4God

Quick question:

If evolution is random and had no designer, then why did man "create" god(s)? In a sense, the first man was ignorant to the god vs no god question. My question is how does it logically progress that one would come to the conclusion that god(s) exist and that you can communicate with them? If there are no god(s) and they are not working in nature, what would make man make them up. Marx says religion is the opium of the masses, but who's the guy who first thought..."you know if i tell these guys this tall tale-they're gonna put in power as the man who "talks with god"?
If man attributed "curious" natural phenomena to a higher being(s), does it follow that he should come to such a conclusion after observing said phenomena(sp?)?

p.s.
Do you all happen to know of any books tackling this question? Seems interesting to me.

christ-on-a-stick

E-Z.

"And so, man created "God" ~ in his image".

A. Early "man" is at a loss to explain forces of nature and thereby attributes them to a "Higher Power". Viva la supernatural.

B. Said Higher Power is created (conceived of/imagined to be) in "the image of man" - essentially, anthropomorphised.

C. The anthropomorphised "God", aside from (ostensibly) providing answers to questions yet unanswered by science etc., begins to fill valuable roles in the psychological needs/desires of man (Father. Protector. Provider. Arbitrator of Universal Justice!!! - in the face of the oft-seeming indifference of the natural world).

D. (Ruling Class: ) A-ha! People find comfort in the idea of this benevolent dictator*(benevolent dictator). Perhaps, then, that comfort provided can be manipulated and exploited to further our means (control).

Marx got something right, if nothing else (hypothetically and a different discussion.) Religion (et al) *IS* the opiate of the masses. See Koy for further details.

*this phrase occurred to me on account of having heard it from one of my grandmother's late longtime friends, Helen. She grew up in Germany and was a member of the Hitler Youth. She married Walter, a GI in WW2, and lived in the US for the majority of her life. A lovely woman all around. Upon the release of the motion picture Schindler's List, she went to the theatre to see it with my grandmother. In the conversation that followed (hearsay to me of course) she insisted that she and her peers had truly believed that Hitler was a "benevolent dictator".

After all, he made the trains run on time.

Jeremy_the _Atheist

Early man saw lightning, vocanos, changes in the weather and other natural phenomena and had no way of explaning them and so invented ways. Basically, they imagined beings that were just like themselves only more powerful controlling things. Of course, they were fearful of these beings as lightning storms, tonadoes, hurricanes, etc could be quite deadly and so they worshipped and sacrificed things to these beings in hopes of appeasing them.

It's not a hard question. It has the same basic answer as why do people believe black cats are bad luck, to knock on wood, and other strange things.

Unless you believe that UFOs, Tarot cards, Astrology, and the long list of other superstitions is true, I would say, "Yes, it's quite obvious that it would follow."

To answer the Opiut question, some people figured out fearful their tribe members were of the gods they had invented and so he decided to take advantage of it. People do this all the time with other superstitions, is it really so hard to believe someone would do this concerning belief in gods?

lunachick

I agree with everything COAS and Jeremy has said, except that I think marketing is the opiate of the masses.

Religion and God-belief came into being just as COAS and Jeremy have both said; primitive peoples needed to explain the unexplainable. Therefore, man created god(s). God filled the gaps in knowledge - from electrical storms, to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, to the seasons, etc, etc.

But marketing! Oh, baby, there's the thing. It is in the marketing strategies of anything from religion to politics, from hair care products to the latest in mobile phones, that lies your true opiate of the masses.

The marketing of religion - from the crusades and bloodletting of foreign cultures and/or opposing ideologies, to personal guilt and shame; heavenly rewards or hellish punishments in some kind of immortal eternity; claiming commonly-evolved human moral standards as only their own (ie: some of the 10 Commandments); and playing on peoples fears as well as their need for love and acceptance; prosetylising at ground level through people who are convinced by the benefits of the product; etc. Marketing is the opiate of the masses, and religion has no shortage of salesman and marketing gurus behind the product/ideology. It's quite fantastic, really.

Editted to add: Actually, drug is probably a better word than opiate, because the marketing gurus - through the employment of various marketing ploys (including peer pressure and the manipulating overwhelming desires within yourself) - can make you feel lulled into a false sense of security, like opium; or they can set you alight and get your adrenalin pumping, like speed; or they can trick your mind into hearing and seeing things that aren't really there, like acid.

Ego

If my understanding of Marx is correct (We've been studying Neitzsche, and Marx is N.'s closest equivalent of an opposite.)

Opium of the people isn't a reference to the modern day concept of getting high, so religion isn't for making people feel the escasty of life. Rather it's used to numb the feeling of pain. So like a person feeling pain would get painkillers to numb the pain, a poor person due to the economic reality they turn to religion to aliviate the pain.

Karl Marx's Opium of the people (about.com)

Pouye

As a child, you quickly learn that there are some things which are out of your control. Pain is one of those things -- stomach cramps, teething, daiper rashes... these things make it clear!

As a person gets older, they begin to ask questions about pain, but for the most part, people accept pain as a fact of life. The way they deal with this fact has a lot to do with what they have been told by others. If a person is surrounded by people who believe demons are around every corner, they might attribute pain and suffering as spiritual attacks. In history, this led to some very interesting (and unusually cruel) "medical treatments".

Marx believed that the "problem of pain" was not solved by religion, but he did notice that religion did tend to "numb" the pain and make the fact of pain more palatable. However, he also believed that this "numbing" affect was not positive, since his conclusion was that there WAS no answer -- grin and bear it, and then die like everyone else.

For myself, I also believe pain is a obvious fact on this planet. However, (and Marx was right about me in this sense) I tend to personally believe that this painful world is a perfect "breeding ground" if you will, for faith.

We humans praise and award achievements based on the obstacles which were overcome to achieve them. The greater the obstacles overcome, the greater the achievement.
Examples: The blind and deaf Helen Keller; Jason Pipoly, a disabled man who swam the English Channel; Nobel Peach Prize winners; decorated war heroes; Olympic athletes.

It seems to me that the Bible also talks about these kinds of things:

"But this precious treasure�this light and power that now shine within us�is held in perishable containers, that is, in our weak bodies. So everyone can see that our glorious power is from God and is not our own.
We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don't give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going. Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies."
2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Peter said this in 1 Peter 3:13-14a:

"Now, who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you suffer for doing what is right, God will reward you for it. So don't be afraid and don't worry. Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life."

The "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is full of these kinds of examples (of course... a Christian author...)
Why do we fall in love with Sam? Because he never gives up. Faced with impossible odds against evil and suffering, the little halfling keeps plodding on. When all hope seems lost, he somehow finds hope to carry on.

As a Christian, I am not as worried about death and pain. I believe the world is "broken", but will someday be "fixed". I believe people die, but not forever. I believe a just God will set things straight in the end. I believe that God uses pain in this fallen world as a tool to bring people who live in a world where "reality bites" to ask the question, "Is there an answer to the pain and suffering I face? Is there any hope?"

Hope does spring eternal.

"Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.
There are three things that will endure�faith, hope, and love�and the greatest of these is love."
1 Corinthians 13:12-13

"So, you see, it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him."
Hebrews 11:6

Under the Influence,

Rock

foxjazz

I think since the agricultural revolution, man began to have power and time to think on the things that concerned man.

A quote from B:

Have you ever wondered why it is the duty of the clergy of so many sects to read the Divine Office Daily? Why the same affirmations of faith are repeated word for word in so many religious communities around the world -- Daily? Is it so difficult to remember that Allah is One or that Christ died for our sins that it must be reiterated at least once every day throughout life? Of course we know that these things aren't in the least difficult to remember. And we know that the pious don't go to church every Sunday because they've not forgotten that Jesus loves them. They want to hear it again and again and again and again. In some sense or other, they need to hear it again and again and again and again. They can live without hearing the laws of thermodynamics ten thousand times, but for some reason, they cannot live without hearing the laws of their gods ten thousand times.

What was forgotten in the Great Forgetting was the fact that, before the advent of agriculture and village life, humans had lived in a profoundly different way.

variant 13

First - evolution isn't random.

Second - the first humans had no language (very little), no writing (or evidence of it), no science. Everything was stories, even now it is we just got better at it.

The first humans didn't just come up with god/s out of the blue, they developed them over time through stories. Seems logical to me, I'll try and find the article that explained it better.

Pouye

Oh, yeah...

Atomic particles have natural properties which inherently bond when the right conditions are present... like when you heat up hydrogen atoms in close proximity to massive temperatures they fuse and you end up with a new element... helium. (The consequent release of energy is a hot one!)

You mix some chemicals together and you end up with other chemical compounds, etc. All of the right compounds will just naturally mix together in the right way if all of the conditions are right. We don't know why or how, but non-living matter just seem to have a propensity to do this and make life happen... life like THIS:

Even the simplest single celled organism is a "high tech" factory of sorts -- complete with artificial languages and decoding systems; central memory banks that store and receive impressive amounts of information; precision control systems that regulate the automatic assembly of components; proof reading and quality control mechanisms that safeguard against errors; assembly systems that use principles of prefabrication and modular construction; and a complete replication system which allows the organism to duplicate itself at bewildering speeds.

Maybe this is why Nobel Prize winner Sir Francis Crick said, "The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going."
(Francis Crick, Life Itself (New York: Simon and Schuster,1981)

Off topic again... (sorry),

Rock

foxjazz

Just because life is complex doesn't make evolution random.

The Theory and proofs of evolution out weigh all other reasonable accounts for life.

Just because the lottery is won, has nothing to do with chance whatsoever. Once it is won, chance and probability do not exist with respect to the present.

Argument from the existence of life, or that life seems magnificent, is an old tired argument that appeals to emotion more than to logic.

To appreciate life, art are fine things, but to assign any other significance to them is error. Thanks for playing though.


Fox