Did god create us or did we create God?

M

Medicine*Woman

Jesus: Mythstory--Not History!
Valued Senior Member
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M*W: I've always pondered the idea, that if God created the human race, he should have made himself known to all, so there would be no confusion or doubt. I never could believe that a creator god could be so negligent. I've also believed that the whole concept of a higher power has evolved over the course of our existence. Why else would Christianity be dying worldwide? So, I searched the Internet and found this website that confirmed what I've always known.

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

What was especially interesting was several Christian scholars reported that one reason Christianity is dying is because of the grossly outdated doctrines of the trinity, virgin birth, and even the resurrection!
 
You know, I found the ideas of Erich Fromm quite good. He had the opinion that humans have created god. First, when humans were still quite primitive, they worshipped fire or lightning and thunder. As the human mind grew more compley, the gods became more anthropomorph. E.g. from early germanic beliefs Thor as god of thunder.
But also new gods were created, gods (goddesses) of love, of war...
Still humans evolved and they began merging all their gods into one. That was the state for several millenia now.
But I am not yet sure what the next step is. As far as I remember, for Freud the next one is love, or the self. Not entirely sure.
 
As our science and knowledge of human nature, and the nature of reality advances, I think it's becoming simply undeniable that the idea of a god or gods is just that, an idea -- a fabrication to make us feel good and secure in times of despair and need. That, and it's historically been used as a control-through-fear tactic to keep the public stupid and the elite in power.

I'm not familiar with Eric Fromm, but what you describe exists in a lot of places -- most recently, I've read it in some socialist literature, Reason in Revolt.
 
We created "God", but someone/thing else created us whom we thought was "God". "God" is just a placeholder to describe the origins of creation/everything.

- N
 
[... danm i like the name of htis thread ^^^] lol personally i believe humans created god... but what do i know
 
God is a part of human reminences of the bicameral mind. Every human on earht have traces of the bicameral mentality of ancient past, atheists, and agnostic are evolving away from bicameral mentality to a more developed intergrated process of thinking.

Dr. Julian Jaynes;
The Origin of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

link

G.
 
hey..
the whole world has only one true God .and He is the Creater of us.
Don't u think so?
 
Bells: I watched a doco last week on the very topic of whether we created God. Was quite interesting and revealing. I just did a very quick search and found the program summary (Short read but worth it):

God on the Brain

And here's another article on the same topic:

Spirituality and the Brain[/QUOTE]
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M*W: Thanks, Bells, for these two profound articles. The first reeks of Paul of Tarsus. Makes me wonder if brain lesions were the progenitors of religion and spirituality. As an OB/GYN medical professional, the very process of any normal childbirth adds trauma to the fetal head. In prolonged labors, there can be more serious damage to the infant cranium, since it is very soft and pliable during delivery. As we entertained more protein in our ancient diet, the brain grew larger making childbirth lengthier and more complicated. Even in a normal birthing event, slight damage can occur, and there may be no symptoms until the child reaches his teenage years. Then, symptoms of schizophreniform disorders become manifest. I believe that even a normal birth can result in such maladies as childhood depression and possibly ADD and ADHD.

Thank you for your articles. I hope everyone on this forum reads them.
 
Bells said:
I watched a doco last week on the very topic of whether we created God. Was quite interesting and revealing. I just did a very quick search and found the program summary (Short read but worth it):

God on the Brain

And here's another article on the same topic:

Spirituality and the Brain
Click to expand...

Interesting, wasn't muhammed an epileptic?(serious question not taking the piss)
 
Neildo said:
We created "God", but someone/thing else created us whom we thought was "God". "God" is just a placeholder to describe the origins of creation/everything.

- N
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Right on the mark. God is a substitute for our incomprehension of many
things.
 
all the evidence points to the non-existence of God. Those who believe in God base their belief on Faith, not logic. So many times its pointless to argue with believers using logic. It is only when believers state that evidence or logic leads to God that we should debate them..
 
Really more people should read Dr. Julian Jaynes work, it completely covers the origins of consciousness, and has a good explanation of the god, concept and were it comes from.

G.
 
all the evidence points to the non-existence of God. Those who believe in God base their belief on Faith, not logic. So many times its pointless to argue with believers using logic. It is only when believers state that evidence or logic leads to God that we should debate them..
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It doesn't matter if logic is used or not when it comes to defining the unknown because regardless, we won't know. The only thing logic helps with is being able to convert others to your belief so it seems more, well, believable. When it comes to the unknown, the only thing that matters is what each individual person thinks. It doesn't matter if a logical person is 99.9% right logically because since it's all unknown, that 0.1% could be what's true which shatters the whole logical person's theory. Theories are mere probability of observations, not concrete 100% this-is-the-way-it-is fact. Faith and scientific theory about the "unknown" is all philosophical assumptions, plain and simple, otherwise it wouldn't be unknown.

- N
 
actually, logic and reasoning is a very valid way to look at things and make decisions regarding their truth. It is true that we can not know about the existence of god(s) 100%, but it is still very reasonable to use logic to come to a conclusion. In fact, logic is one of our greatest assets as humans.
If a person is 99.9 percent right logically then i'd say that person has made some good progress. Much better than the 50/50 chance we'd be left with without logic. Faith is only a personal thing, and should not be transferred from person to person. Logic however, can be passed on and continuously bettered and advanced.
It is a mistake to assume that just because we can not KNOW something 100% that we can not come closer to the truth....
I, for one, am excited to see what the progression of science and logic continues to tell us about the universe...

Greg
 
Oh I agree, it's just that I don't even think we'll ever come as close to even 50% probability of being correct in a theory on the origins of creation. That's the only reason why that while logic is the greatest tool around, when it comes to *that* unknown mystery of the origins of creation, it's somewhat useless since I doubt we'll ever come even remotely close to figuring it out.

That's just my opinion and guess on our success on that matter in the future, but hey, that shouldn't stop us from trying. I just feel it's an inevitable failure. That's probably the only thing I've ever been pessimistic about, and I'm the type that believes anything is possible, heh.

- N
 
its extremely likely that you are correct that we will never be correct abouta final theory about the origins of creation. But i'm pretty sure we will get alot closer. Not to long ago, we thought that the sun revolved around us, and that the earth was the center of the universe. Now we know we are only but one planet revolving around the sun, one of about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, with billions of galaxies in a universe that is expanding, possibly starting from a "big bang". We've come along way....who knows what we will know 1000 years from now! Maybe we'll be aware of billions of other universes floating in some existence that we can measure and somehow observe, and we'll know alot more about how our particular universe started. It is only science and logic that will get us there. If we relied on faith, we'd still be worshiping the sun. We may be selling ourselves short to look too far into the future and assume we will never know the answer. All we can do is take one step at a time.
We are kind of begging the question to even imagine "the answer". We dont even know what that means. Science isn't about "the answer" to end all questions. Its about progress. And we've made alot of progress.

Greg
 
Not to long ago, we thought that the sun revolved around us, and that the earth was the center of the universe. Now we know we are only but one planet revolving around the sun, one of about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, with billions of galaxies in a universe that is expanding, possibly starting from a "big bang".
That's all just common belief that finally was "proven" for those that need proof. I don't need the recent news of finding new "earth-like" planets in our galaxy to prove what I've always thought. We don't need to know there's billions upon billions of stars in our galaxy as many have already thought that. And I also don't need to finally wait until someone finds a bunch more universes as I'm pretty sure there are millions. I also won't need to finally have scientific findings of life on another planet to believe in other life, intellegent or not. Proof is only needed for those that lack faith. While yeah, I was never in the 1600's or anything like that, my opinion of "always having known that" may be a bit biased due to the age we're in of having a lot of that information readily available to us, heh, so I'll just try and talk about things that have yet to happen. The only thing that fits so far is having found earth-like planets in our milky way which I never needed absolute proof of or life on other planets.

Maybe we'll be aware of billions of other universes floating in some existence that we can measure and somehow observe, and we'll know alot more about how our particular universe started.
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That still won't answer the origins of creation. We can watch millions upon millions of universes being created from scratch but that won't give us the answer as to how the very first universe was created. It's just like when people ask "If God created everything, who created God" endless argument. Something has to have always existed and that's the one thing we'll never know regardless of how much evidence there may be. Just like in archaelogy, we may find bones, spears, old food, pots, manuscripts and the like, we can probably decipher that a huge battle took place here blah blah blah, but we won't know the exact step-by-step details and in that case, we can be completely wrong. When it comes to the past, we can only know what the outcome was, not the exact order of events and any other fine details, and that's the problem we'll face with knowing about the origins of all creation. Philosophy will always exist to answer that unknown and it's why religion will always exist, at least in the form of agnosticism if all else is gone.

- N
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Neildo: "that still wont answer the origins of creation"

Again, the idea of a definitive "answer" does not even really make sense. Science is about againing progressive knowledge, which is very possible in terms of our origin. It doesnt even really make sense to discuss an "answer of the origin" at this point. Its a false concept. We can only gain more knowledge.
 
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