life, Gods doing?

life, Gods doing? [+ favourites]

Why? Who said? The best argument I've heard from people who believe they're so informed of their creator is that " look at the universe, it's perfect, something had to of created it. "

... are you kidding me?


I just don't buy by into religion, namely, Christianity... but for the most part.. all organized religion. Why? First and foremost, none of them can get their damn facts straight. none of themmm . Second, if you think about it, doesn't the idea of God sound something like mythology? We laugh at people who believe there were gods and goddesses that controlled all aspects of life. At the time, it made perfect sense to them. How is our truth about GOD ANY DIFFERENT????!?! How stupid do you feel that one day, thousands of years from now that people are going to say this generation of people were a bunch of kooks that actually believed there was some dude up in the sky that controlled everything and made an actual heaven and hell for good and bad people.


Control. I honestly think this is for control. Think about this now... If we didn't have religion and all these bed time stories about going to a fiery hell for doing bad things, how many out of control people do you think we'd have in this world? If we just said do what ever the hell you want, kill people, steal things, keep yourself ignorant of love and peace and all those other good emotions.

The problem is, what I believe people get confused - all Goodness in this world is an act of God... bull. shit. All events that happen in this world are acts of God... bull. shit. All intricacies of life as we know it is an act of God... bull. shit.

I think it would be hard to understand or even fathom this idea because they've been lied to for so long that this character... this image... has been drilled so far in to our societies, that we couldn't imagine ourselves with out a creator if we tried at this point. Almost like a " I've seen it, I can't unsee it now. " kinda thing.


I think that the perfect balance of life and order in this universe doesn't have to be the doing of a divine creator as a being completely separate and higher than our "selves".



people who decide to respond to this...I can't stress enough... look closely at certain words I use... I am speaking for myself. I have become aware that when people believe they can speak for everyone, problems are bound to arise. why? BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT OPINIONS. I don't want to hear "that is wrong." because you know I can just say "no, you're wrong" and it's a stupid battle of who's perceptions appear to be right more often.

please, share your own opinions. not what you think everyone else's are.

"I'm a human being, God Dammit!! My life has value!!!"

"Think about this now... If we didn't have religion and all these bed time stories about going to a fiery hell for doing bad things, how many out of control people do you think we'd have in this world? If we just said do what ever the hell you want, kill people, steal things, keep yourself ignorant of love and peace and all those other good emotions."

If that were true then why would someone even bother to create a religion in the first place? That same person (or persons) could just as easily (probably more easily) set up a government and create a social contract that everyone would have to abide by in order to live in the society. Clearly there's some other motive than just merely control.

Not only that but the original texts only preached of charity and equality and love. They create no elite class in order to collect money or power. If it is all a hoax then what did people like Jesus or Mohammad gain?

Sure there are people who have used these texts for their own means but look at the original intent of all those holy books. There is seemingly no egoistic gain.

"I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them."

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Clearly there's some other motive than just merely control.

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If it is all a hoax then what did people like Jesus or Mohammad gain?

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"I'm a human being, God Dammit!! My life has value!!!"

I recently come across an article on Freud which comes very close to some of the theories/ conclusions Ive had myself, about the origins of religion. (I have included some of it below.)

To me, in ancient times when people were very superstitious and didn’t understand the world as we do now, they attributed it to something they could relate to. So it was natural when lighting struck their fields and burnt them down, or there was a flood or famine, or all their livestock died- to look up into the sky and feel there is some higher power doing it to them.

Thus they would seek to appease this higher power and it developed into a relationship similar to the one they had as children, with them trying to please their parents so the parents would treat them kindly and protect them.

And their parents would instill on them the laws and ideals of the civilization they came from. And for any community to work, people are basically good to one another, do what benefits all members and try to fit in.

With this combination of giving nature and things we dont understand a divine slant- plus a paternal manifestation- it is only natural when we created these gods, deities and spirits of our very first religions, we believed that in order to stay on their favorable side we had to behave.

And so when the first men began to write their religions down and to have “visions” etc they actually came up with a set of rules that did infact teach people to be good and love thy brother etc.

Exactly like your parents told you.

Eventually, just like “my dad is stronger than your dad,” when opposing civilizations with their own paternal gods met up, it became a matter of the strongest religion surviving.

An example of this is the Christian ONE God versus the old Roman Pantheon.

The reason Christianity superceded the Roman gods, despite it being an outlawed religion punishable by torture, lion feeding and crucifixion was because it taught that every man was equal. And it also taught that women were equal aswell.

It put all humans on an even level; the emperors, senators and wealthy merchants were all seen as equal to the slaves, the workers the homeless, and the women, in the eyes of the ONE Christian God. (Whereas the roman gods of the time were fickle and capricious and only seemed to favor those in power.)

It’s not surprising that when humans need this belief in a paternal figure who commands the universe, that the majority of people would eventually find the Christian god more appealing, since this god loved all his children with equal fervor.

This is just one explanation into how and why people created religion.

Then of course there was the inevitable corruption of these ideals which Mugen has brought up. You are right about religion becoming a tool for those in power.

If you look at the history of the Roman Catholic Church over the centuries you will clearly see that it went off the path.
Like the saying goes: Power courpts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Having the power of God on your side to get others to do your will would be a great temptation.

And another saying that comes to mind is:
Religion is the opiate of the masses.

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For Freud the raison d'ętre of religion is to defend us against nature by removing the terrors, etc. of nature. For example, the personalization of nature offers to humanity a way of understanding what it is we are so powerless over. This also permits the development of some form of control over nature. Thus it is through "sympathetic magic" that humanity comes to gain a feeling of some kind of control over nature.


Freud suggests that it is natural for humanity to personify nature and the like as humans know from the beginning that the way to influence nature is through the establishment of relationships. Thus, when he growing child learns that he or she is to remain powerless forever (a child), dependent upon superior powers forever, he or she lends to this divine figure the powers that belong to the parent.

Once divinity has been given such attributes, Freud follows, everything that occurs is understood by humanity to be an expression of an intelligence superior to us and death is no longer seen as the extinction of life. Rather death is seen as but the beginning of a new kind of existence which lies along the path of development to something higher. This view, thus, announces that the same moral laws of civilization, also govern the whole universe.

Hence there evolves an understanding of a kind of superior wisdom which directs the course of things, an understanding of a superior goodness and justice . . . From this point of view . . . humanity's relation to the divinity come to recover the intensity and intimacy of a child's relation to her or his parents.

But, Freud notes, the role of the Gods and Goddesses has over time evolved away from their relationship to nature (the divinities and nature have become autonomous of one another). Thus it has become the task of the divinities to even out the defects and evils of civilization and to attend to the suffering which we inflict on each other.

To Freud the historical truths put forward in religion have become so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. He compares religion to the practice of telling children they were brought by the stork.

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"When I was a child I flew! Then as an adult- I watched others soar."

Chained Wings, I can't get over that every post you make seems like they would have been my thoughts exactly If I were to come across such information the same way you did.

"I'm a human being, God Dammit!! My life has value!!!"

Youre actually quite lucky Mugen. I was full of the same inquisitiveness and musings as you when I was 18. But there was no great repository of knowledge all in one place known as the internet back then. Nor were there any forums where I could reach out across the world to talk to the few other rare individuals who thought the way I did.

I was alone in my curiosity of life's great mysteries. And whenever I tried to talk to my peers about the deeper things in life, Id get funny looks till I decided it was best to shut up and keep my thoughts to myself.

Since discovering the internet, and this site in particular, I have regained that thirst to learn and share my thoughts. And I feel I need to make up for all those lost years.

What Im happy about, is that coming to this site has actually helped me learn and change myself. I feel I have grown in the last year more than I have in the last 5.

Just the fact that I can come to a conclusion Sigmund Freud came to on my own, purely because of my conversations on this forum is a really cool thing. I wish I'd started earlier.

Now back to the religion...

"When I was a child I flew! Then as an adult- I watched others soar."

I want to make it clear that Im not saying God doesn't exist. Only that it seems most probable that instead of God making us in His image- we made Him in our image so we could relate to Him.

See, even the word Him makes it easier to comprehend the idea of a super entity. But why Him? Why not a Her? There were many religions that worshipped nature and fertility and believed in goddesses and they have been quashed by the patriarchal Gods of the modern age. Either way, there is a universal belief in some higher power that runs things from above. And wether its a He or a Her, we seem to want to believe in them.

But what about an It. It just seems alien to our psyche when we see God that way.

But I feel there is something beyond my senses that just tickles them on occasion, that is out there and cannot be grasped or fathomed with what Ive been given. And it makes me wonder at the meaning of the universe and if there is a higher power.

I can almost "feel" it to be so. But it is just beyond my reach. This higher power is what I believe to be what modern religions call God. If there is such thing.

But I see it more as an energy or a universal consciousness. They say god is all knowing and all powerful and ever present.

Maybe its the energy of the universe itself. That way it can be everywhere, and it can know all things, and be in all things at once. And it is all powerful because it is all things.

It makes more sense to me than a wrathful old man with a beard. That seems to be the imaginings of humans.

Having said all that, Im actually puzzled by how much religion seems to captivate people so much- and yet no one seems to believe in it anymore.

The majority of people who post here dont seem to believe in it and yet it is the most common thread. Even I find it more of a compulsion to post when I come across an interesting thread about God than I do about other topics. Even despite the fact I think we tend to focus too much on religion on this forum.

I think the reason being is because it deals with the meaning of life and also reassures us that when we die it isn't the end.

Personally I think that what we do here and now is more important than what came before, or what comes after, and our spirituality can be found in the way we shape ourselves. Moreso, than in pondering what some guy called Jehovath, son of Such and Such The Meek did to Ashmael The Wise, 2500 years ago.

I believe that if people focused on the emotion and phycology thread or the science thread we would actually find the answers to God or the meaning of life allot quicker- than if we focused here and debated what ancient scrolls that have been doctored for thousands of years really mean.

But... here I am.

Maybe this proves my point. That in trying to understand the universe and what moves it, we use a means that is the most familiar and relatable to us.

"When I was a child I flew! Then as an adult- I watched others soar."

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...it seems most probable that instead of God making us in His image- we made Him in our image so we could relate to Him.

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I can almost "feel" it to be so. But it is just beyond my reach. This higher power is what I believe to be what modern religions call God.

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Maybe its the energy of the universe itself. That way it can be everywhere, and it can know all things, and be in all things at once. And it is all powerful because it is all things.

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I believe that if people focused on the emotion and phycology thread or the science thread we would actually find the answers to God or the meaning of life allot quicker-...

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"I'm a human being, God Dammit!! My life has value!!!"