Did man invent God?

[blazeofglory]

Do not confuse invention with creation, for both terms are different and mutually exclusive from each other.

God might have created man and the res of other beings and non-beings, animate or inaugurate.

But the idea that God existed was the idea of man.

If you believe in mythological God wherein God has a variety of forms, incarnations and the like. God is deemed at times wrathful, at times very pleasant or His moods change time to time.

But we, the intellectuals do not perceive God as a mythological figure.

We men of letters or rational beings if we believe at all think that God is just a source of energy or we believe God is not the white turbaned old man or someone in paradise high in the sky. We think God is not a thing, material or bodily figure. God is in everything, permeating all beings.

This is the intellectual description of God.

[Judas130]

If god is nature and its order (by order i do not mean design, I mean its function), then we are all subject to it, and we are all part of it - this god. An atheist to the Judeo-Christian God cannot be an atheist to the 'God is nature/universe' description, because the description is real - there is the 'intention', as Russell would call it, and there is the 'extension', our physical evidence.
If you like this idea, you will enjoy Spinoza and the ideals of Theosophy.
Yet again, we are all born from nature's function, but nature is nature, and it is again man who 'creates God' from nature. Yet it is an idea that is on the right path, for we have the empircal evidence that this exists - that is not to say 'it exists in reality that God is nature' - but more to say 'nature is here and intact, it supports us, punishes us, and it permeates all'. If you choose to worship God in nature, you are worshipping nature, and you are replacing the word 'nature' for 'God', or you are personifying nature as a heathen might - 'mother nature', 'father sky: Caelus', etc - but you say we are beyond this mythology, so that gives me some hope.

What is more, is that for the religious minded, Nature comes with a morality system: Natural Law. However, if we really did follow nature to its full extent, we will realise how brutally unloving and unforgiving it is, or 'negatively moral', rather than 'immoral' because it is free from much we see as 'moral'. For example, mankind mothers its ailments, whearas in nature, the weaknesses of hereditary disease are cleansed through natural selection, or if the deer falls from the pack, it is left abandoned to perish, so is this what we must do with our disabled? I hear the name of Hitler and the Nazis, but bear in mind it is unnatural to kill another, but it is all the same brutal if we leave our loved ones to suffer painfully.

[LMK]

Do not confuse invention with creation, for both terms are different and mutually exclusive from each other.

There is no confusion of terminology in this poster's mind.

To answer the question; "Did man invent God?" there are two answers.

Yes, man invented the terms, definitions, etc. that describe or name God.
No, many of those who believe in God, believe that God revealed himself to man through any number of means.


~L

[Helga]

did man invent God? yes

[Judas130]

did man invent God? yes

So man invented ALL Gods and their definitions?
If God is love, did man invent love?
to cover my tail, in love we experience a whole package of emotion, so did man create this emotion?
If God is the universe, did man invent the universe?
If God is the sun or the moon, did we invent these?

[Pendragon]

God created man in His own image. Now the created thinks that they can create the Creator in theirs...

[Forbidden_Realm]

"If Horses and Oxen had hands, and could paint, and makes works of art as men do, the horses would paint their gods- horses- and the oxen would paint their gods- oxen-" Xenophanes.

[tailor STATELY]

"Did man invent God ?" I believe... No.

As I believe, when God gave Adam the intelligence to understand deity, God was revealed to man as such. I believe this process continues today.

"If Horses and Oxen had hands, and could paint, and makes works of art as men do, the horses would paint their gods- horses- and the oxen would paint their gods- oxen-" Xenophanes.

Aw... A much more important question: Was the X-Man correct ? I do not think so.

IMHO... Given that the horse or oxen could indeed paint and therefore exhibit the same intelligence God endowed man... There would be horse or oxen who would 'receive' The Word, as revealed, that man was created in God's image and would therefore paint God as man depicts God.

Then there would be horse or oxen who, as man does today, worship themselves; or worship other gods (Lambs, Goats, Bears, Tigers, etc); or no gods; or, ever be questioning until they made up their mind one way or the other through logic, epiphany, revelation, or whatsoever.

... IMHO

:tailor STATELY

[Judas130]

There would be horse or oxen who would 'receive' The Word, as revealed, that man was created in God's image and would therefore paint God as man depicts God.

Can man truly paint 'God', or does man paint 'God' subjectively?
The Judeo-Christian God is depicted as a Zeus like figure, while images of Jesus are not accurate at all, being westernised, and due to not one artist who has painted Jesus having actually seen the man. Vishnu, Buddha, all have images, yet there are no graven images of Allah allowed.

So whom is correct?

[Red-Headed]

Did man invent God?

Almost certainly. I like Feuerbach's asseveration that God is an anthropomorphic projection of Man.

[vagantes]

One thing is absolutely certain: God did not invent Man.

[Faineant]

So man invented ALL Gods and their definitions?
If God is love, did man invent love?
to cover my tail, in love we experience a whole package of emotion, so did man create this emotion?
If God is the universe, did man invent the universe?
If God is the sun or the moon, did we invent these?

This is rather fallacious, do you not think.

Man invented god for the sole purpose to explain the existence of all the examples you gave (And of course, many more).

So the simple rebuttal is still 'Man invented God', and no, did not invent the universe, love, and the likes.

[Maximilianus]

If God is love, did man invent love?
to cover my tail, in love we experience a whole package of emotion, so did man create this emotion?

Nope, love is felt within. We need not invent it, as we need not invent all the other emotions we feel.


If God is the universe, did man invent the universe?
If God is the sun or the moon, did we invent these?
Neither. Men are too tiny to invent a universe, but big enough to create divine ideals in order to feel safer... and bigger.

(My humble opinion)

[Smoogles]

"Religion is Humanities Crutch", the father figure in a fatherless adulthood, the comfort knowing it's alright to make mistakes because your God is "All-forgiving". I don't know much, but the little I do know. There is a fallacy within the idea of God, and how man perceives this being as having an active "invisible hand" on humanity.

[NikolaiI]

So man invented ALL Gods and their definitions?
If God is love, did man invent love?
to cover my tail, in love we experience a whole package of emotion, so did man create this emotion?
If God is the universe, did man invent the universe?
If God is the sun or the moon, did we invent these?

Just wanted to share this :) It's from the Nature of Consciousness, by Alan Watts.

"If there is any such thing at all as intelligence and love and beauty, well you've found it in other people. In other words, it exists in us as human beings. And as I said, if it is there, in us, it is symptomatic of the scheme of things. We are as symptomatic of the scheme of things as the apples are symptomatic of the apple tree or the rose of the rose bush. The Earth is not a big rock infested with living organisms any more than your skeleton is bones infested with cells. The Earth is geological, yes, but this geological entity grows people, and our existence on the Earth is a symptom of this other system, and its balances, as much as the solar system in turn is a symptom of our galaxy, and our galaxy in its turn is a symptom of a whole company of other galaxies. Goodness only knows what that's in."

http://deoxy.org/w_nature.htm

[NikolaiI]

This is my answer.

There are infinite levels of existence, and God is the source of all of them. God is the source of everything, which ultimately means that God is everything and everyone. In other words, God is inherent in everyone and everything, even matter.

You say God is without form, nirguna. Sri Ramakrishna explains simply that God is both with form and without form. Not that one is a superior truth than the other, but both saguna, with form, and nirguna, without form, are equal. But saying this I am not disagreeing with you. Both are true of God.

As for your original question, it is kind of unanswerable. It would seem apparent that God created us, but it is really unanswerable. All we can know is what currently exists. Both humanity and God exist.

All of the questions in life, or rather the most central questions, when most truly put, can hardly be formed in words. They are said with such longing to know, that they can't even be put into sentences. One who really desires the truth feels it with such an intense longing, more intense than anything else, so intense that one cannot live without knowing. With all the breadth of the universe, one cries. "Wh..? - What? or why?" And also the true answer can also not be fit into words. It is cut short. And yet the sages have all said the same things. Life is so simple. There is a peace beyond any of our comprehension awaiting us. Therefore, nothing, nothing, is worth feeling anxiety for, because again, there are infinite levels of existence. It is not that we cease to exist. We are a form that is reincaranted eternally. There are millions of birds - there is one bird. It is all one. Consider - there are billions of humans, now think of there being only thousands, living as enlightening beings, perfect beings, as Gods. Would there be less love? God is the infinite One who is split into all of us. We're all part and parcel of God. We're all part of the universe, part of God; this is the fundamental thing, the only, only, only thing that matters.

Why? Why is it all that matters? Because one's connection to God, to the source of everything, that alone is real, but that is what we do not feel. Instead we feel separated from our source.

People cheat each other and exploit each other, and this is the cause for the problems in the world. Actually, the world, and the universe, is one - and everything in it is God. But we can only realize the unity and divinity of all life if we long for such knowledge with all of our selves.

[Judas130]

This is rather fallacious, do you not think.

Man invented god for the sole purpose to explain the existence of all the examples you gave (And of course, many more).

So the simple rebuttal is still 'Man invented God', and no, did not invent the universe, love, and the likes.

The sole purpose of that was to perhaps broaden a few people's mind when they come upon the idea of 'God'. Many here refer to the Judeo-Christian. Yet if one would say 'I am an atheist to all Gods' or 'Man invented all Gods' (which is what I see as the meaning behind the phrase 'man invented God') then this assertion is not possible. If God is the natural order as thinkers here such as NikolaiI suggest, then one cannot be an atheist to this or believe that man invented such - because that is impossible. Man did not invent the emotions in love and if God is love, we cannot deny that existence as man-made. Personally, I am an atheist to the Abrahamic religions, as well as Hinduism - but when we question what God means on other grounds, we struggle to say 'man invented all Gods'.
One can say 'man invented God' when it applies to a personalised deity with characteristics and a face that somehow displays a perfection which we do not possess. The gods man cannot deny are the ones whereby we have given something like 'nature' / the 'universe' / 'love' / 'the entire existential order of things' / 'matter' a different name, which is 'God'. These are ideas come into the grounds of deism or even atheism, but any logical fallacy lies within this 'name-calling'.
I agree with what NikolaiI suggests, and the reason why the word 'God' is used to cap the functions of all and everything that exists as a universal organism - is because, to our ears, it sanctifies this natural function - which we can go outside, or look inwards, to observe and to know that this God exists free of man-made invention.
Some might claim the invention is in the sanctifying, yet it is not, because it is the the most simple, and highest knowledge of which we know to be certain, and find peace in understanding this certainty - it can also be free from religion, yet all the while giving man a universal brother/sisterhood - and this is the true divinity.
peace

[Babyguile]

Which God are we talking about here...?

[Judas130]

Which God are we talking about here...?

It is 'God as nature/the natural order', because at the start of the thread Blaze writes:




We men of letters or rational beings if we believe at all think that God is just a source of energy or we believe God is not the white turbaned old man or someone in paradise high in the sky. We think God is not a thing, material or bodily figure. God is in everything, permeating all beings.

This is the intellectual description of God.

[Saladin]

Which God are we talking about here...?

Which God are we not talking about here?

[NikolaiI]

It is 'God as nature/the natural order', because at the start of the thread Blaze writes:


Quote:
Originally Posted by blazeofglory

We men of letters or rational beings if we believe at all think that God is just a source of energy or we believe God is not the white turbaned old man or someone in paradise high in the sky. We think God is not a thing, material or bodily figure. God is in everything, permeating all beings.

This is the intellectual description of God.

Blaze says, God is not a thing, material or bodily figure. What in nature is not a body? Everything in nature is a material or bodily figure. God is beyond material and bodily figures. God is not nature because nature is infinitesimal compared to God. It's not a bad thing though, you have the right idea to say God is nature, or God is the universe.

You might argue that, on the other hand, God is within nature. At this point I probably must concede retract my previous point because - what does nature mean anyway? It doesn't mean anything at all. Neither does God. In fact we cannot define anything for that fact.

Nature means one thing to me, and something else to another, and very quickly and ultimately it again means nothing.

The only point here is that none of it matters - all knowledge about God, or anything in nature, is not worth fighting over. It is not to say that it doesn't matter, but it's a private and a personal thing. To be shared only among intimate associates. There is no reason for any of us to be in contact with any of each other. But we are still here. Even though the fact that it is meaningless, would perhaps indicate that it would a; be unprofitable or unpleasant to communicate with such random strangers and b; be rather discouraging for future contact. However, despite all these impossibilities we get on here, make friendships, share more than 90% joy rather than much unhappiness. Why? How can we be such optimistic and successful creatures? It is ultimately boiled down to the question, how and what does it mean for a being, a creature, to be happy? It is not a question that can be answered with measurements, and really it is a deeper and more fundamental question than many we ask.