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7 Answers
- YodaLv 66 years agoFavorite Answer
Why do Gods get invented in the first place?
The reason that religious documents state that God invented the morals and passed them onto the guru's, saints and saviours of mankind is simple: kings and government administrators seek to control the masses of people. If a king says to his people "it is wrong to steal!", the people are going to say "who are you to tell us what is right or wrong?" Therefore, to get the masses to accept the control and will of a king, the king has to state that the laws come from a higher authority than that of a human being. Then the people are going to say: "It's funny how God always talks to you!!!". Therefore, the kings employed a class of people who would be able to speak with God: the priestly caste (or Brahmins in India, the Oracle in Greece). This way, the kings cannot be accused of inventing Gods, and the Priestly caste are happy because for their duplicity, they get preferential treatment and wealth.
In the beginning, cultures worshiped their ancestors. These ancestors were imagined as ethereal incorporeal (non-bodied) spirits that watched over the community. Every community had it's own ancestors. As communities spread, they required more land, and so these communities spread into one another. The resulting conflict would then lead to one community subsuming another: thus, the victorious community would wish to impose their ancestor worship on the vanquished community. How though can you make one community worship the dead ancestors of another community. The answer was stumbled upon: you transform the worshiped ancestors into Gods, and then you make a supreme God that the other Gods work for. With this solution, the conquered community's ancestors can still be worshiped, but the supreme deity (from the victorious community) must be worshiped in deference.
Of course, the traditions and laws of the victorious community are thus imposed upon the defeated community. Sometimes, communities that warred over territory would compromise and mix laws and traditions. Therefore, often the religions of nearby communities are much more similar than the religions of communities that live continents apart.
This mixture of religious traditions happened in Israel. The original God of Israel used to be El---hence the root -el in many of the names of people and places e.g., Isra-EL, Micha-EL, Immanu-EL. Somewhat later, El was replaced by YHWH (Yahweh)---hence words like Hallelu-YAH. They marketed the transition from El to Yahweh by saying that YHWH was El's other name, even though the theology and traditions in the YHWH scrolls were different than the scrolls written by El priests.
In India, there are so many religions because this method of placing a supreme impersonal God at the top of a long list of junior deities. In India they also have the tradition that ''all laws from different sects'' are equally valid, and this helps maintain variety and harmony at the expense of homogeneity (i.e., one size fits all).
Of course, in Judaism and Christianity, junior Gods were relegated to the status of Angels, and if your junior God fell out of favour when your community led a failed revolted, your junior God might end up being caste as a demon instead.
God cannot blame anybody. Humans have analysed the world with our dialectical thinking, and created concepts of right and wrong. These concepts are artificial: animals don't have such boundaries. There is no 'God' that stands out (God doesn't show himself anymore), although there may be infinite God that the mind of man cannot measure---because God is incorporeal and infinite!
According to Jews, God is incorporeal---meaning having no body---hence, God has no brain like we do (or at least not like ours), and thus no artificial morals/values. So, you can relax: the only people who will persecute you for doing ''wrong'' will be other humans.
- SarahLv 46 years ago
Both Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 read, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Some take these verses to mean that atheists are stupid, i.e., lacking intelligence. However, that is not the only meaning of the Hebrew word translated “fool.” In this text, the Hebrew word is nabal, which often refers to an impious person who has no perception of ethical or religious truth. The meaning of the text is not “unintelligent people do not believe in God.” Rather, the meaning of the text is “sinful people do not believe in God.”
Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/fool-heart-no-God.html...
- TheophilousLv 66 years ago
Mark 9:24 "And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."
Jesus fixed his unbelief.
John 6:37 "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out."
John 6:65 "And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father."
So faith is a gift, given by God. Why not ask him for this gift and see what happens?
- Got Proof?Lv 76 years ago
The kind that doesn't exist.
The biblical god is an UNBELIEVABLY bad problem solver. He screws up the first two people he creates and condemns them and billions of their descendants to lives of toil and hardship. He hates his creations so he drowns them all. Then he decides to "save" them from the sin HE CREATED THEM TO HAVE by impregnating a teenager to have a son who gets himself tortured to death without getting the job done.
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- CCLv 76 years ago
A real god that is not prone to shyness, and will reveal himself to all, such that the evidence that supports his existence is objective, validated and verified.
- Susanna LIVESLv 76 years ago
A Loving and Merciful God friend...why do you mock Him:-( He loves you too, very much! but He will NEVER force anyone to accept Him, who could Love a God who forced us? you won't believe either way huh:-(