Creating God

[Divine Insight]

Here's a good program that explains how and why humans created God due to evolutionary pressures.

Creating God

So there's the evolutionary explanation of how religions came to be.

[AgnosticBoy]

However, I don't see any reason to restrict myself to only naturalistic explanations in all cases unless you can justify accepting that position as opposed to being open to BOTH natural and supernatural explanations as the evidence allows.

Why should we be open to "supernatural explanations"? Especially when they aren't "explanations" at all.

For example, if there truly was a supernatural God that people could experience, how then do you explain why so many people have had such widely different supernatural experiences of this God?

If there was anything to it should everyone have experiences that point to the same God?

So it's more than just "supernatural explanations", it's supernatural tales that aren't even consistent.

Compare this with the evolutionary theory of how man created their Gods and their religions which actually does explain everything.

So in the end, the so-called "supernatural explanations" aren't really explanations at all.

So there isn't any question of which "explanations" we should be open to.

The secular explanations are actual explanations.

The religious experiences that people claim to have do not explain anything supernatural at all. So there isn't any "supernatural explanation" to even consider.

Calling it an "explanation" is already a mistake.

It's not like you have two valid explanations to chose from.

One explanation makes perfect sense ("i.e. the secular psychological explanation".)

The other so-called "explanation" is no explanation at all. All it amounts to is tales of visions, dreams, or the imagination that people have experienced in their minds. And these descriptions don't even point to the same conclusions. They typically point to people imagining to have experiences associated with the religions they were brought up to know about.

I just don't see where there are two different explanations to be open to.

The secular evolutionary explanation is the only meaningful explanation we have.

And by 'meaningful', I'm talking about being consistent and actually making rational sense. I'm not talking about someone's personal subjective judgement that something might be emotionally meaningful to them. I'm talking about rational meaningfulness, not emotional meaningfulness.

So it's not like there are two rational "explanations" to choose from. There's only one. So there's no other explanation we need to be "open" to. People claiming to have had religious experiences is hardly a rational explanation for anything. Especially when the people who have had religious experiences insist that this is always evidence for the religion they were brought up to believe in.

That should tell you volumes right there. In fact, that type of experience actually confirms the social psychological evolution explanation. This is exactly what the social psychological evolution explanation predicts.

I believe that there can be supernatural or religious-based explanations but they are not the same as scientific explanations. You're simply not acknowledging that there are different types of explanations.

When I stated earlier that I'm open to supernatural explanations, I used that to say that I won't limit myself to naturalism. Of course, my degree of confidence in a supernatural explanation would be based on the logic and evidence in support of it.

Getting back to the main topic, do you agree with my point that experiences (supernatural or hallucinations depending on their validity) can be a source for various religious beliefs? For instance, the disciples having experience or mass hallucinations of a resurrected Jesus and subsequently developing a belief based off of it? If you agree with my point then logically we can say that no one cause accounts for all religions.

[Divine Insight]

I believe that there can be supernatural or religious-based explanations but they are not the same as scientific explanations. You're simply not acknowledging that there are different types of explanations.

I am acknowledging that there are different types of explanations. There are rational and irrational explanations. All I'm saying is that the irrational explanations are not valid explanations.

When I stated earlier that I'm open to supernatural explanations, I used that to say that I won't limit myself to naturalism. Of course, my degree of confidence in a supernatural explanation would be based on the logic and evidence in support of it.

But what I'm saying is that the so-called supernatural explanations are not based on logic and evidence. They are based on nonsense, and undependable hearsay rumors that cannot be verified. Rumors that aren't even consistent.

Getting back to the main topic, do you agree with my point that experiences (supernatural or hallucinations depending on their validity) can be a source for various religious beliefs? For instance, the disciples having experience or mass hallucinations of a resurrected Jesus and subsequently developing a belief based off of it? If you agree with my point then logically we can say that no one cause accounts for all religions.

There is no credible evidence that any disciples had any mass hallucinations.

The Christian Gospels have absolute no credibility at all. To begin with we know that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were actually retelling of Mark's original Gospel, in come cases literally word-for-word. Yet both Matthew and Luke also added their own inconsistent embellishments. There is no credibility in the Gospels of Mark, Mathew, or Luke. To think that these where three individuals who shared a common hallucination is simply wrong.

Both John and Paul were entirely different. In fact, Paul never even claimed to have seen any actual Jesus. Paul claims to have had a vision when he was under extreme duress. John's Gospel takes the original idea of the previous Gospels and tries to make Jesus into the absolute Son of God to the point where he claims that anyone who dares to not believe in him will surely be damned.

By the time we get to the Gospel of John, I think we are getting into the realm of a Gospel that was indeed written specifically for the purpose of starting a very dogmatic religious creed.

And other than these 5 authors, who all had different things to say, and often times highly contradictory things to say we really have nothing. In short we're talking about a religion that was basically crafted by the rumors of basically three men. We can hardly even count Matthew and Luke since they were basically just regurgitating what Mark had written while adding their own embellishments.

The idea that there is anything there that has any serious credibility is precisely what the religious authoritarians would like for us to believe. But critical examination reveals otherwise.

~~~~~~

There are also other extremely clear flags that demonstrate that this religion cannot be anything other than man made superstitions.

Give it some serious thought.

We supposedly have a God who will damn us if we don't obey his directives and commandment pretty much to the "T". In fact, as is written in John's Gospels, if we fail to believe in Jesus and accept him as the only begotten Son of God we are damned already. This is a foundational concept of Christianity. Refuse to believe in Christ and be damned. And it's your own fault to boot.

Are You going to take that seriously?

Just think about it. This God had supposedly sent his only begotten Son to offer human salvation through grace. Many people who met Jesus did not think he was special. Certainly not the Chief Priests of the Temple. According to the Gospel tales even his own disciples didn't believe Jesus was the Son of God. For surely they would not have denied him if they had actually believed that he was the Son of God.

These Gospels also have this God speaking from the clouds on several occasions to proclaim that Jesus is his Son. Have you ever stopped to think about why a God would need to shout down from the clouds to tell people that Jesus was his Son? Apparently even this God must have felt that Jesus himself wasn't convincing anyone.

These Gospels claim that not only did Jesus perform all manner of supernatural miracles, but he even rose from the dead to prove his supernatural divinity. And not only that but this God also caused an earthquake that shook open only the graves of saints who then physically climbed out of their graves and went into the Holy City to show themselves to the people there.

This supernatural God supposedly went through all manner of trouble to try to prove his existence to humans. But apparently it didn't have a major affect even at the time it happened.

But now, today, we will supposedly be damned if we merely question the validity of these ancient tales?

Do you really think that makes any sense?

Also, look at the BIGGER PICTURE. This is the same God who flooded the entire planet earth (for which there is no scientific evidence to support). In fact, we actually have scientific evidence that no such global flood that killed off the bulk of humanity could have possibly taken place within the time frame allotted. So we know that never happened.

But the religion claims that this God did do this. So this is a theological problem in any case. We're supposed to then believe that this God changed his mind and later decided to send his only begotten Son to earth to be crucified by humans so he can offer humans undeserved amnesty?

If this God where going to offer people undeserved amnesty why not just offer it to Adam and Eve at the very beginning?

This religion doesn't make any sense in terms of being the behavior of some supposed supernatural God who is supposedly all-wise, and supremely intelligent. It just doesn't add up.

So the idea that this religion could be true doesn't carry any credibility at all. It's not really "open" to being a rational explanation for anything.

Could their be a supernatural creator God-entity that we know absolutely nothing about at all? Sure there could. But if such an entity exists we have no evidence for it at all. And the Hebrew Biblical folklore most certainly cannot be a correct description of it.

So no, this Abrahamic religion cannot be a viable explanation for the existence of religion.


Also, if you're going to hold that the Biblical God is the "true cause" of religion, then how do you explain all the non-Biblical religions? You'd need to fall back to claiming that those religions are all man-made. And at this point you're favoring just one religion whilst accepting the secular explanation for all the others.

And even within the Abrahamic religion how do you explain the extreme diversity and divisiveness? You have at least the three major divides Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, none of which reflect the original strict religion described in the Old Testament.

And all three of these major divisive sects are internally divided even further. Christianity is probably the most divisive of the three. Christianity has the obvious major faction between Catholicism and Protestantism, along with a few other sects that refuse to be associated with either of these great divisions. And then Protestantism (which is the most "protesting" sect) has continued to divide itself into so many demoninations that it's actually impossible to even keep track of them all with any meaningful clarity.

And there's supposed to be a supernatural God behind all of this?

Is that truly a rational conclusion?

Are all Jews and Muslims going to hell because they refuse to accept Jesus as the only begotten Son of God who was sent to be their sacrificial lamb? (sacrificial scapegoat) I don't mean to be derogatory by using the phrase "sacrificial scapegoat", but how could it be anything less than this? The idea is that Jesus was scarified to pay for the sins of undeserving humans. Free amnesty to the guilty sinners. That's not even justice. It's a complete about-face from what the original religion started out to be all about.

And what about the Catholics and Protestants? Which of them are hell-bound for believing the wrong things?

~~~~~

I just don't see where this inconsistent self-contradictory religion can be held up as an explanation for anything. And then you're still stuck with having to explain the origin of all the Non-Christian religions. You'd need to revert back to the secular psychological explanation for them anyway. So what was gained?

If there was only ONE religion in all of humanity and it was always the same with total consistency, then, and only then, would your argument have any merit. But that's not the situation.

There's aren't two options. The secular explanation is the only explanation that makes any sense.

~~~~~

Having said that, I would like to recap that this doesn't mean there cannot be a supernatural God. To the contrary, the God of Buddhism could be real. Why? Because Buddhism doesn't make tons of self-contradictory claims about some personal God who will condemn you if you fail to believe in him.

To the contrary, the God of Buddhism couldn't care less if you accept the secular explanation of reality. What you might believe is totally irrelevant to that God. All that's relevant is what you actually do.

So the secular explanation for religious beliefs doesn't rule out the possibility of the existence of some supernatural God. But it does rule out certain specific religious dogma. Of course, in the case of the Biblical dogma, that dogma pretty much already ruled itself out anyway for the reasons I've stated above.

So I'm not saying that there cannot be a supernatural God. I'm simply pointing out that we can know that some man-made religions were clearly man-made and the Hebrew folklore recorded as "The Holy Bible" is certainly one of them.

Realizing this truth of this we can hardly blame any hardcore secularists for embracing the idea that this is then probably true for all supernatural God beliefs. After all, they have no good reason to think otherwise.

[AgnosticBoy]

[Replying to post 12 by Divine Insight]

I don't see how your points disprove hallucinations but rather it shows that you don't trust the claim that the disciples had hallucinations. The Christian disciples were just one example. There are people alive today who do report having supernatural experiences (many or all may be hallucinations). Again I'm not claiming that the experiences are of something in the real world but they do occur. They can be about something other worldly just like the fictional stories can be about supernatural things. When people accept these experiences as true then they are able to develop beliefs around them just like Dr. Even Alexander did in regards to the afterlife.

[Divine Insight]

I don't see how your points disprove hallucinations but rather it shows that you don't trust the claim that the disciples had hallucinations.

It wasn't my point to disprove hallucinations. I simply pointed out that in the case of the Biblical authors there isn't even any indication that more than one person had a similar coordinated hallucination. So there's nothing there that needs to be explained away.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 6 by AgnosticBoy]

There's a notable neurosurgeon who came to believe in the afterlife because of an NDE.

To go along with what DI said...how is it one can have knowledge or an experience of an AFTER-life through a NEAR-death experience?

[AgnosticBoy]

[Replying to post 6 by AgnosticBoy]

There's a notable neurosurgeon who came to believe in the afterlife because of an NDE.

To go along with what DI said...how is it one can have knowledge or an experience of an AFTER-life through a NEAR-death experience?

NDErs tend to believe they're separated from their bodies during, after, or near death. If we can have survival without our bodies, then that would certainly open the door to afterlife in some form.

I think it's also worth considering what death involves, especially considering technology today.

Death is a process, and not just a simple endpoint. Presumably the experience begins to occur when our vital functions (brain and/or heart) become severely impaired. Advanced methods of 'resuscitation' (which the ancients had no knowledge of and therefore these NDErs would stayed dead and could not tell us their experience) can stop the death process or even reverse it.

[Divine Insight]

During the course of my life I have had quite a few powerful experiences that could be called near death experiences. Although I wasn't necessarily near death when I had them.

Also, it has been reported that astronauts and even pilots who have undergone tests in a centrifuge to simulate high g forces have also reported having experiences very similar to those reported as near death experiences. This has lead to conclusions that when the brain is starved of oxygen it can lead to these kinds of experiences.

I think also individual perception is a huge issue. When I have very profound visions and dreams I accept that this is precisely what they are. When other people have these same experiences they make a big hoopla about them.

I would suggest that this is also the case with various other experiences. I've been in places where strange things have happened. I am prepared to accept that these things were natural occurrences caused by a gust of wind, and strange reflection, or a mere coincidence. Others who have experienced precisely the same things who were with me were convinced that they had seen a ghost, or some other spiritual creature.

So I think 99% of it is what the person makes of it in their own imagination.

I've had very vivid dreams of meeting Gods and going to heaven, etc. I don't take them seriously because our society has conditioned us to imagine these kinds of things. We imagine them from having seen similar things in movies, or read about them in books, or even heard other people suggest similar experiences.

So it's not like we're living in a vacuum and just make these things up out of the blue. We've heard enough tales of NDE's to easily imagine having one ourselves. And once we've imagined that we've had one, we tend to believe it. Or at least some of us do. Other's realize that it's just our own imagination.

I'm especially not impressed with Dr. Alexander's claims because he's too demanding in his claim that there is no way his brain could have done this. That seems to me that he's just out to try to lay claim to have proof of something. In fact, didn't he actually entitle his book "Proof of Heaven"?

I think that gives him away right there.

When a religious fanatic claims to have proof of their religious beliefs, it's time to change the subject.

[AgnosticBoy]

[Replying to post 17 by Divine Insight]

We can dispute whether or not a particular supernatural experience is genuinely supernatural. What we can not dispute as much are that people believe that their experiences were genuine despite all of the naturalistic explanations you bring up. And of course, they can build a belief system from unreasonable or shaky grounds (e.g. acceptance of an experience, etc.)

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 17 by Divine Insight]

We can dispute whether or not a particular supernatural experience is genuinely supernatural. What we can not dispute as much are that people believe that their experiences were genuine despite all of the naturalistic explanations you bring up. And of course, they can build a belief system from unreasonable grounds (e.g. acceptance of an experience, etc.)

I totally agree. I do not dispute that people believe that their experiences are genuinely of supernatural origin.

The problem is that this is hardly evidence that their beliefs represent anything more than this.

Just because they believe something doesn't make it true.

Don't forget AgnosticBoy, we see people from all different religions believing that they have had personal encounters with the Gods specific to their religious beliefs.

So accepting this as any sort of objective evidence is extremely problematic.

There are even people who have very firm beliefs that they have seen and even spoken with fairies. This is no joke. There are places in Europe where people take faeries and leprechauns quite seriously. In fact, there are people all over the world who embrace those beliefs with a passion as well.

I've met Wiccans who swear up and down that they have met and seen the Moon Goddess during some of their rituals.

If we start accepting people's beliefs as compelling evidence, we're not only going to need to take every religious belief seriously, but we'll need to take claims of sightings of Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, Alien Abductions, Elvis Sightings, etc., seriously as well.

I think there comes a time when it makes sense to request better evidence.

As they say, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

I think this is extremely wise advice to embrace.

Here's a question for you:

Why is it that NONE of these extraordinary claims of religious experiences have ever been accompanied by knowledge that could have only been obtained from a divine source?

The bottom line is really quite simple. Anyone claiming to be in contact with a supernatural entity should be able to obtain supernatural knowledge from the supernatural entity they are in contact with.

Doesn't it cause you pause for doubt when this simple requirement has NEVER been met?

People who claim to be in contact with a living Jesus have never been able to provide any information that would demonstrate this. Yet such information should be extremely easy to obtain if they were truly in contact with a living Jesus.

Has Dr. Alexander been able to provide any evidence that he was in contact with a supreme being? I'm pretty sure he hasn't.

Why would this God bother talking to people who are almost dead only to send them back?

Does that even make any sense?

If God wants people to believe in an afterlife why not just announce it from the clouds like he supposedly did in the days of Jesus?

Things just don't add up.