Man thinks therefore God laughs
My guess is that “God” is a creation of man, born of our insecurities and fears. There’s probably some biological basis for the belief as well, as it’s nearly universal.
We collectively create Him and pour the concept full of our dreams, wishes and hopes, as well as the things that scare us. Not purely a shortcut to thinking, but a sort of security blanket that we use to prevent the ultimate truth from sinking in.
Being raised in faith, I don’t want to believe this, but the longer I am on this earth the more I do.
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Studies show that many of faith heal better, have a better mental outlook, and often have a stronger support system than those who who are not religious. If going to church, praying, etc., makes you happy, do so, and do not concern yourself with what others believe.
Phaedrus writes:
Possibly the problem is as much a preconception of ultimate truth as it is with preconceptions of God.
In a world with so much religious conflict, it is so wonderful to read something so honest that gets to the heart of the human condition. Phaedrus may be right that we subjectively create an image of something to ease our insecurities and fears but is that the same as saying higher realities we are attracted to do not exist objectively.
Simone Weil suggests becoming open to experience something higher than ourselves instead of by believing in something but by not believing in the future as initiating the “good” that attracts the heart of Man. No need to create an image of God when struggling not to believe in false Gods
Yet we are continually deceived in this way. Advertising is based on this attraction and the belief that this or that product will make things “better.” But better and worse are relative and life vacillates between these two subjective considerations.
Simone Weil suggests keeping an open mind and heart that goes beyond searching and self-questioning but by realizing that the higher realities the heart is sensitive to cannot appear in this way. Instead, the courage to remain consciously open, to not look for those answers in societal life itself but beyond it. So she suggests refusing to be conned into this and seeing that it cannot. That is not say that societal life is not valuable but that it is not able to satisfy these deeper desires of the heart. This "refusal"she suggests is really a very deep and authentic question of the unconditioned heart and when it remains pure, I do believe it attracts an answer.
From this perspective, God is neither imagination regarding ultimate truths leading to escapism nor preconception but an open question of the heart. In these times with so many influences and attractions, it is so hard to retain this impartiality. But for those that do, I believe they begin to understand what is impossible for the literal mind and conditioned heart.
Good post Nick.
I don’t mean “ultimate truth” to be “Ultimate Truth”- nothing so lofty as that. I more mean we construct these elaborate rituals and belief systems as a smoke screen to distract us from the “truth” that we will die alone and our existance will utterly end. True, I can’t prove that death is the end, but the weary rationalist in me thinks the odds are excellent that’s the way it is.
To me religion is mostly ‘whistling past the graveyard.’ I think deep down people are born with the inate sense of their mortality, and I also think that piety is just a veneer. The crucible of life burns it away for most people.
I really admire deeply religious people, don’t get me wrong. But I can’t shake the feeling that deep down in the core of religious intellectuals they know that their elaborate scholarship is just a type of delusional architecture.
No offense to the genuine intellectuals with faith, like Uccisore. That’s just my point of view.
I’ve come to hate the ‘G’ word - just in using it you begin to limit the very thing you are wishing to give some form to. As if you could give a form to something which must by default contain formlessness.
Animating force–>Creation–>Life–>Awareness–>Animating force–>Creation–>Life–>Awareness–>Animating force dah-de-dah-de-dah.
Stop looking and start seeing already. 
DITTO. [size=75](but I hope God didn’t hear that)[/size]
Hi Phaedrus
Is it possible that there are those born with also an innate sense that there is something more to human purpose than “normal” life that can only be logically and emotionally discovered through the willingness to sacrifice veneer?
Tab and Bessy
How do you do this?
in MY theory god is the universe burning sulfur manipulated he puts a part of his spitirit into it because it is of him,“he” isn’t really a man but his son is jesus was a sign of his power and prophecy wich is well known by believers to come true (that i doubt) the universe is like an eye but god created himself to look inside of himself and found humanity who he claimed to have created yet we were dropped off by some gods & goddesses where they showed their powers and etc to us before they left earth and the universe who was sleeping at that exact time the black hole would be a portal for their ships able to take the pressure of being split up but the particles are anti-matter so they last just long enough to make it here and back soon a fleet of ships will come and take humanity as slaves away from god and we may be taught the knowledge of gods weaknesses.
It is like the expression Know That I Am. Know it, believe it, and most especially live it. Constantly discussing, comparing, and contrasting each other’s faiths is boring and senseless. Not to mention it causes wars.
Hi Bessy
As you know John in the Bible advises us to test the spirits. The reason is because we are gullible and open to self deception. Seeing and fantasy are not the same.
Your idea of knowing, believing,and living it, can have mixed results depending on the truth of what you know, believe and live.
Terrorists know, believe and live their truth. does that make it good? I would say their seeing is fantasy and their living it produces horrible results.
I will agree that most conversation is meaningless but when done with the right attitude, it can become rewarding and far from boring.
Wars are not caused by people discussing and arguing especially in the company of a case of good scotch. Wars are caused when people have decided right and wrong but with different interpretations.and decide to live them.
"Wars are not caused by people discussing and arguing especially in the company of a case of good scotch. "
Wow, do you know any Irish people?
im no bible scholar, but doesnt this directly contradict what one of those other jerks said? when jesus was in the desert and satan was there asking him if god could create a burrito so hot that not even he could eat it? or maybe it was homer simpson.
deism means that god doesnt do anything in this world, but he exists and he created it. if you are not a deist, and not an atheist, i would really like to know exactly what is the basis of your belief. surely you must have encountered some experience that leads you to believe god directly intervened in the world in a way that could not be a product of his initial creation. and by ‘encountered some experience’ i dont mean read or heard, i mean experienced.
what i believe is that god created this thing in order to harvest some metaphysical byproduct. thats the only reason that my selfish human brain can imagine for creating something. maybe he wanted to create happiness, or he wanted to harmonize his ‘omnisoul’ by inducing its already harmonized components (those of us born lucky without suffering) to perform selfless action on the less harmonized components (those born with suffering and without priveleges).
what i mean is that god created a machine that causes a certain action to happen. and when that action happens, some kind of metaphysical action takes place outside our universe that god intended to create and utilize.
if god made his presence known, by imbuing a magical man with healing, sea parting or flying powers, then the people would know that a god exists and that they should be doing something specific in order to appease him. if god wanted people to be geniunely selfless or genuinely infidel-destroying, then he could never tell them that this is what he wants.
if he told them that this is what he wants, then those people would do these things in order to please god. they would not do them simply because they genuinely wanted to help their neighbor or because they geniunely hated american consumerist imperialism. they would do it because they wanted their 70 virgins and endless video game library, or perhaps simply the satisfaction of a greater power who openly offered no such reward.
what is clear is that their motivation would be changed, and it is my theory that god wants their genuine motivation.
my first suggestion is somewhat idealistic. its mainly based on the fact that helping someone else feels good to me, and god created this feeling via darwinian evolution for a reason. it makes me feel like a big man when i help someone and they dont even know it. and this is probably a direct result of darwinian evolution just like everything else… probably.
but if god created this world in order to harvest the product of some human actions, or, more logically, the actions of any animals that make informed decisions (since most animals, including humans) fall into this category, he would be harvesting selfishness, not selflessness.
to answer the question ‘what did god create humans to do?’ you ask two questions. did god create them correctly and what have humans done more than anything else.
i think its safe to assume that god did not make any mistakes in his creation, simply because how the crap can we talk about gods mistakes. assuming that, what have humans done more than anything? it would appear as though they have been selfish more than anything, when looking at large scale history.
genocides everywhere, xenophobia abroad and paranoia at home. but what about the selflessness of every parent towards every child. perhaps those two cancel out completely, and god did actually intend and succeed at making a selflessness manufacturing machine.
whatever. the only reason why anybody creates anything in human society is in order to produce a usable byproduct. so therefore the only reason why i can think that god made this universe was in order to create some kind of byproduct that we will never see or understand.
so when considering this and looking at chris/ju/muslianity, you have to ask yourselves, how and why did god think up the idea of humans. apparently, the whole purpose of creating humanity was to make humans happy.
ill admit that if i had the opportunity to make actual tiny people just like me and control their world in order to make them happy, id really do it. but… well i dont know where id find the corporate funding for such a completely fruitless project.
and more importantly, if my main goal were to make humans happy, their world would actually be full of happiness and 100% devoid of suffering. explain suffering, christians. explain why god requires “YOUR” freewill to be good when he is the jerk who created your freewill. he gave you a lack of money or an amazingly large amount of money. he gave you asshole parents or smotheringly righteous parents.
to say that luck/god had no hand in your development is stupidity. to say that the development of your “free” will is not influenced by these circumstances is even more stupidity.
my theory is purely logical and requires no such thing.
Nick,
I didn’t mean that all religious discussion is boring, but one’s faith is such a personal thing that many times it is futile. I am a family of mixed faiths and the majority of people in our respective religions are even intolerant of our ability to have regard for each other’s culture and faith.
Terrorists are driven by their passionate spirituality just as someone who professes to live by Jesus’s Golden Rule and comparing the two is useless to me. Personally, I strive to live a good life but am not in terror or fear of being judged in the hereafter. I am far more fearful of those intolerant fools who call themselves faithful. I am far more fearful for them if, in fact, there is Judgement Day because those who hold themselves above all others as divine may regret it.
You can talk all you want to another about religious values, but is it valuable only when you can find your common ground, or is there really more value in listening to the faith of your neighbor? - really listening, and maybe learning something. I have always hated the phrase “tolerant” because it sounds so much like the ability to tolerate, which has such a negative connotation. I say when it comes to religion, live and let live. I don’t belong in your spiritual world anymore than you belong in mine.
This seems like less of a position to me, and more of a matter of manners. Isn't that what you're advocating, really? A polite backing off? I mean, the facts are the facts. Either some people are going to hell or not, either we're being reincarnated or we aren't, either there's a God or there isn't. Now, none of this may be polite to talk about around the dinner table, and because these things are so important tempers flare, but really digging into it has to be [i]someone's[/i] job, yes? It seems to me that everything you've said here about religion could be just as easily said about politics- the only difference being, Election Day is a little more tangible than Judgement Day, and so we are [i]forced[/i] to talk about it.
Anything’s possible, Nick. If we knew any of this with certaintly there’d either be no religion or else no need of faith.
My feeling/opinion/belief/hypothesis is that god/God is a fantasy existing only as manifestion of human hopes and fears. Sacrificing the veneer of religion may indeed get us closer to ‘truth,’ if that’s what you mean to ask- how can I say for sure? I feel pretty certain religion is pure fantasy, but you can’t really prove the negative.
Manners? Yes. It is about consideration. This is a forum of discussion so (obviously) we are going to discuss, but why do you think they tell you to stay away from religion and politics? Believe what you believe and vote for whom you want to vote for, but don’t jam it down my throat.
Another good question here is why are some religions so anxious to convert you and others stay to themselves? Christians want to spread the word, tell it on “every street corner” mountain… and Jews, who stay to themselves are basically inter-marrying and dying off. When have you ever seen a person in the Jewish faith come to your doorstep sellin’ the paperback Torah? Is it about wanting to spread the joy or about wanting to take over? I have always wondered that.
Well, they tell me not to discuss it at the Thanksgiving table and similar situations, and I don't. Is that the kind of 'staying away' you mean, or something more?