God Real or a Comforting Figment of mankinds Imagination

O

Origen

Registered Member
The idea of a possible higher power has been around ever since man has had the mental capacity to create him. My question is Simple. Was higher power created because he truly exists, or was he merely created for man to attempt to strive for his greatest potential, or was a higher power create as mankinds stress reliever?
 
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The idea of a higher power has been around ever since man has had the mental capacity to create him. My question is Simple. Was higher power created because he truly exists, or was he merely created for man to attempt to strive for his greatest potential, or was a higher power create as mankinds stress reliever?
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You stress on the idea of a higher power. I believe that you are looking in the wrong direction. Just because groups of people believe in a higher power does not mean that these beliefs can be compared. Many scholars today believe that you cannot compare religions, mainly because we cannot define religion. All of the attempted definitions do not work in all instances.

Also when you say "created for man to attempt to stive for his greatest potential" you already have prejudice in that statement. Not all religions agree on what the "greatest potential" of a person is, and not all of them try to make man strive for it. For example certain types of Buddhism are not concerned with the "potential of a person" because all it is is an illusion.

The premise that humans would create a divine being because they want to fufill what you seem to think thay are capable of is flawed also. It does not follow that just because people want to achieve more that they envision some all powerful father to watch over them. That might at most be part of the reason for a mental creation of a god, but not the sole reason by any means.

Also, in many religions god is not a stress reliever. A good example would be Martin Luther. He felt during his whole life that he was never clean enough and he would go to confession sometimes a few times a day. His religion caused him great stress. Just because you have a god to believe in does not mean that it will relax you. While some people`s conception of a being might do this, certainly those are not the majority. Most of the western conceptions lean towards a god that is willing to punish for little things, and that the god tests us for our own good. So the creation of a god to act as a stress reliever does not explain the creation of stressful religions or ideas in religion. If it was a stress reliever then why not have a god that punishes nothing and you get eternal bliss for doing whatever you want?

Just my ideas.
 
Granted that the original questions were flawed and opininated, the idea that all people will ever agree on the concept of a higher power is impossible. I think that the concept of a higher power is solely based on personal preference. I mean that is why there are thousands of religions in the world. Everyone wants everything about their higher power to suit them. This is why the world will never have a universal religion.
 
IMO, God exists as a primitive attempt to explain things men of that time period could not comprehend.
 
I think the issue is really very simple.

Faced with unexplained phenomena and without a formal mechanism of discovery (i.e. science) did man –

1. Detect and observe a supernatural being causing the phenomena, or

2. Used his imagination to speculate that a supernatural being must have caused the phenomena.

For (1) to be true there must be evidence of such an entity. To date there are many claims of evidence but none have ever been shown that result in a link to a supernatural entity. Alternative explanations have always been possible.

That leaves us with (2) as the reason for all theistic religions. Gods are just human fantasies.
 
And of course we mustn't forget the fuzzy pink elephant.
 
Originally posted by Origen
The idea of a possible higher power has been around ever since man has had the mental capacity to create him. My question is Simple. Was higher power created because he truly exists, or was he merely created for man to attempt to strive for his greatest potential, or was a higher power create as mankinds stress reliever?
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The chronology of your question, is backwards. God was not created by the minds of man, He is the pre-existant creator, who reveals Himself to the minds of man, because of the love that He has for His creation.
 
Originally posted by Cris
And of course we mustn't forget the fuzzy pink elephant.
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Now now, we shouldn't set whatsupyall off again... ...:p
 
M,

Ah but without the wonderful contributions from members like W we'd all sit around and agree with each other and there would be no debate.
 
god does exist before anything had been created by him
then he creat the world then the human.and he gave us the mind to think and create, so sceience developed and developed and now some human still dont believe in him.

is it becoz u dont see him. so why do u believe in air while u not seeing it?
 
biblethump,

God was not created by the minds of man.
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That’s an idea. Perhaps there are some people whose brains were hard-wired with a god fantasy from birth. This could explain why such people are unable to perceive any alternatives.
 
Mohamed,

Welcome to sciforums.

is it becoz u dont see him. so why do u believe in air while u not seeing it?
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It is not a question of seeing but of any form of observation or detection. For example there are many tests we can perform that shows that air is present even though we can’t see the air.

However, for gods, not only can we not see them, but there are no tests we can construct that can detect them. Without any form of detection gods are indistinguishable from any other imaginative fantasy.
 
Am I the only one suspecting this is muscleman/whatsupyall under another name? Look at the spelling.
 
mohamed,

there is only one god!
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How do you know that?

But which of the "One Gods" do you refer to? The Christian god? The god of Islam? Or some other definition.
 
god of moslim.
anyway god is one for all world but it is people who dont believe in god. or adding to him criteria which dont belong to alah
 
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