Where Did 'God' Come From?

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Religion is living in a mental kind of imagined simulation. One adjusts perceptions of reality as being part of a god scenario.

Good point. I suspect we all indulge illusions of different sorts.

Humans certainly like to pretend. We all do it. When we're watching a movie or reading a novel we're suspending disbelief. We pay actors millions of dollars to pretend for us. Theater is the same thing. I often wonder if being able to pretend is uniquely human, but I doubt it is.

And we have mirror neurons, pretty cool.

People who undergo psychotic breaks are typically experiencing the condition to a destructive end. And the worst pretenders are dead, the ones who think they really can fly off the top of a cliff like a bird. These guys get selected out of the gene pool.

I often tell the story about one of my players when I coached many years ago. He broke his arm when he climbed a tree, opened an umbrella and thought he would be able to float to the ground like he saw in cartoons when he jumped. I watched a lot of Three Stooges growing up but never once thought I could get away with the things they did, like dulling a hatchet hitting Curley on the head. My brain knew that jumping out of a tree with an umbrella was only pretend but some brains don't know that. Natural selection and all.

 

[WAB]

Religion is living in a mental kind of imagined simulation. One adjusts perceptions of reality as being part of a god scenario.

Good point. I suspect we all indulge illusions of different sorts.

Apologetics. Throughout hisoy religion has been a major source of amuse of power, control, conflict, death, and destruction.

Illusion and delusion are two different things. Scifi movies are illusions. Believing a god will protect you against a disease is a delusion. Believing ancient Hebrew myths are real is a delusion.

Perhaps.

But believing that consciousness - or at the very least the sensation of control and autonomy that everyone feels, is "an illusion" is also delusional, and in a potentially equally harmful way.

Sam Harris goes on about it, and he should know better since he's a freakin' neuroscientist! Two posters at TFT go on about it, and I decided to finally put them on ignore for good, after all these years of hearing that nonsense.

I guess we choose our delusions, or we don't, according to Harris.

What pisses me off more than anything is someone handwaving away such terms as "mind", "consciousness", "I", "self", "autonomy" "self-control", "independent", "free", "freedom", "rights", "liberty", etc.; OR - conflating the meanings of those words with other words which have clear distinctions between them (such as "free" and "freedom" - oy!); or just not being able to discriminate between the use of certain terms as they pertain to epistemology/metaphysics and/or political notions of responsibility and accountability, especially with respect to criminal behavior and/or arrest, incarceration, rehabilitation and/or imprisonment (my head hoits!); AND: people who are either closet classists and/or simply do not grasp the meaning of egalitarianism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, or any other subtle and 'nuanced', methodological, research-based investigative study or experimentation be it scientific, medical {including psychiatry}, historical, academic, or professional relying on quantitative data and generally eschewing subjective opinion and speculation (for example engineering), etc, etc, etc.&...

But what can you do?

 

[none]

If you are going to encode those terms with quotes I'm "skeptical".

 

[WAB]

If you are going to encode those terms with quotes I'm "skeptical".

You should be! I frequently get very confused with all the punctuation. All the "s and the 's & the ,s & the ;s & the []s & the ()s & the {}s & the - _ ^ * s and all the other squiggly litt-el marks and symbols and the`s and the ~s...but this one - | i really like. Looks like a wall into which I might be someday compelled to smash my noggin until it breaks like a walnut. Which reminds me...|

 

[none]

If you are going to encode those terms with quotes I'm "skeptical".

You should be! I frequently get very confused with all the punctuation. All the "s and the 's & the ,s & the ;s & the []s & the ()s & the {}s & the - _ ^ * s and all the other squiggly litt-el marks and symbols and the`s and the ~s...but this one - | i really like. Looks like a wall into which I might be someday compelled to smash my noggin until it breaks like a walnut. Which reminds me...|

Now your bee in "0B7u53".

 

[ideologyhunter]

YOU'RE bee.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, I'm going to do my usual for a first post of a philosophical (and to be fair, with MOST threads) and respond to the OP without even really reading it.

Sorry Marvin.

So, god came from a need, a need to describe the universe it's processes, it's systems and relationships. One of those process relationships is that there are strategies which work, which are not the strategies we were born "feeling" towards. I touch on this in the morality/ethics discussuon. This inevitably will lead any organism so afflicted by the conflict of interest between the drives of their emotions and the realities of social constructions that yield the fact of a "secret/revealed" truth that points to the more useful social constructions

And then the transform from human family creation to God-tribe-birth happens.

It's interesting because even if God were invented by a completely random process, monkeys bleating nonsense in this case, it still is an idea with philosophical function insofar as it is going to have survival value against available alternatives: if you can accept that the universe was created or started at a point in time and was given order and rule by a singular entity, you are much closer to the survival value of "the universe has consistent rules and behavior which can be repeated and studied", which is self-explanatory.

In many ways, though, it came as much from the idea of a "spirit" of a tribe, really the ancient human instantiation of the selfish gene, mashed up against those other things.

 

[steve_bank]

Apologetics. Throughout hisoy religion has been a major source of amuse of power, control, conflict, death, and destruction.

Illusion and delusion are two different things. Scifi movies are illusions. Believing a god will protect you against a disease is a delusion. Believing ancient Hebrew myths are real is a delusion.

Perhaps.

But believing that consciousness - or at the very least the sensation of control and autonomy that everyone feels, is "an illusion" is also delusional, and in a potentially equally harmful way.

Sam Harris goes on about it, and he should know better since he's a freakin' neuroscientist! Two posters at TFT go on about it, and I decided to finally put them on ignore for good, after all these years of hearing that nonsense.

I guess we choose our delusions, or we don't, according to Harris.

What pisses me off more than anything is someone handwaving away such terms as "mind", "consciousness", "I", "self", "autonomy" "self-control", "independent", "free", "freedom", "rights", "liberty", etc.; OR - conflating the meanings of those words with other words which have clear distinctions between them (such as "free" and "freedom" - oy!); or just not being able to discriminate between the use of certain terms as they pertain to epistemology/metaphysics and/or political notions of responsibility and accountability, especially with respect to criminal behavior and/or arrest, incarceration, rehabilitation and/or imprisonment (my head hoits!); AND: people who are either closet classists and/or simply do not grasp the meaning of egalitarianism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, or any other subtle and 'nuanced', methodological, research-based investigative study or experimentation be it scientific, medical {including psychiatry}, historical, academic, or professional relying on quantitative data and generally eschewing subjective opinion and speculation (for example engineering), etc, etc, etc.&...

But what can you do?

We can do what the powerless always do, Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we may die...

A sense of control is normal and mentally healthy. Delusion is when one based on a philosophy or religion believes one wilrds some kind of special power.

I knew an educated Christian engineer who told me without his faith he could not get through the day without being plagued with questions. His faith gave him a sense of order and stability. The role of religion and philosophy as well.

 

[Swammerdami]

What I have gleaned from my readings — although I've never seen it expressed the way that I will in this post — is that there are three types of "god." Their developments should be considered separately.

(1) First are animistic spirits. Just as people are likely to treat animals as conscious by default, so rivers, mountains, trees and forests may be regarded as inhabited by spirits. I don't necessarily regard this as superstitious: when people try to understand nature without the benefit of science, it is normal for "magical" interpretations to arise. These animistic spirits "live" on their own terms, generally without special interest in humanity.

(2) Eventually people began worshiping dead kings or dead ancestors, and asking them for advice. These "gods" are ancestral to and focused on a particular tribe of humans, and are depicted as having human form, so are very different from animistic spirits.

These two types of God can be combined and conflated together. Babylon for example had Marduk as their divine Ancestor-God and Shamash as the God of the Sun. Various conflicting interpretations were in use: Marduk might be equal to Shamash, the son of Shamash, or in an independent pantheon.

(3) Finally monotheism developed (along with abstract philosophies like Buddhism), with principles very different from (1) and (2).

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Where did God come from? If you're referring to the Judeo-Christian God, then God is a version of earlier pagan gods from places like Babylon. He was revised by Hebrew religious and political leaders to suit the unique culture of the Jews and their interests. This God said he "chose" the Jews to be his people because those were the words that God's creators stuffed into his mouth.

So God as we know him came originally from pagan people and was later retooled by Jews and then Christians to serve their purposes.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

What I have gleaned from my readings — although I've never seen it expressed the way that I will in this post — is that there are three types of "god." Their developments should be considered separately.

(1) First are animistic spirits. Just as people are likely to treat animals as conscious by default, so rivers, mountains, trees and forests may be regarded as inhabited by spirits. I don't necessarily regard this as superstitious: when people try to understand nature without the benefit of science, it is normal for "magical" interpretations to arise. These animistic spirits "live" on their own terms, generally without special interest in humanity.

(2) Eventually people began worshiping dead kings or dead ancestors, and asking them for advice. These "gods" are ancestral to and focused on a particular tribe of humans, and are depicted as having human form, so are very different from animistic spirits.

These two types of God can be combined and conflated together. Babylon for example had Marduk as their divine Ancestor-God and Shamash as the God of the Sun. Various conflicting interpretations were in use: Marduk might be equal to Shamash, the son of Shamash, or in an independent pantheon.

(3) Finally monotheism developed (along with abstract philosophies like Buddhism), with principles very different from (1) and (2).

Some scholars like Hector Avalos disagree with this version of theistic evolution. Avalos maintains that monotheism, for example, could have developed in some cultures at any time and not necessarily after animism. I really can't think of any reason why monotheism must be a late development in the history of religion.

 

[Ephesians]

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.

He didn't 'come' from anywhere because He has always existed. He's an eternal being.

 

[Copernicus]

He didn't 'come' from anywhere because He has always existed. He's an eternal being.

No, you are confusing God with physical reality. God came from human beings trying to figure out how it works and how to cope with it.

 

[Ephesians]

He didn't 'come' from anywhere because He has always existed. He's an eternal being.

No, you are confusing God with physical reality. God came from human beings trying to figure out how it works and how to cope with it.

God isn't part of 'physical reality,' so no.

 

[Copernicus]

He didn't 'come' from anywhere because He has always existed. He's an eternal being.

No, you are confusing God with physical reality. God came from human beings trying to figure out how it works and how to cope with it.

God isn't part of 'physical reality,' so no.

I also believe that God is not part of physical reality. Nor are other things that don't exist.

But I get that you believe reality is composed of two "substances"--the physical and the spiritual. That's why philosophers refer to your stance as  substance dualism, aka "mind-body dualism" and "Cartesian dualism". Most humans seem to believe that intuitively, even though we have a lot of compelling evidence that what we think of as our spiritual side is grounded in physical brain activity. Even substance dualists like yourself can argue over whether God exists. That is, you can still become an atheist without necessarily becoming a materialist. However, the argument for me is not over whether God exists, but over whether substance dualism is a reasonable position to take. Materialists tend to be what you could call "stone cold atheists", because the big question for them is how physical reality resulted in the material universe that we find ourselves in. The existence of any particular spiritual being is not an issue, if one rejects the belief in all such beings.

 

[Ephesians]

I also believe that God is not part of physical reality. Nor are other things that don't exist.

That's a pretty bad argument. "A being like God can't exist because God isn't of matter and energy, and I've presupposed that only matter and energy can exist!" Lul.

 

[Copernicus]

I also believe that God is not part of physical reality. Nor are other things that don't exist.

That's a pretty bad argument. "A being like God can't exist because God isn't of matter and energy, and I've presupposed that only matter and energy can exist!" Lul.

Actually, your position is the weak one. What you are arguing here is that I must prove that there is no other "substance" to reality than the matter and energy we observe. That is a demand to prove a negative, which is not my burden. Yours is to prove your positive claim--that a spiritual realm is likely to exist in addition to the physical one that we know from observation to exist. For example, do you know anything about human nature to support the claim that there is a spiritual (nonphysical) side to our existence?

 

[Ephesians]

Actually, your position is the weak one. What you are arguing here is that I must prove that there is no other "substance"

I don't care what you think you can prove or can't prove.

Did you not admit that you're presupposing materialism? That there is only matter and energy? And if so, how is that a good argument against God's existence? All you're doing is presupposing that the very category of existence that God occupies is nonexistent. Do you really think that's persuasive?

Yours is to prove your positive claim--that a spiritual realm is likely to exist

I could do that, but it's besides the point... My critique against your position still stands whether or not I believe there's another category of existence that is outside of matter and energy. All I'm saying is your position is silly. "Hey guys, God doesn't exist...! Why? Because I've presupposed that He doesn't exist! Bam!"

 

[Rhea]

I also believe that God is not part of physical reality. Nor are other things that don't exist.

That's a pretty bad argument. "A being like God can't exist because God isn't of matter and energy, and I've presupposed that only matter and energy can exist!" Lul.

There is no reason and no evidence to propose that anything other than matter and energy exist. There is no evidence of any kind.

You are “presupposing” that something other than the only things we can detect, measure, or predict, exists. We have absolutlely no reason at all to presuppose this exists.

Copernicus is not ”presupposing” anything. He is observing that absolutely nothing other than matter and energy have been shown to exist and be capable of interacting with any scale of reality that can affect us.

 

[Rhea]

God isn't part of 'physical reality,' so no.

So your claim here is that the god you believe in is powerless to interact with humans in any way?

Well, we agree.