Is man 'programmed' to seek a 'god'?

[warpus]

This "personal" God did come down twice in history. Once to Moses and once to Palestine.

You forgot about Joseph Smith, Zoroaster, and Mohammed... and a bunch of Hindu dudes.

 

[timtofly]

You forgot about Joseph Smith, Zoroaster, and Mohammed... and a bunch of Hindu dudes.

No, He still is a personal God. Most folks don't start religions based on encounters. I suppose the more charismatic ones have done so though.

God did not start any religions either. He gave the law to Moses, not a religion. He took away the NEED for the law in Jesus. Any one can have an opinion on why He did that, and start their own religion if they want to.

 

[Kyriakos]

A bit off-topic but the full judaic law if followed seems to lead with mathematical certainty into madness, that is the need for human instincts to express themselves in inner rather than outer ways.
An enlightened alien psychology scientist could have created said law to mess up the jewish people

 

[Winner]

I got a question: Why does Atheist become so active when there's a discussion about god? Is god interest them? Why so much militantism? Why so much affirmation like "there is no god" instead of "in my opinion blablabla?" when even great scientist says that they don't know if there's a god or not?

What "militantism"? Where?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

These people who use that word think that doubt, curiosity and questioning is some sort of militant behaviour.

And he talks about scientists. Who use all 3.

 

[Narz]

No. But we are "programmed" to look for meanings and patterns, which often leads to religion. It's been observed in pigeons too, I believe, so there is no reason to believe we're unique in that sense. It's just that our imagination allows us to invent Gods where there in fact are none.

Nailed on post #2.

Religion evolved because it's easier to remember important information (about life, morality, social rules, etc.) thru story & myth than merely a bunch of dry rules.

AFAIK, monothesiem only evolved within the last 1% or so of mankind's existance. It makes sense really, when people migrated into cities with many competing local myths & spiritual practices creating a simplified, all-encompassing "God" to obsolete the local deities was a good way to unite/control the masses.

Originally "spirit" was no severed from the natural world. AFAIK, all aboriginal religions were animistic. Only recently has the idea of spirit disconnected from matter become popular (if it even existed at all previously). Obviously this philosophical leap (popularized by Plato, IIRC) has caused extreme harm. Animism demands care for environment as well as each other whereas in the modern Abrahamic religions nature merely exists to serve man (who's true home is in Heaven anyway). It's not surprising the rape of nature has been the inevitable result of such thinking.

It's time to evolve beyond a singular, non-changing/evolving God disconnected from nature/flesh & realize the point of spirituality, not as something to cling to or fight & die over but a way to connect to one's world & one's fellow man, to gain appreciation for & delight in one's condition & remember moral principles!

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I have an interesting question to those that claim that "gods" were needed until there was no "scientific" explanation how nature works.

It's not that god was needed until science came along, it's that god has been needed less since science came along. The anxieties that befall man are not the same as there used to be. When survival depends on the right weather to make crops grow, weather tends to take on divine proportions. We don't have that worry today. But people still worry about other things, and there will never come a time when we will know everything. It's impossible for a finite creature such as man to know infinite things.

AFAIK, monothesiem only evolved within the last 1% or so of mankind's existance. It makes sense really, when people migrated into cities with many competing local myths & spiritual practices creating a simplified, all-encompassing "God" to obsolete the local deities was a good way to unite/control the masses.

Can't say I disagree. The powerful elite have seen religion as a highly effective tool to control the masses and lend legitimacy to their rule. We still use ideology in this regard today, but we have replaced religion with other notions, such as nationalism.

 

[Souron]

I have an interesting question to those that claim that "gods" were needed until there was no "scientific" explanation how nature works.
Why the ONLY person (who later turned into a nation), that came up with the idea of One G-d, was Abraham?
I mean, there were thousands upon thousands people living before and around him - yet ALL of them were deifying separate nature components without even thinking of the possibility of One "Boss".
Not to mention, that Abraham realized that the Boss is NOT the "Nature" itself, but rather Someone above it all.
IF you claim that the only reason to "invent gods" was to explain how lightning strikes and famine comes - why Abraham (living in a society of 100% "Nature-worshipers") wasn't satisfied with such an "easy" explanation, yet he sought for something BEYOND what the eye can see???
As the story (the Midrash, story-type commentaries that reveal the hidden context and meaning of the Torah) tells us, Abraham simply understood that the world is too complex to attribute events to separate powers, therefore there must be some single Boss.
Question - but why did he seek for the solution OUTSIDE the system, not just saying "oh, so it's Nature the Boss"?
(Well, that's what modern scientists do - they call the Nature to be the "Boss". Yet, Abraham immediately looked for something beyond it.)

My personal opinion is that the monotheism arose from the tradition of having a God associated with a nation. God explains the good and bad fortune of the ancient nation, as God is said to have looked over the Jews. It is not a huge step to deny the existence of the nation gods of other nations. So the Jews are Gods chosen people in the same way that Athenians were Athena's patrons except that Athenians did not deny the existence of the greek pantheon.

The parallels between city-state patron Gods and the depiction of God as the protector of the Jews are immense.

 

[Kyriakos]

Remember Pythagoras Euripides! In the Bachai a Greek head of a city state is dismissive of the deity Dionysus, because it is foreign (from Asia). So Dionysus intervenes, makes some people mad, and in the end his head is seen on a pike carried by his own mother...
In the ancient Greek world it appears to have been a virtue to respect the deities of other states or even foreign people.

 

[Souron]

katipunero
Religion is not bad, unless explicitly so (like most ancient polytheistic cults were - human sacrifices etc).
What IS bad, is when PERSONAL desires are PRETENDED to be G-d's ones.
Same goes for POLITICS.
The idea of people ruling people IS good, until "some become more equal than the others".
What G-d truly wants - it UNITY between people.
There is a very useful idea brought in Jewish texts:
The difference between generations from Adam to Noah and then from Noah to Abraham - about both it is said that they were "constantly doing evil", yet the first resulted in a Flood that killed almost entire humanity, whereas the latter "gave its merits to Abraham".
And the commentaries explain this inconsistency:
Generations from Adam to Noah were robbers and murderers - thus not meriting nothing at all.
Generations from Noah to Abraham were also rebels against G-d, ultimately building the Tower of Babel "to fight G-d".
Yet, they were very friendly one to another, like a big family (or rather, bee hive), thus that friendship and unity between people did gain them merits.
Except that all was done for the totally wrong reason - and thus the merit was withhold until Abraham came and directed the attention of people towards G-d.
Abraham also was an embodiment of love for people, thus he merited the results of the "wrongly utilized" love of the generation of the Tower.
The lesson from here is obvious:
Even if people unite for WRONG reasons, but if they show each other true friendship and unity - they gain merit.
What's left then - is only to be able to utilize it.
So - RELIGION (as a way to unite people) is good, what is bad - is the wrong ways to use it.

Uniting people is good, but wars over poorly evidenced ideology are bad. But there are other ways to unite people without having a common God. The value of religion must be taken in comparison to those things, other ways. Also, Religion has done a great deal of harm. In the modern world it does more harm than good. So by that standard, religion is bad.

I got a question: Why does Atheist become so active when there's a discussion about god? Is god interest them? Why so much militantism? Why so much affirmation like "there is no god" instead of "in my opinion blablabla?" when even great scientist says that they don't know if there's a god or not?

Great scientists say the don't know anything; God's not special in that regard. But just because certainty is rare, doesn't excuse belief in things without evidence. Moral issues are important, so it is very bad when somebody uses incorrect information to make moral choices. Also, while there is overlap between scientists and atheists, doing research, and being atheist are quite seperate. Scientist are not spokespeople for atheism, although the ideals behind the scientific method are in conflict with religion.

Atheist militant are same, in my opinion, the only reason that pushed a lot of them to contradict religious guy is pride, pride...and pride. If you think god is a joke , good for you guys, let's live a wonderful life in waiting of dying and disapear in nil.

Will religious people then stop doing bad to other people because they believe in God, like mistreat gays and raped pregnant women? Though really, I do care what people believe, even if it only seems to impact them. People should do the right things for the right reason.

BTW, just because you don't want to disappear into nothing, doesn't affect your ultimate fate. Believing in an afterlife won't make it happen. Better instead to come to terms with the evidence that's there, then deny it and invent your own fiction.

It's impossible for a finite creature such as man to know infinite things.

It may be impossible for man to know every fact in the universe, but there is no reason to believe man is incapable of explaining in totality how the universe works. Man will know the Grand Unified Theory.

 

[-Perceval-]

These people who use that word think that doubt, curiosity and questioning is some sort of militant behaviour.

And he talks about scientists. Who use all 3.

You just understood nothing about by post:
I just like the scientific way of thinking, it is clear with no hidden meanings. And the basic thing for all scientific is to accept the fact that they don't know everything. People who affirm they got the true on everything, are fanatics. Religious or Atheist, that's all.

Great scientists say the don't know anything; God's not special in that regard. But just because certainty is rare, doesn't excuse belief in things without evidence. Moral issues are important, so it is very bad when somebody uses incorrect information to make moral choices. Also, while there is overlap between scientists and atheists, doing research, and being atheist are quite seperate. Scientist are not spokespeople for atheism, although the ideals behind the scientific method are in conflict with religion.

I agree, scientist are not spokespeople of atheist, i never said that. But still we should give a great importance of what they say. You say that's it's unnacceptable to believe in things without evidence? Wow if humanity was thinking like that, we would still be prehistoric man today.

Will religious people then stop doing bad to other people because they believe in God, like mistreat gays and raped pregnant women? Though really, I do care what people believe, even if it only seems to impact them. People should do the right things for the right reason.

BTW, just because you don't want to disappear into nothing, doesn't affect your ultimate fate. Believing in an afterlife won't make it happen. Better instead to come to terms with the evidence that's there, then deny it and invent your own fiction.

Yes, religious people rape pregnant woman and hurt gays...If i think like you i could say, atheist put people in prison in siberia(like russian communist)...yes of course it's with this way of thinking that this debate will be intersting !


You think that's cause i am fear of death that i believe in a superior entities? I just don't care about me dude! See, your way of thinking is so egoist! It's just that when i see incredible peoples doing fantastic thing, or even normal people making huge steps in their lives i just can't imagine that death is able to destroy that. But maybe you get only a material point of view, if it is ther's no use to continue this debate cause we're just not talking about the same thing. It's like a dog and a cat who try talking about how they will kill an elephant...Just, no sense at all!

 

[Narz]

It's like a dog and a cat who try talking about how they will kill an elephant...Just, no sense at all!

I saw that cartoon too, I agree, it was hard to follow.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You just understood nothing about by post:

Maybe the start of your post threw me off:

"I got a question: Why does Atheist become so active when there's a discussion about god? Is god interest them? Why so much militantism?"

Where you place 'militantism' in-line with active discussion and interest, in a thread talking about a god-related subject.

I just like the scientific way of thinking, it is clear with no hidden meanings. And the basic thing for all scientific is to accept the fact that they don't know everything. People who affirm they got the true on everything, are fanatics. Religious or Atheist, that's all.

True, science only says: based on our observations our best conclusion to date is ...

 

[Souron]

You just understood nothing about by post:
I just like the scientific way of thinking, it is clear with no hidden meanings. And the basic thing for all scientific is to accept the fact that they don't know everything. People who affirm they got the true on everything, are fanatics. Religious or Atheist, that's all.

It's not fanaticism to say that the standard model, the theory or evolution, and all the other accepted scientific theories are facts. It's a stronger claim than strictly justified by science, unless you define fact as things that have a high degree of certainty, but it's not fanaticism. And claiming that the most established theories are true, is on par with claiming that the most fantastical ideas are false.

You say that's it's unnacceptable to believe in things without evidence? Wow if humanity was thinking like that, we would still be prehistoric man today.

No, why do you think that? Few discoveries can be attributed to overconfidence.

Yes, religious people rape pregnant woman and hurt gays...If i think like you i could say, atheist put people in prison in siberia(like russian communist)...yes of course it's with this way of thinking that this debate will be intersting !

It was a little hyperbolic, but pro-life and anti-gay opinions do tend to be widely attributed to religion. The fact that religion is near certainly false makes such reasons and the policies and attitudes that arise from them bad, to say the least.

You think that's cause i am fear of death that i believe in a superior entities? I just don't care about me dude! See, your way of thinking is so egoist! It's just that when i see incredible peoples doing fantastic thing, or even normal people making huge steps in their lives i just can't imagine that death is able to destroy that. But maybe you get only a material point of view, if it is ther's no use to continue this debate cause we're just not talking about the same thing. It's like a dog and a cat who try talking about how they will kill an elephant...Just, no sense at all!

I'm not sure exactly why you want to convince yourself that there is an afterlife. But it does seem to be because you have decide that you want to. And that's a bad reason.

 

[Kyriakos]

It seems equally unfounded to think there definitely is no afterlife though. It is not as if there is any hard evidence that there is not, and it is not an issue that can get reduced to the hyperbole of inventing some supposedly analogous but in reality dead-wrong parallelism with obviously non existent phenomena.
I think that the possibility of there being an afterlife is not great, but not infinitesimal either, in a way it is like the possibility of Constantinople becoming Greek again

 

[Souron]

That's a great opportunity to tie the discussion back to the original topic. More obviously than having a natural "programming" to believe in gods, there is more to suggest that man has a bias to believe in an after life of some kind. As an example, -Perceval- seems to have such bias. (OTOH, it might not be his nature so much as his having grown up in a christian culture). The question is, what is the proper response to such biases? Do we take them as evidence that our intuitions were places by some greater being? or do we instead look with greater skepticism at such ideas, because of our natural bias to believe them?

I posit that the latter is the right response. If man does in fact have a natural tendency to attribute things to God, then such attribution must be taken with an extra dose of skepticism.

 

[-Perceval-]

That's a great opportunity to tie the discussion back to the original topic.
More obviously than having a natural "programming" to believe in gods, there is more to suggest that man has a bias to believe in an after life of some kind. As an example, -Perceval- seems to have such bias. (OTOH, it might not be his nature so much as his having grown up in a christian culture). The question is, what is the proper response to such biases? Do we take them as evidence that our intuitions were places by some greater being? or do we instead look with greater skepticism at such ideas, because of our natural bias to believe them?

I posit that the latter is the right response. If man does in fact have a natural tendency to attribute things to God, then such attribution must be taken with an extra dose of skepticism.

Hahaha, i laught, who told you i grew up in achristian culture? First i live in France, a country where 60% of pop get no religion, i also live in the south west, the region of France where the socialism and communist(there's a lot of communist mayor here) is the more present. Even in school teachers make always critics on religion. You see you get so much pride that you think you can guess evrything?
Also even if i appreciate the fact that you're back to the original topic, the question you are asking is not objective. I am just trying to get the more objective and scientifical point of view, so i propose to first speacking of how different tribes in the world apprehend world with religion before making opinion ourselves. In fact this subject is at 70% an Anthropological question.

True, science only says: based on our observations our best conclusion to date is ...

Haha i agree(of course the evolution theory is not calling into question) and today the best conclusion to date is not that god doesn't exist.

PS: Also i noticed that the american(atheist or not) point of view on religion is completely different from the european one. I can understand Atheist rage in america if believers are like you describes them(believe in creationnism ect...). But just try to open your mind a little bit guys and read my entire post when i post. I post post who criticise religion and atheism and you're just seeing me as a fervent religion defender. Let's read and keep cool guys.

 

[Whiskey_Lord]

Too bad that the only way to defend religion is to engage in an absurd amount of mental gymnastics. Do yourself a favor and don't try to defend that which is indefensible.

 

[-Perceval-]

i am not defending religion or atheism, i'm just trying to proove that nobody get the absolute truth.

But i have to agree with you, i should accept the atheist superiority in this forum and stop believe in objectivity. Heil Atheist! Without jokes i am just gonna leave this thread cause i am alone against plenty of atheist and it is very very boring to to debate with people who just don't accept to be a little bit objective. Good bye guys, i am not gonna post here anymore.

Moderator Action: Phrases such as 'Heil Atheist' aren't conducive to civil discussion.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Kyriakos]

I have to agree with Perceval in that theists and atheists very often make very similar mistakes, that is they substitute belief for truth.
In my view we do not have any hard evidence than an afterlife does not exist. For all one knows it does not presuppose the existence of a god in any intelligible and useful polemically way; maybe the energy never dies, and in some complicated amalgam of equations we are not familiar with, some sort of consciousness carries on.
It is not like we have even a unified theory atm. Mind and matter are very much distinct with current theories, even with those that try (in my view clumsily) to present the one as the other in different planes.

As for evolution, i think it has a serious place in this issue, but obviously it is not the final word on it. Even the human mind does not really appear to be cost-effective in any way; why have endless realms of thought if you are to just live and reproduce? Take a look at the ongoing attempt to create a robot that actually is autonomous: the scientists there are in no way trying to give it consciousness as we have, they make something ultimately very basic. This should tell you that in order for something to be self-sustainable, and possibly even reproduce, it does not at all have to have such a delicate balance of a mental world as the human one.