h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'God' is a form of control over people, used mostly by those who weild a certain amount of power in their specific 'religion'.

You see, if the religious elders wanted people to do something, if they told them to do it outright then they wouldn't. However, if they gave them some 'cock and bull' stoiry that they had recieved a vision from some sort of 'god' to do it, then they would. Anybody who questioned it could then be stoned to death for heracy.

I agree, but only partially.

I think God and religion are things people invent to explain things that they couldn't explain by any other way. Before scientific thought came about, people would concoct "gods" of this and that to explain why there were stars, earthquakes, the moon, volcanoes, the ocean, tides, seasons, dirt, etc. Most ancient cultures had several gods, each with his/her/its own territory in nature. The Chinese culture (and I'm only dimly remembering this) has over 100 gods, along with stories of how those gods went from being mortals to immortality.

I think, though, in Western civilizations, people eventually melded their gods into one all-powerful god. You can see this in Plato's writing, where he speaks of "The God," rather than "gods." Again, I'm hard pressed to remember where exactly I read this, I think it was in a book by Socrates about Plato's last days. But I so dimly remember it, it might have been Plato talking about Socrates' last days. In any case, my philosophy professor was quick to point out that distinction and say that Plato is sometimes seen as the "first Christian."

When those gods became the one God, I'm sure educated people realized that knowlege is power, and knowlege about God is very powerful. They probably got together their "cock and bull story" to start exerting this power over the unwashed masses. I'm sure someone compiled a bunch of folk stories into the Bible and started calling it the Word of God. Thus, the cult was started.

2000 years later, the "Word of God" has undergone several revisions and translations, to the point where it probably doesn't look anything like the original Bible. The concept of God itself is a holdover and is still used to explain the unexplainable. In today's society, where we've explained away almost every natural phoenomeon, it explains good and bad luck more than anything ("It was God's Will that our mother got run over by a bus..."). I've noticed that God is held strongly by people who:

1) Need everything in the universe to have an explanation, and
2) Are willing to believe in an all-powerful being who has the power to control everything, has laid down strict rules of conduct even though He/She/It gave us free will, and whom they've never seen, felt, smelled, tasted, or heard.

In my opinion, I'd rather believe in the Force than God. At least people can control the Force, and look really good doing it. And while God only has one good movie with someone exerting His power (The Exorcist), the Force has three and a half good movies involving it (meesa thinks that Phantom Menace isa stoopid movie).

I have a couple of problems with this vein of conversation.
First, I think it's too reflexively cynical to say that anyone could have "invented" God. Even if God is just a human construction, the idea developed slowly, beginning at a point in time beyond our ability to trace. Early religious leaders probably sincerely believed in God (or gods), even if they did use the idea for their own ends. They may have helped the idea _develop_, but they couldn't have _invented_ it.

Second, consider these religious laws:
"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God." (Exodus 20:8-10)

"He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:12)

"You are not to eat of these [animals], among those which chew the cud, or among those which divide the hoof." (Leviticus 11:4)

These are from the Old Testament, of course, and reflect the Judeo-Christian concept of God. These are among the laws allegedly given to Moses from God. My question is, what benefit to the priest gain from "controlling" the people with these laws, and almost all of the other laws found in the Torah? I can't see any. So it doesn't make much sense to say that God was invented so that religious leaders could get their way, because, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the religious leaders aren't asking for anything for themselves. It is true that they are to receive tithes or a portion of a person's sacrifice to eat, but there are _much_ easier ways to make a living than by inventing and enforcing a religion.
Third, people aren't stupid. Give them some credit. If you take a society of people who have no concept of God and have no need of a concept of God, and then have someone tell them, "Hey, you shouldn't eat pork because... uh... this all-powerful being that you can't see or hear or touch and that you've never heard of says you're not supposed to," they would laugh in his face and run him out of the villiage.

As far as the Bible goes (and I don't want to stray to far from the point of the discussion, which isn't the Bible), it's also much too easy to say that it's just a bunch of stories that has been handed down incorrectly through generations. Archaologically, the history given in the Old Testament (though, of course, not the theology) is quite reliable at least as far back as Joseph's administration of Egypt. Textually, you might be amazed at how well a largely illiterate culture can trasmit information over time. Before this century, the oldest copy of the Old Testament book of Isaiah was in the Leningrad Codex c.1000 AD. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, an identical copy of Isaiah was found that dated about a thousand years earlier - the book had been passed down a thousand years without a single error. When a scribe deeply believes in the sanctity of what he is copying, he will take great care to do it properly. As a matter of fact, the Bible we have today looks a *lot* like the original Bible, at least as far as you can say that there was an original Bible. It's certainly almost identical to the one used 100 BC - 70 AD, and most of it was composed within a thousand years of that time, often less.

Christianity has been the dominant religion in the Western World for the past millenium and a half, and I think that problems with it and rebellion to it have tainted all Westerners' views of God and religion. Rebellion to it has become so reflexive that arguments that the Bible is just mistranslated stories and that religion is a calculated form of control have received an aura of "just common sense," and rarely are ordinary people able to defend these arguments that they (often loudly) proclaim. Whether concious or not, it goes something like this: Hypocritical Medieval Christian priests used the name of God to execute those who disagreed with them and make a nice bit of wealth for themselves; therefore, religion only exists so that priests can control people. It's self-obvious.
Or: The story of creation in Genesis seems to disagree with what science now knows about the beginnings of the universe, the earth, and life; therefore, the entire Bible must be a myth. It's self-obvious.

Anyway, to reiterate what I'm trying to say (I had a point when I started this - really! Go back and check!), no one "invented" God, there's actually little reason for someone to up and invent God, and most of the people who have profited from the idea of God have also believed in it, even if they weren't that devout in their belief. They've been more misguided opportunists of something already existing than conniving conspirists set to control the world by inventing a God and asking people to kill a cow every now and again. Assuming that He doesn't actually exist (again, because of the backlash against Chrisianity, many people refuse to even *consider* the possibility), then the idea of God developed over time as a sincere belief and, as you said, an attempt to explain the unexplainable.

P.S. The Force actually is God. When writing the Star Wars stories, George Lucas deliberately distilled the common concepts of God from the world's religions to use as the Force. (And this isn't just me - he's said all this himself in an interview.) It may not be God from the viewpoint of any particular religion, but it is intended to represent God.

P.P.S. What about the Ten Commandments? Yul Brynner? Charlton Heston? That was a pretty good movie.

I didn't actually read your whole long thing, but I think that , In the old days when no one really understood how science and weather worked, people would make up stories to justify things that happen, and just like rumors and myths get started, people distorted and blew up the stories, until everyone took them as truths and not just stories, and that may be how God turned into a bearded man in a white robe up in the clouds...

I wouldn't have read the whole thing, either, if I hadn't had to write it. That's pretty much what I meant, though, as opposed to anyone 'inventing' God for a selfish purpose. Thank you for condensing all that into a few lines! I've been trained in my education to be thorough, which, as you can tell, is sometimes more cumbersome than it's worth .

perhaps you are confusing religion with 'God'. i agree that certain religions have indeed wielded the power they had over others by using their status within a 'church'. but its not a way to describe what God IS. i could never, no matter how extensive my vocabulary or creative my mind i could never possibly describe to someone who doesnt 'know' Him what its all about...unless youre satisfied with kindness and love and peace with others in this life we spend on this planet.

Great Red Dragon, don't think those "elders" were completely stupid! All those laws and restrictions DID have some common sense behind them. This is a lot more obvious in the Koran (it's more recent, and at the time of its writing, Arabic civilization was a lot more advanced than European civilization): Muslims cannot enter a mosk without their "ablutions", which means that every Muslim was obliged to wash at least once a week, for obvious hygienic reasons. Originally (I'm NOT kidding, and this still exists in some fundamentalist countries), Muslims may not wipe their behinds with the same hand they use for eating, again for obvious hygienic reasons. The prohibition of eating pork has the same roots (and dates from ages before, after all, all Jewish prophets are also Muslim prophets, even Jesus), and so on. For Muslims, Jewish and Christian people are "People Of The Book", and different from the "unbelievers". It makes one wonder what all the fuss is about in the Middle East...

But, indeed, a number of re-writes and some very weird and far-fetched "interpretations" of the old religious books has indeed led to some "laws" that have nothing to do anymore with the original meaning: for example, nowhere in the Koran is there any mention of veiling women, only of "avoiding temptation", and this originally was a warning to MEN, not an edict for women. Originally Islam dispensed with priests and the like too: everyone could pray wherever he or she wanted to, without a "middle-man". But as everyone can see, a lot of that original meaning has been lost, and I believe the same thing happened with Christianity or other religions.

The sabbath, I would guess, was invented for a number of possible reasons.

-> There was nothing to do in those days except work, pretty much. So a day without work, meant a day which could be partially devoted to religion. A regular time set aside for relgion is good for the priests. Note that as well as there being no work, the sabbath was holy.
-> sabbath being non-working would be popular with the poor, and unpopular with the rich. There are more poor than rich, and the rich are probably educated enough to start asking difficult questions.
-> humane reasons - 6/7 days working is about as much as we can manage without going insane.

Ex21:12 was a way of stopping people killing one another, which was good for society, and so good for the priests in charge of it. Lev11:4, I imagine, was important because:
-> such animals were unhygenic
-> killing such animals for food was wasteful, better is to drink their milk, and keep them alive.

I agree that these things built up over several thousands of years - but I expect that the various books were actually written by wise men/prophets, and they were written to control and guide those around them. Not necessarily for bad reasons, though.

God, in my opinion, was "invented" by mankind to make themselves more secure. But when I say invented, I don't mean they spontaneously decided to make God up, but that from the awe of looking at the sky at night, or at something else of such beauty, they used God to explain it. When people walked alone, in a dark forest, knowing the risk of being killed by some predator, the thought of some almighty deity looking after them brought a lot of comfort. This is understandable. When terrified, even the very secular start praying. God is a manifestation of fear, brought about to help people stay calm in terrifying circumstances.

Now, I see a posting above claiming that "the force" in Star Wars was actually God. Sorry to say this, but that's balderdash! The films/novels are very humanist. In fact, people have complained that they preach humanism! "The Force" comes from within. Luke has to concentrate to use it. He doesn't prey to get it!

I love Star Wars.

So, maybe that's what god is, the force from within you. Whats the difference between looking within yourself for for an interior force and looking within yourself for an exterior force? Maybe god is the force that runs through the inside of us all? Maybe there is no such force at all, but then what is the purpose of life and consciousness, and what makes us different from other carbon substances, like charcoal?

Also, I kind of think science is a religion too. we make up al this stuff about how things work, and it all makes a lot of sense, but to theists, god etc, all makes a lot of sense too. Look at the evolution of the model of the atom, at first it made sense, but now it is very different than when it started, how do we know that sometime in the future we won't all realize that it has all been a myth too?

I myself am somewhat atheistic, but really I'm just confused and looking for the answer....

Firstly, can I say that we are not made solely of carbon, else we would be very crumbly or very brittle, but either way pretty stupid.
We are complicated creatures.
You say that this God may be a force inside that. Well, you seem to bë redefining God. If God is simply our minds, then I do believe in God. If God is the little hairs down are throat, then I believe in God. But if you tell me that God is omnipotant/omniscient/omnipresent, then I will dismiss God. If you tell me God is simply some linking between us, I would say that might be true, but I am not sure of it as the evidence is not too convincing. But again, if you tell me that this linking between us has its own will/conciousness, then I would say your argument is not convincing.
Science is not a religion. Some people in the past have followed science without question - like a religion. This is wrong.
You said about the model of the atom "it is very different than when it started" - exactly. This is scientific progress. At first, it was thought that the atom was a single particle. Flaws were found in this model and so the idea of smaller particles called electrons was devised. Then it was realised that electrons are outside the centre of the atom. Then it was realised that the centre of the atom (nucleus) is made of other particles. Then, it was found out that these particles are also made of smaller particles. This is progress. One idea is accepted, but when a more correct model is realised, it is accepted (and so forth).
Now, you say that we might find out "it has all been a myth". That is totally unlikely. What has been developed is not some wild story someone thought up. The theories fit with the evidence. If the evidence disputes the theory, the theory is ammended. It is very unlikely to be totally incorrect. The current model of the atom is nothing like the first one, as you say. However, the first model was not a myth, but a theory that had only started its development.

okay, sorry.

Sorry? about what?
I'm only putting forward my viewpoint.
Yes, it is very blunt, but calling God a manifestation of fear is even blunter!
Please don't be offended by my argument, I am just trying to justify the atheist viewpoint.
I've talked to many people who say what you have said - that God is from within. The fact is, depending on what you define God to be, the concept is either more or less logical.

gilly: I'm not sure that an apology is required - I can't see anything you've said which is in any way insulting...
Perhaps some might disagree with the validity of what you said, but I thought you expressed your points well.
*shrug*

Yes, exactly my point.
I don't have anything against the messanger of a viewpoint, I just put forward my case against it. Just because I disagree with your viewpoint does not mean that it offends me. I hope the same applies to you .