Where Did 'God' Come From?

[Marvin Edwards]

A newborn child, cold and hungry, cries out to the universe for food and warmth. He is gathered up in his mother’s arms, and is comforted, and fed.

We don’t remember this experience, but it is one we’ve all shared. I believe it leaves us with a sense that we might implore a greater being to come to our aid in time of trouble, and that it is likely the seed of the idea of ‘God’.

On a cold day, I walked out of the apartment ready to shiver. Stepping out of the shadow and into the sunlight, I felt a warmth and comfort, as if I were loved by the Sun. And I understood how easy it was for our ancestors to view the Sun as a god.

In early history people worshiped multiple gods, prayed to them for favors and offered them gifts so that the rains would water their crops, and the river would not flood their homes. By coincidence, this sometimes appeared to work. Psychologists have since discovered that behavior that was intermittently rewarded was more difficult to extinguish than behavior that was consistently rewarded. And so superstition flourished.

But then something new was added. Monotheism took the strong position that there was only one God.

And not only was this the God to pray to and worship, but this God also expected you to follow rules. If you followed the commandments, you would prosper, if not in this life, then in the next.

I remember the preachers from my youth, Oral Roberts and Norman Vincent Peale, teaching that God is a Good God, and that following Him brings both blessings and expectations. I remember the prayer at dinner, “God is Great, God is Good …”.

God became a way to make being good and doing good both valuable and sacred. And that is why the idea is still useful today, even by those of us who use the term in a literary rather than a literal sense.

 

[steve_bank]

Well, if you go by the Old Testament god destroyed the world by a flood because he was unhappy with the way that which he created was going. In that respect Trump was 'god like', blame others for that which he created and went wrong.

A temperamental god at best. In Christian mythology god creates humans, humans who obey go to heaven, those who do not suffer eternally in hell. A dictator.

The Hebrew god was a personification of the male patriarch. Greek gods reflected human attributes.

For Christians god is whatever you want it to be. For Evangelicals god is an avenger.

'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the lord, he is wiping out evil with a great shining sword', or something like that in Battle Hymn Of The Republic.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Well, if you go by the Old Testament god destroyed the world by a flood because he was unhappy with the way that which he created was going. In that respect Trump was 'god like', blame others for that which he created and went wrong.

A temperamental god at best. In Christian mythology god creates humans, humans who obey go to heaven, those who do not suffer eternally in hell. A dictator.

The Hebrew god was a personification of the male patriarch. Greek gods reflected human attributes.

For Christians god is whatever you want it to be. For Evangelicals god is an avenger.

'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the lord, he is wiping out evil with a great shining sword', or something like that in Battle Hymn Of The Republic.

Well, you got the good stuff and you got the bad stuff. The fact of the bad stuff does not discount the good stuff. The fact of the good stuff does not discount the bad stuff. It's sort of like history. We only recently took down the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Mankind is not perfect and neither are the gods we create.

 

[DBT]

There are probably as many versions of God as there are believers in God.

 

[WAB]

There are probably as many versions of God as there are believers in God.

I would say that is almost certainly true.

But, I do agree with the essence of what Marvin is saying here, which Spinoza also said (er...for the most part), in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP).

 

[southernhybrid]

Imo, almost every institution that humans create has its good positive side and its negative side. So, it makes sense to me that a god can be both good and evil intermittently.

 

[steve_bank]

Well, if you go by the Old Testament god destroyed the world by a flood because he was unhappy with the way that which he created was going. In that respect Trump was 'god like', blame others for that which he created and went wrong.

A temperamental god at best. In Christian mythology god creates humans, humans who obey go to heaven, those who do not suffer eternally in hell. A dictator.
.


The Hebrew god was a personification of the male patriarch. Greek gods reflected human attributes.

For Christians god is whatever you want it to be. For Evangelicals god is an avenger.

'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the lord, he is wiping out evil with a great shining sword', or something like that in Battle Hymn Of The Republic.

Well, you got the good stuff and you got the bad stuff. The fact of the bad stuff does not discount the good stuff. The fact of the good stuff does not discount the bad stuff. It's sort of like history. We only recently took down the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Mankind is not perfect and neither are the gods we create.

Christians are no bteer or worse than anyone else, despite claiming to be moraly superior ahnets pf a god.

I read Moher Teresa's book. She was remarkable IMO. Motivated by faith to work with the worse wrenched people in India. She had critics.


On the other hand over here scripture was used to justify slavery. One of the most grotesque pictures I saw was an old photo of a church picnic with a lalck person hanging from a tree in the background.

One person hears god telling her to aid the destitute, another hears god say 'hate fags'. Over here Evangelical rhetoric often crosses over to hate speech justified by 'god says....'.

As I see it one's image of god is a reflection of who you are, not the other way around. Kind people see kindness, hateful people see justification of hate.

The Hebrew biblical god is not a god of underseal love. God changed with the Gentile adoption of the bible and evolving into Christianity. Today god is what you make it to be.

 

[excreationist]

About the thread's title with respect to my belief I'm probably in simulation -

I think the intelligent force(s) had a beginning and will have an end....

Here is an entertaining look at a simulation in the future where a person forgets his true identity and becomes "God" as part of a test:



I think that God doesn't want to be obvious to skeptics.... see: https://www.lifesplayer.com/bible.php

 

[DBT]

If a Simulation, it's more likely to be a high tech civilization doing the Simulating rather than a Supernatural God, whatever that is supposed to be.

 

[excreationist]

If a Simulation, it's more likely to be a high tech civilization doing the Simulating rather than a Supernatural God, whatever that is supposed to be.

In order for "God" to be "supernatural" it just needs to override the normal physics - e.g. create matter, teleport matter, allow walking on water, etc.

 

[DBT]

If a Simulation, it's more likely to be a high tech civilization doing the Simulating rather than a Supernatural God, whatever that is supposed to be.

In order for "God" to be "supernatural" it just needs to override the normal physics - e.g. create matter, teleport matter, allow walking on water, etc.

Overide from what state? A physical state? A non physical state?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

As I see it one's image of god is a reflection of who you are, not the other way around. Kind people see kindness, hateful people see justification of hate.

Which nicely explains why believer gods are so adept at being irrational, emotional, divisive problem creators. These gods use their power for personal gratification and are unable to ever solve any problems. These gods never seem to be able to figure things out and implement lasting solutions but instead fix problems with more death and destruction which nevertheless seems to make them very happy.

Non-believer gods tend to be painless, rational problem solvers that act with civility and respect.

 

[excreationist]

If a Simulation, it's more likely to be a high tech civilization doing the Simulating rather than a Supernatural God, whatever that is supposed to be.

In order for "God" to be "supernatural" it just needs to override the normal physics - e.g. create matter, teleport matter, allow walking on water, etc.

Overide from what state? A physical state? A non physical state?

Normal physics in a simulation could be said to be "physical" - with material "cause and effect" rules....

 

[Copernicus]

A newborn child, cold and hungry, cries out to the universe for food and warmth. He is gathered up in his mother’s arms, and is comforted, and fed...

It does seem rather obvious that gods are part of how people make sense of their physical reality. They do the same things for adults that parents did for their children, so it makes sense that they would ground their model of reality in their earliest experiences. Parental authority is absolute, and it is the basis for learning about how to interact with other humans--i.e. an authoritarian basis for deciding what is good and bad. More importantly, though, is the fact that we manipulate reality by imposing our will on our bodies. So it makes sense to think of other objects in our environment as agencies that are able to sense and interact in the same ways--by acts of willpower. Animism--imputing minds or "souls" to everything--is the most primitive form of religion. Gods are a reasonably good explanation of external forces of nature, and that gives rise to polytheistic religions in which gods exist as family and tribal units with their own behaviors. They explain why the seasons change and even when they change so that farmers can grow and harvest crops at the proper time. Monotheism arose naturally as a way of unifying complex societies, especially as empires collected diverse communities with competing polytheistic pantheons. Hence, we got precursors to monotheism in the Egyptian and Achaemenid empires, which influenced the Hebrew version of biblical mythology.

So my reaction to the OP is that theism isn't just the product of wishful thinking. It is a very natural way of modeling reality based on early childhood experiences. Over the centuries, this natural, albeit simplistic, model of reality has given way to the realization that natural forces are not really like animacy. Physical objects and forces are not always the product of minds that will physical events to happen. So science has become the natural enemy of religion, because it contradicts the older ways of predicting how reality behaves. Now we understand a lot more about how order naturally evolves out of chaotic deterministic interactions, so it is no longer necessary or useful to model reality on the basis of early childhood experiences. Our models can be much more sophisticated and interesting now.

 

[steve_bank]

As I see it one's image of god is a reflection of who you are, not the other way around. Kind people see kindness, hateful people see justification of hate.

Which nicely explains why believer gods are so adept at being irrational, emotional, divisive problem creators. These gods use their power for personal gratification and are unable to ever solve any problems. These gods never seem to be able to figure things out and implement lasting solutions but instead fix problems with more death and destruction which nevertheless seems to make them very happy.

Non-believer gods tend to be painless, rational problem solvers that act with civility and respect.

I could not have said it better.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Which nicely explains why believer gods are so adept at being irrational, emotional, divisive problem creators. These gods use their power for personal gratification and are unable to ever solve any problems. These gods never seem to be able to figure things out and implement lasting solutions but instead fix problems with more death and destruction which nevertheless seems to make them very happy.

Non-believer gods tend to be painless, rational problem solvers that act with civility and respect.

Given the fact that (Biblical, anyway) scriptures are crammed with examples of God either being a murderer or getting his chosen peeps to murder, and given the even more confounding fact that the believing community gets hit with just as many catastrophes as us heathens, it's a great farce when the believers try to square how life turns out with their belief in a loving creator. You're prospering? Praise God! Your marriage broke up? God wants me to grow from this and rely more on Him. Your child has cancer? God works in mysterious ways, and man's puny brain cannot comprehend those ways (even though, when you prospered, you seemed to understand God pretty well.)

 

[DBT]

Overide from what state? A physical state? A non physical state?

Normal physics in a simulation could be said to be "physical" - with material "cause and effect" rules....

What is the reality of whoever it is running simulations?

 

[Copernicus]

Overide from what state? A physical state? A non physical state?

Normal physics in a simulation could be said to be "physical" - with material "cause and effect" rules....

What is the reality of whoever it is running simulations?

That's a very clever question, young man, but it's  turtles all the way down!

 

[excreationist]

What is the reality of whoever it is running simulations?

I think it would be a futuristic world whose past vaguely resembles our current world. (Known as "ancestor simulations" when precisely simulating their past)

Various possible scenarios:

The "Roy" game: (skip to 24 seconds) - you're just a player - who forgot their outer identity:
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szzVlQ653as&t=24s[/YOUTUBE]

Where the player is the creator God:
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeS4k3pKo5o[/YOUTUBE]

Assuming the Christian God exists - they could be ignorant of their original identity:
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA5PlJiqOnk[/YOUTUBE]

 

[excreationist]

What is the reality of whoever it is running simulations?

That's a very clever question, young man, but it's  turtles all the way down!

I think each simulation would have less information than its outside world.... and each outer world would have more information than the simulation... so I don't believe that there could be an infinite number of levels....