Why God?

[slush33]

I've often wondered why man finds it necessary to have a God. It came to me the other night and the simplicity is such I'm amazed I didn't think of it at 10 years old.

Man created God to place between himself and the unknown; later he honed That to fit between himself and a random universe.

[Sal1981]

Hi and welcome to Atheistforums.com

[aitm]

Possible. Possible. But there is a little history that would suggest, man created the gods, so man could be "created" by gods…..makes them better soldiers you see. Dying for a god - and going to a heaven, is a better sell than dying for another man to make him richer.

[stromboli]

Welcome. "Why god" is first because of fear of the unknown and a way to explain it, and secondly the realization by early rulers of how they can manipulate people with it. From Ur of the Chaldees to Babylon to the Indus Valley to Egypt to Rome, it has been a political tool from the very beginning.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Well..The original rulers of masses of people needed a way to control them and get them to do the dirty work, but the rulers couldn't keep an eye on everyone at the same time so they conjured up someone who could see all and even read your thoughts.. As long as the ruler was appointed by god himself he didn't have to worry about being questioned because the ruler being appointed by god only had to answer to god and not mere mortals..  The ruler only had the power to punish you till you died, but god could punish you long after you die and since the ruler was appointed by god he could by extension keep punishing you forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.. Best do what your ruler says or he'll have his lacky god kick your ass for eternity..  The ultimate strong man dictator, god.

[slush33]

Priests and the church is  religion. That is subtle but different from God.

[Mike Cl]

I've often wondered why man finds it necessary to have a God. It came to me the other night and the simplicity is such I'm amazed I didn't think of it at 10 years old.

Man created God to place between himself and the unknown; later he honed That to fit between himself and a random universe.

^This.  Yeah, I often thought the same exact thing.

[Flanker1Six]

Hey!  Welcome to our gang! 

[widdershins]

Gods are different things to different people today.  Originally, it makes sense that gods were a way to explain the things around us which we didn't understand.  The very setting of the sun seemed like powerful magic back then.  Throughout the millennia the idea of various gods have been used for other reasons.  I think today the most common uses for gods are to make money off the ignorance and fears of the masses, to gain power by telling the masses what to believe and how to act (control, essentially), to justify horrible acts against your fellow man, to make one's self feel special with a personal connection to the highest power possible, to make one's self feel superior to one's fellow man and to alleviate fear of the unknown, especially death.

Generally speaking most people I have known have needed a god for a combination of these reasons, and sometimes even then what they get from their god is not enough.  For instance, many Christians desire greatly the need to feel special.  It's the same reasoning which causes people to believe in Bigfoot and entertain wild conspiracy theories; the desire to know some secret, to hold some special knowledge which would amaze others if they only knew.  But often simply having that knowledge (or pretending to) isn't enough, so they then have to invent a sense of persecution because if they're being persecuted for this knowledge that makes them extra-special.  After all, believing that you have some super special knowledge is good, but if you have evidence, in this case an additional belief that you are being persecuted for how true your secret knowledge is, then all the better.

I couldn't really speak to the origins of gods in general, though given the vast number of them throughout history I would hesitate to believe that all gods everywhere were created for the same reason, though I would be more willing to believe that the most ancient gods were created as a way to explain the world.  I'm relatively certain that the "necessity" people have felt for having a god has changed dramatically throughout history, due in large part to circumstance.  The God of the Old Testament, after all, is not the same one found in the New Testament in any way but name.  In the 400 years or so between the writings circumstance had changed so much that the God they worshiped changed entirely in personality.  Interestingly, gone was the need for miracles on a massive, sometimes global scale, replaced by the need for smaller, more personal miracles.  And the miracles went from mostly involving death and pestilence with the occasional help (often still involving death and pestilence, just not for the devout) to a few nice things and exactly the opposite of death and pestilence, healings and resurrections.  The need for God had changed from a need for vengeance to a need for personal attention and help in their daily lives in just a few hundred years.

I'm often long winded, by the way.  Welcome.

[Hydra009]

I've often wondered why man finds it necessary to have a God. It came to me the other night and the simplicity is such I'm amazed I didn't think of it at 10 years old.

Man created God to place between himself and the unknown; later he honed That to fit between himself and a random universe.

Pretty much.  Gods are essentially anthropomorphized nature so that nature can be bargained with.  It's the sort of thing that an imaginative child might invent and a foolish adult might maintain.

[Baruch]

Possible. Possible. But there is a little history that would suggest, man created the gods, so man could be "created" by gods…..makes them better soldiers you see. Dying for a god - and going to a heaven, is a better sell than dying for another man to make him richer.

Don't knock the Illiad (Trojan War).  Back in the day, you could even have the gods choose up sides, and participate in the war.  Long live Agamemnon and Priam!

[Draconic Aiur]

I've often wondered why man finds it necessary to have a God. It came to me the other night and the simplicity is such I'm amazed I didn't think of it at 10 years old.

Man created God to place between himself and the unknown; later he honed That to fit between himself and a random universe.

Because fear

[Shukhov]

God absolve of responsibility and can be used to justify bigotry.

[mauricio]

Pretty much.  Gods are essentially anthropomorphized nature so that nature can be bargained with.  It's the sort of thing that an imaginative child might invent and a foolish adult might maintain.

I think the delusion of god comes from a much more visceral delusion, the one of self. Humans have a sense of self, which they see as the rational agent controlling the actions of their body. The self has some funny properties that hint at it being illusory, for example the self has a perceived location in the body. Since i was a child I have always sensed the location of 'me' to be behind my eyes. There's some interesting experiments where they use VR googles (visual stimuli) and physical stimuli to confuse your perception of where your self is located, generating out of body experiences. God is a projection of self into the natural world. Teleology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology) The fundamental difference between atheist and theist seems to be that of substance dualism vs substance monism. To the theist the self has an independent existence and it is likely ineffable, that is the soul. And God is a big ass almighty soul which gives purpose and rationality to everything that happens in the universe.

[jakeeey]

Welcome to the forum, slush.

Before I'd attempt to answer the question of why God, I'd have to first understand what the questioner meant by 'God', as there are so many definitions I've often seen conflict based on a simple misunderstanding about what God is.

For a lot of people, maybe even the majority, God is imposed from birth rather than them having a conscious, informed choice later on in life.  I think that's a fair explanation of why humanity as-a-whole goes in that direction in a fanatical sense (with a healthy dose of ego), but why the individual adult believes in a god is anybody's guess.  I suppose we all have a complex set of internal processes that lead us in that direction.


Anyway, see you around the threads.




J :)