" has had to do over the centuries to continue to preserve belief in the Bible?

As an example there aren't many christians left who believe that the earth is less 10,000 years old (as one would surmise using simple math to add the ages of Jesus's bloodline). The "6 day" creation has also been rendered metaphoric by most believers in order to reconcile what we know about how our planet and solar system came into existence with the myths contained in the bible. Geology clearly shows that no universal flood (Noah's) happened approximately 4,000 years ago so lots of creative re-interpretations of that myth have been forthcoming. Since the bible doesn't even address many modern concerns such as smoking, drugs, abortion, euthanasia, etc., nearly every modern believer has had to use personal opinion or appeal to authority to render a tenuous position. The bible's clear teachings that women are to be "silent" and completely submissive to men are disregarded (by most believers) now as concessions made to fit the time in which they were written and not binding today. The bible's clear endorsement of slavery is completely ignored by modern believers who are now civilized and educated enough to realize that slavery is an absolute abomination even though it was accepted as just a fact of life in biblical times.

Galileo Galilei was imprisoned as a heretic for suggesting that the earth was not the center of "creation" as the bible suggests. Eventually the church had to get used to the idea that the earth revolved around the sun and that the universe was a lot bigger than the skies (with stars that could be shaken from the sky, fall to earth and be trodden under the foot of a giant dragon) and the flat earth (from which Jesus could be taken to a mountain high enough that he could view "all kingdoms of the earth" from a single place).

Apart from that, the bible itself is nothing more than the result of powerful and influential men in the 4th century (and following) arbitrarily picking the "scriptures" they liked and denouncing as "heresy" the ones they didn't particularly care for. It's not like god miraculously caused books that he approved of to glow in the dark so folks could pick them out from the books he didn't approve of. Believers can apologize all they want to for the way in which the modern bible came into existence but all you have to do is look at the real history behind it and you can see for yourself how arbitrary and capricious the entire process was.

As if that weren't enough to chew on, there are literally tens of thousands of variant readings in the bible. Yes the modern translations are faithfully reproduced due to the advent of the printing press, but for many centuries copies were hand made and even with the utmost of care being taken by the copiers words were changed, sentences were added, modified, deleted, etc. Most (even christian) scholars agree that Mark 16:8 is actually the end of the book of Mark and the rest was added much later. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

I appreciate your willingness to investigate what you believe. Not many believers are willing to do this, but prefer to be bottle fed by their pastors their whole lives. It's "safe", comfortable, and doesn't require any effort on their part. Kudos to you! :notworthy:

[Alf]

I believe each generation has to create its own imaginative conception of God. During Axial Age (800 B.C. to 200 B.C.), political and economic changes led to new religious ideologies throughout the known civilized world like Taoism and Confucianism in China, Buddhism and Hinduism in India, the rational philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in Greece, differing concepts of monotheism in Israel and in Iran. But a personal God could easily become no more than a projection of humankind's limited hopes and fears; in short, an idol. But that still doesnt mean God doesnt exist or that God was first made of Man. You could say than what we see are mans ideas about God. Not that man created God but they were what man thought out God to be and thats different from saying man created God out of imagination.Really it comes down to we dont have out right facts that man created God. So either man created the idea of God or mans' idea of God evolved to what it is today from something that we cant explain.

The problem here is that there has never been any form of positive evidence that this deity exists in the first place. For that reason one can safely rule out the case that man's idea of god is man's attempt at trying to understand god.

If I see an ant and I then try to explain what I believe makes an ant tick and how it lives its life then it is my attempt at trying to describe an ant. But if I never saw an ant in the first place then it is clearly just me making stuff up in the first place and it just happens to have the name "ant" and it may or may not coincide with how we know ants are and if it does it is purely accidental. Of course, if we do not know if I made it up or I really saw an ant then a good match would be evidence that I really had seen an ant and that it was not purely accidental.

However, no such evidence can be made concerning deities. Consequently, we can positively conclude that they are all man made up. People have a vivid imagination and it has been used to make up all sorts of fantasy creatures - deities are just one subgroup of such fantasy beings.

Alf

[Alf]

So are we suggesting that as our world has advanced technologically, socially and intellectually that so too has our creation of God and what fits our world today? I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable. But your thoughts point to religious foundations such as these as though they were and will continue to be fabricated and manipulated differently for every generation. Am I off base here?

Hello there and welcome to IIDB!

First off, the christian religion has roots in an older tradition of the jewish religion and can also trace roots from greek philosophy and thinking. However, since its early start in 1st century it too has changed substantially although it has kept some things unchanged. These things may be enough for you to think that nothing has changed and that the belief is unchanging but this is not so. For one thing you have lots of denominations of christianity now that didn't exist back then. Back then you had "christianity" and that's it. Then later it diverged into slightly different beliefs - greek orthodoxy, roman catholic and several middle eastern sects as well as the egyptian coptic and ethiopian christianity. Later the roman catholic split off the protestants and the brittish church - this is partly political as the roman catholic church had substantial political power in those days but it also changed the religion. Did you know that the 10 commandments are different in the roman catholic church and the protestantic church and neither are identical to the 10 commandments that Moses got from God if the old testament is to be believed? In fact, if you read the old testament (OT for short) carefully you will find not just one set of 10 commandments there either - there are 3 sets which differ slightly in exaclty which 10 commandments they contains. This is evidence that while the "10 commandments" was important for jewish tradition and later christian tradition it wasn't really important what those 10 commandments were - as long as they were 10 in total and that they contained the important and easily remembered rules of not stealing or killing. These "basic" commandments has been kept in all the different sets unchanged while some other commandments has been replaced and obviously depends on exactly which tradition you subscribe to. It would then be wrong to just remember those commandments who has been kept the same in all versions and conclude that they are "eternal" and "unchanging". The fact that there are differences proves that they have in fact changed over the years and while some differences has been kept in the different jewish traditiosn they have also changed both when moving into the christian tradition and also changed when the different christian traditions split from each other.

If something so fundamental and down to the core of christianity as the 10 commandments can change the natural conclusion is that just about ANYTHING can change. In the early christianity not everyone viewed Jesus to be a deity - many saw him as a prophet and the most important prophet or rabbi. It wasn't until several centuries later that they declared him to be divine.

The fact that there are "christians" who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, in the virgin birth etc should be a great hint that things are not as firm and unchanging as you perhaps think. These things was "settled" to be the core of what christianity is and definitive characterstics of what it means to be christian by people centuries after the assumed crucifixion. The earliest christians did not necessarily follow those definitions and some would have disagreed.

So no, there is no reason to believe christianity or any other religion is "unchanging" or fixed - it is a very fluid matter. A quick check - do you oppose slavery? The idea that a person can own another person? Early christianity did not oppose slavery and in fact many slave owners used the bible to argue that it was their god given right to own slaves. I would think that most christians in modern times is apalled by such an idea. If christianity was unchanging how can it be that christians today can oppose slavery while christians at that time claimed to have their rights as slave owners from the very same bible that christians today read?

The truth is that although the text of the bible have only changed a little throughout the years but how it is read and how it is understood has changed enormously and as such christianity has changed with it.

Also, although an overview of the bible today is much the same as an overview would be 1000 years ago it has in fact changed a lot and not only due to change in language but also due to change in how we understand the bible. So it is flat out wrong that the bible hasn't changed.

Alf

[Sarpedon]

I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable.

Well, so what? One thing that one notices about religion is that people believe what they want to believe, and ignore anything that seems contrary. Most christians know about the dead sea scrolls, but have never read them, nor care what they say. Likewise, very few christians have ever read the bible. It doesn't actually matter what the bible says, because the bible isn't a big part of modern christianity. Its more of a symbol these days than a reference. For example, the Ten Commandments. Everyone talks about the Ten Commandments, and how important they are. Whenever anyone talks about them, I first ask for them to recite the ten. MOST OF THEM CAN'T! Second, I show them in the bible that there were actually Thirty commandments, rather than ten. This shocks them, without exception, because NONE OF THEM BOTHERED TO READ IT! This is how god gets modernized. Things that were once considered important get ignored, or relegated to symbol and metaphor. Religion is defined by what is believed and practiced, not by what is written, because people don't read what is written.

[Mageth]

I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable.

Elaine Pagels has done some interesting research on the "Gnostic Gospels" (a bit of a misnomer actually since all are not "gnostic") or, more broadly speaking, early Christian writings, many if not most of which were not included in the Canon (and others have as well, of course). Note that for all of these writings, canonical or not, the oldest surviving documents are themselves copies (of copies (of copies...))). IOW, we do not have originals of any of the books of the Canon (the DSS are not "originals" - they're copies). For some early mss., we only have fragments.

Anyway, a point Pagels makes from her research on early mss. is that the Christianity we know today (which, of course, comes in more flavors than Baskin Robbins Ice Cream) is the evolved survivor(s) of what was a group of many different and distinct early "Christian" beliefs; different strands, so to speak. There was no one Christianity "as we know it" in the first Century CE. Well, originally, there may have been one source for "Christianity", but if so, it's lost to us as to what exactly it was, what its beliefs were, where and how it started, etc. Before too long, from whenever and wherever it started, there were several strands, with different "documentation", different beliefs, different leaders, etc. We don't have a "light" on Christianity until after it was already diversified, as far as I understand it.

You might say "We have the Bible, with the Gospels and Acts and Paul's letters!". Well, yes we do. But we don't have any original mss. of those until much later, and the dating of most if not all of them is quite questionable, particularly of the Gospels. Further, as noted below, those are the documents that were selected as the "Canon" by the "strand" of Christianity that triumphed! There are many more questions about those documents that I won't go into here. Let me just say that they're certainly not the sure thing that many people take them to be. Look into the BC&H forum for more info.

By the 4th century, the ancestor of modern christianity "won the day", supressed the other strands, began forming the Canon that would become the Bible of today (or Bibles - there's more than one, you know), and began (or continued) to actively supress the other "heretical" strands of the faith, including the systematic desctruction of their "documentation". What we know today of the competing strands of belief comes mainly from references made to them in the documentation of the "winner" (e.g., in the letters of Paul, and in the writings of some of the church "fathers") and from the few documents or fragments of documents that managed to escape the purge.

Of course, the emerged Christian 'catholic church' with its credes, canon, etc., from the 4th century was different than the "Christianity" of the First Century. From then to today, the 'church' has evolved, divided, evolved, divided, etc., until now we have a multitude of major and minor denominations, splinter groups, etc.

So the 'church' of today is different than the church of the 4th century, which was different than the "christianity" of the first century (BTW, we actually don't know all that much about the first century Christians, at least not to any high degree of confidence, for the simple fact that not much has survived).

There is no continuity in Christianity. A First Century "Christian" would have a hard time recognizing the Christianity of the 4th Century, much less of today.

And then, on top of that, there's the topic of the evolution of the God concept. Rather than go into it here in depth, I'll just say that a person in Israel at the time that the Books of Moses were written would have a quite different concept of "God" than a person in First Century Jerusalem, who in turn would have a different concept of "God" than a typical person (e.g., you) today. (The concept of) God has evolved over time.

[graymouser]

So are we suggesting that as our world has advanced technologically, socially and intellectually that so too has our creation of God and what fits our world today? I can only speak in terms of Christianity because so far I am ignorant of other religions, but I am curious what your explanation of all the documentation is. The Bible and other items such as the dead sea scrolls come to mind. They seem to me unwavering, unchanging and undebateable. But your thoughts point to religious foundations such as these as though they were and will continue to be fabricated and manipulated differently for every generation. Am I off base here?
Christianity is hardly "unwavering, unchanging and undebatable," though it likes to pretend that it is. In reality, Christianity does not refer to a single religious entity, but a whole astounding variety of religious traditions focused around the stories related in the Gospels and the various literary material we call the New Testament or the Christian Bible.

Throughout history, in the areas where Christianity has been the major religious and ideological force, it has been repeatedly redefined to meet the needs of the day. It changed dramatically when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire; from one religion that met state disapproval it went to being the defining religious and intellectual source of Rome. Regional conflicts played themselves out mingled with theological debates; Rome and Constantinople came out on top, and as their interests and needs diverged, distinct Roman and Byzantine churches emerged. This was eventually realized in the schism of these mutually incompatible churches. As the Catholic Church -- the bulwark of feudalism -- became too heavy a burden and a new ideology needed to be forged for the new mercantilism and capitalism, religion was radically opened up from top to bottom, and the Protestant Reformation changed the face of European religion. The nature of this Protestantism has been amorphous; sometimes it has been a social protest (Munzer, the Anabaptists, English Levellers and Quakers) and other times it has become a new bulwark of the state (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism). Catholicism has been a billion different things over the centuries. Christianity has justified slavery and colonialism, and justified the revolt against them. It has been used to oppress the masses, to delude them, and yet at times it has been their hope and refuge. It has never been one constant; the Bible is more a mirror than a guide. The ideas that are pulled out of it are almost always the ideas that are put into it. The religion isn't the documents; it's the varied real people who practice it.

[modernPrimitive]

Do u believe this? That man created the idea of God? If so, Why would he make it up? To make himself feel better about the possiblity of their being something else to this life. Lying to yourself to suppose to make you feel better?

I think the idea of God is rather counter-intuitive to the primitive analytical mind yet intuitive to the the well "intuitive" mind. One cannot use today's rationale to understand man's primitive mind and the development of religion. Since our understanding of the primitive religion is somewhat sketchy we can look at modern disparate tribal religions and deduct that primitive religion would have been somewhat similar - especially when there are correlations between the religious artifacts and symbolism of such tribes and those out of which modern religions have grown.

Primitive man does/did not have the empirical foundations that we have today - he did not analyse the world in such a manner though he would have made certain deductions based on apparent cause-effect relationships. All "primitive" tribes have some form of religious practice that provide some means of inducing conscious realization of certain unconscious conditions or patterns. (eg: continuous drumming combined with psychotropic ingestion to induce trance states etc). Of course there are also the "commoner's" spritual practices that involve "listening" to the unconscious through dreams via animal totems / ancestoral archetypes while psychoatives were / are usually reserved for the "medicine-man".

The commonality of unconscious patterns (unconscious archetypes) accross disparate and often isolated tibes - eg: the "Uroboros" suggests that such induced "hallucinations" are not necessarily delusional but rather based on very real and pre-existing neurological patterns inherant in the human psyche.

As the primitive mind evolves towards a more elaborate one so too does the pantheon of archetypes (gods).

As far as we know, one of the first people in history to advocate monotheism was Akhnaton (father of Tut-ankh-amon) though there might be evidence that Sumerian religion was at one time monotheistic from which a vast pantheon later derived.

It seems that somewhere along the line man discovered a way to tap into the unconscious without the use of psychoactives which included practices such as meditation, fasting under the hot desert sun, intense prayer followed by meditation etc etc.

A common theme in descriptions of the higher meditative experiences (eg: Samadhi or Dhyana in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions) is an experience of the Absolute Unity of All Things - a sort of panentheistic experience if one were to interpret this religiously (though many don't).

It seems likely that this experience is the foundation for belief in a monotheistic God while "lesser" unconscious experiences form the foundations of various pagan heirarchies. Of course mix these two all up and we end-up with a quasi-monotheism that consists of trinities and Saturnian Father-gods.

The unconscious is a curious thing - these unconscous archetypes tend to expose themselves to the ego-consciousness regardless of the use of psychoactives or religious practice. Jung found this out during many of his psycho-analysis sessions. I've met many a sincere Christian who has in his meditations stumbled upon Alchemical symbology specifically the "Divine Wedding" (alchemically known as the "Chymical Wedding" - precisely the same idea archetypally). The human psyche has a certain series of inherant patterns the most "primal" (most "unconscious") of which suggests a Unity between the individual ego-consciousness and All Other Existense on some unconsious level.

A bit long-winded but I think a better explanation of how this "God-idea" came to exist. How does the historical evidence support your opposing theory? Read The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neuman (available online somewhere) and The Golden Bough by James Frazer for further research.

[Deleet]

Yes.

"Men create the gods in their own image."
Xenophanes 570 BC

[modernPrimitive]

Yes.

"Men create the gods in their own image."
Xenophanes 570 BC

Sure. Considering that most archetypes are anthropomorphized (except for shamanic animal totems) - this is simply for purposes of identification. The "pattern" behind the archetype however is not anthropomorphic.

[Cheerful Charlie]

Speaking strictly in terms of Christianity are you not aware of the vast amount of backing and filling "christianity" has had to do over the centuries to continue to preserve belief in the Bible?

As an example there aren't many christians left who believe that the earth is less 10,000 years old (as one would surmise using simple math to add the ages of Jesus's bloodline). The "6 day" creation has also been rendered metaphoric by most believers in order to reconcile what we know about how our planet and solar system came into existence with the myths contained in the bible. Geology clearly shows that no universal flood (Noah's) happened approximately 4,000 years ago so lots of creative re-interpretations of that myth have been forthcoming.



Sighhhhhhhh.... If twas only so. I have been watching the polls since the 70's when creationism was revived by Henry Morris and many, many people believe all of this. But what can you expect from a population where 10% did not know the earth orbits the sun, or a population where 16% do not know who is the vice president of the US? More people believe Adam and Eve were real people than believe in evolution. Scares the crap out of me reading polls. I should stop. 44% of Americans believe that man was created as he is now 10,000 years ago.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm


Cheerful Charlie

[Alf]

Sighhhhhhhh.... If twas only so. I have been watching the polls since the 70's when creationism was revived by Henry Morris and many, many people believe all of this. But what can you expect from a population where 10% did not know the earth orbits the sun, or a population where 16% do not know who is the vice president of the US? More people believe Adam and Eve were real people than believe in evolution. Scares the crap out of me reading polls. I should stop. 44% of Americans believe that man was created as he is now 10,000 years ago.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm


Cheerful Charlie

Danger! Reading american polls can cause you nightmares!

There's something rotten in the state of american education.

Or was it Denmark?

Alf