In the beginning was the herd. :fire:

Humanity is a herd. A herd, of course, is prey-species  and 'spooked' by seen, day-lit, up-wind, close/familiar, while-we're-awake predators as well as, more sinisterly, unseen moonless down-wind distant/unfamiliar while-we-sleep predators.

Contagion of anxiety drives just as it confabulates the herd. Some are lost by sundown or go missing at sunrise; and some turn up bloodied or much worse. Anxiety becomes restless panic. The herd runs from they know not what towards they know not what! On and on forever it seems. Until, once-upon-the-living-can't-remember-when, the herd conjures a Shepherd, stronger, so they dreamtime, than any predator from their nightmares, seen or unseen.

The Shepherd protects the herd, consoles its restless anxieties, guides them through hungered howling desolations towards deliverance - some 'promised' grazing pasture free of all predators where the herd will be safe forever and ever. The herd obeys their Shepherd and ordains its own proxy-shepherds - sheepdogs! - from the herd itself tasked with reminding and guiding the rest of the herd to scrupulously obey and gratify the Shepherd - by any and all means necessary! - in order to induce (bribe) Him never to abandon them.

They remind themselves of the cycles of pleasing & displeasing the Shepherd - consequently (well, way back in the day, 'correlation = causation' :roll: ), they prevailed against & too-often betrayed themselves to predators - with fairytales hymns & epics. The herd reminds itself of The Shepherd's mercy & generosity & love of protecting the herd (or is that 'love of the herd He's Chosen to protect'?); and they re-bind themselves daily via myths & rituals to The Shepherd's providence (extorting largesse). They feel safe - blessed by The Protector Who Shepherds The Herd through valleys of death and over fields of lilies ever and ever on and on towards ... Elysium (or ... until Ragnarok? :yikes: ).

In the beginning was the herd. And the herd was go_d.

Thus Spoke 180 Proof! :joke:

Except that there CAN'T be three of you, according to the Tao Unified Cosmos theory. — god must be atheist

We are just three of the 10,000 things. Or maybe three of one of the 10,000 things.

As for the "Tao Unified Cosmos theory," - it's not really a theory, it's a metaphysical approach. As the Tao Te Ching says - "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao," or, to paraphrase, the Truth that can be theorized about is not the eternal Truth. It is undivided because it is unspoken. The minute you speak, you bring the 10,000 things into existence.

Yes, the Tao - another example of a highly abstract idealistic metaphysical theory. (Perhaps a possible way to approach it: naming / indicating everything under and above the "sun" and, after having done this, to assume that none of them indicated can ever be the Tao, the Tao being that which is not part of "everything", being beyond it.)

Yes, the Tao - another example of a highly abstract idealistic metaphysical theory. — Daniel C

It's not abstract, it's the most concrete thing there is. It isn't a theory. I call it "metaphysical" so it will be clear I'm not saying it's the right way to see the world, it's just one of our choices. It isn't right or wrong, true or false. As I've said many times, like all metaphysical concepts, it's useful or not. You might compare it and contrast it to the concept of objective reality. I come from science and engineering. I find the Tao a much more useful concept than objective reality, which is often misleading.

And, yes, Taoists recognize that, by using all these words to talk about the Tao, they are never talking about the eternal Tao, which can only be experienced and never discussed.

Thus Spoke 180 Proof! — 180 Proof

We remember observing from a safe location on the side the 180-proof flame-thrower in action against various foolish expressions of religion, even theology. You seem to have taken on at least a little a spirit of humour and gentility (do I detect movement among the barbecued?) - which is interesting in itself. But did you ever address, in the manner of a Kant, divinity as a regulative idea? I don't mean any variant of Pascal's wager, nor even acknowledgement of possibility, both strategies being essentially disreputable, but instead a simple and cleaner hypothetical understanding which might say that while the "fact" is dismissible - and good riddance, sez I - the idea, as with many good ideas, is useful for a purpose. The latter being considered, the flamethrower might be better employed as a tool of shaping and instruction, than as a wmd against the foolish, whose numbers you likely know better than I are infinite and legion, and that even can thrive on incineration.

Instead of entering into a cold and indifferent world where one must contrive one’s own meaning, morality, and destiny - to the absurdity of a hopeless mortality - one enters into a world with all of these metaphysical concepts pre-established in the fabric of reality. It is, indeed, the idea that “essence precedes existence”, rather than “existence precedes essence.”
Instead of straining toward a feigned delusion as a mode of subsistence, one is settling into benevolent design as a mode of true fulfillment.

This concept is intriguing, and even exhilarating. Not as wishful thinking or blissful ignorance, but as a philosophical and logical validity. Apparently, it is just as reasonable to presume theism as it is atheism. And, it seems to me, starting with theism can infuse significant hope into our perplexing existential realities. — CS Stewart

Some of us with no religious beliefs do not see the world as cold and indifferent or death as hopeless or absurd. Contriving our own "meaning, morality, and destiny" is what humans do. We're built for it, by whatever builds us - God, evolution, or something else. We grew up with the universe and we belong here. That's one of the things I didn't like about @Daniel C's formulation in the original post. Whether we created God or God created us, it's not because the world is a bleak place. I've come to think that at least some of our religious impulse comes from something you mention - gratitude. Gratitude for what we've been given.

What this chatter usually assumes however is that all of the accounts in religious texts are likewise projections, illusions or wishful thinking. And surely in a mechanised modern culture such as ours it must seem like that. But I don’t believe so - I think there are records of genuine epiphanies, actual ‘revelations’, such that if anyone were exposed to such visions then they likewise would be compelled to accept their veracity. Not everything in sacred texts is true, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all fallacious, either. Otherwise it would make it the mother of all conspiracies. — Wayfarer

If the part in bold isn't fallacious, then set out your reasoning. Surprise me.

I think there are records of genuine epiphanies, actual ‘revelations’, such that if anyone were exposed to such visions then they likewise would be compelled to accept their veracity. Not everything in sacred texts is true, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all fallacious, either. Otherwise it would make it the mother of all conspiracies — Wayfarer

If the part in bold isn't fallacious, then set out your reasoning. Surprise me. — S

You did not ask me, S, but if Jesus, Yahweh, or Beelzeboob (sp?) appeared in front of me and created 100 fish out of nothing instantly in a set of barrels, or turned 100 barrels of water into wine instantly, then I'd accept it as an act of god, not as an act of magic or trickery. Call me gullible, but it would satisfy me as a proof of truth. And you know how religious I am now.

You did not ask me, S, but if Jesus, Yahweh, or Beelzeboob appeared in front of me and created 100 fish out of nothing instantly in a set of barrels, or turned 100 barrels of wate into wine instantly, then I'd accept it as an act of god, not as an act of magic or trickery. Call me gullible, but it would satisfy me as a proof of truth. And you know how religious I am now. — god must be atheist

No, that's not the problem, although that's still actually a problem, because there's still the problem of why God over magic or brain damage or drugs or any number of other possible explanations.

He was talking about "records", which he thought were genuine. The problem is why he thinks that these "records" are genuine, unless he only means by that that he accepts that they really did have a "vision" (where a "vision" is just be a funny feeling or something like that, and not anything supernatural, which would be unwarranted). That in itself isn't that big of an issue. (People do have funny feelings, and they do tell us about them, and they can be genuine in telling us about them). Nor would it be that big of an issue to suggest that that "vision", in combination with an overactive imagination and lack of critical thinking skills, can compel someone to believe that it was something more than is reasonably warranted. But the problem would be if he was suggesting that this would be anything other than fallacious, or if he was suggesting that anyone with the required critical thinking skills and self-restraint would likewise jump to the same conclusion in that situation.

Well, I took my own hypothetical experience to be an example, and instead of creating an example of an epiphany stemming from a spiritual impression or "vision", which the scriptures have some records of, and @Wayfarer said if s/he replicated, s/he would be convinced, I took a vision which is not esoteric or spiritual, but factual and in-your-face, but like you said, it's a vision nevertheless (you likened it to

magic or brain damage or drugs or any number of other possible explanations — S

).

So I simplified the process and declared that I am a gullible human, who, when encounters an experience, which indicated to people long time ago that there is a supernatural force, would also interpret the process or phenomenon as an act of a supernatural force.

There are experiences that are so strong and compelling, although not real, that we believe them.

Solipsists claim that our entire sensory life is precisely that.

I therefore agree with this kind of thinking, so I agreed with @Wayfarer that indeed there could be strong enough experiences in life -- such as Jesus appearing, and creating 100 barrels of fish in an instant -- that even I, a staunch atheist, would not be able to explain with anything but with the existence of a supernatural entity.

Then again, I never encountered anything like that yet. And I believe I never will.

(Incidentally, I also see this hypothetical scenario I described and my response to it, as a way to falsify the scientific finding that there is no evidence of god's existence.)

One has to be careful, however, to be sure that there are no rational explanations extant before one claims that s/he witnessed an act of a supernatural force.

Aliens from other galaxies, for instance, could become invisible to us, and bring in a hundred barrels full of fish, in an instant. I, as a person, would be so impressed by the production, especially when unaware of the invisible aliens, that I would have no choice but believe the real presence of the supernatural.

The interpretation that he was saying something as trivial as that people can have "visions" - feelings or dreams or an imagination or brain damage or drugs or whatever - strong enough that they pretty much can't help but to jump to conclusions doesn't really fit with what he was saying about fallacies, though, because that is a fallacy.

What one believes and what one can self-suggest is incredible.

There was a story that was regaled in Hungary in intellectual circles, which told of a Sorbonne professor in the early part of the nineteenth century, who was a staunch atheist. His students wanted to scare him and trick him into confession of faith in god. They dressed one of their classmates up in typical Devil gear-- hoofs, horns coming from his head, red tongue, and they created some impressive red light and noises, and burst into the professor's bedroom in the middle of the night, and the "Devil" said, "I'll take you now to the depths of Hell and eat you", and the professor looked at it with sleepy eyes, and said, "you are hoofed, and you have horns, you are obviously a herbavore, you won't eat me", and he rolled over to his other side to continue his rest.

The interpretation that he was saying something as trivial as that people can have feelings strong enough that they pretty much can't help but to jump to conclusions doesn't really fit with what he saying about fallacies, because that is a fallacy. — S

I would say what people believe as real on the pattern of their experiences is based largely not only on what constitutes a valid inference, but also on how gullible people are.

You are right, @S, that one should not build an argument, a philosophical argument, on the strength of gullibility, and on the varying degrees thereof, but I see the issue here as an experiential/belief question, not a philosophical one.

The only expanation for this phenomenon which makes sense to me is a psychological one. There must have been this overwhelmimg need in man, right from the "beginning" to find a Superior / Transcendental / Cosmic Being to enable him/her to bear the pain / suffering of being alive and to give meaning to their lives and also a sense of morality. — Daniel C

First, the concept of a singular cosmic being is a rather late development. Much earlier are the gods, often personified, with particular powers and domains. Second, I do not think it is the result of a need but rather an assumption based on a notion of agency. The need or desire to appeal to or appease such agents is a natural outgrowth.

When it comes to something as complex, rich, and varied as religion and belief in God, no single explanation can ever suffice. People believe for many reasons, some of these perhaps providing better justification for belief than others. And usually, it is a complex blend of reasons. Some come from psychological motivations. Some come from political power. Some come from genuine attempts to understand the world and our place in it. Some come from early attempts to control natural forces. Some probably involve social-evolutionary, or memetic, forces. Some come from mystical experiences. Much is simply unexamined tradition.

But how did the idea of God originate in the first place? @Fooloso4 suggests the answer above. People in primitive societies did not have our modern, scientific view of how things work, obviously. But they had something we might we call proto-scientific thinking, with faulty methods of attributing cause and whatnot. People noticed patterns and correlations and made connections between things and used this information to try to help them make their way in the world.

If I am a primitive person in the distant past, I notice that some things move and some things don't. One thing that moves is my body. And inside myself, I find my mind, my motivations, and whatnot. I will my body to do something and it happens. I command and possess this body. Then I notice that there are other shapes in the world that look very similar to my body. But I can't control the other bodies that are separated by space from me. And I see them from the outside rather than the inside. I infer, naturally, as we still do today, that inside them must be some conscious agency like what I have inside myself.

There are other things in the world that aren't exactly like me, but similar, and they also move and seem to have interests like I do. These are animals. They must have minds like I do, though lesser.

Another thing I notice is that when babies are born, the first thing they do is breathe. And when someone dies, their breath leaves them. And when the "breath is knocked from" someone, they lose consciousness and their body ceases to be normally animated. Therefore, this breath must have something to do with what animates these bodies. When it is there, they are up and moving around. When they stop breathing, they stop moving around. And the breath that enters at birth and leaves at death is invisible. A person's mind is also invisible. I know mine from the inside, but I can't see it. And I can't see the mind of anyone else. I see a correlation here. Breath and consciousness arrive together. And breath and consciousness are also both invisible. They must be the same thing. So the mind is a vaporous, invisible thing that enters and leaves bodies, and it is that which animates them.

Now let's notice the root of the word animate. It comes from the Latin anima, which means life or soul. Also notice that spirit is the root of respiration, inspiration, and expiration. These are clues. The word animal basically even means "breather". Pneuma is a
Greek word for spirit, and is also tied to air. Think of a pneumatic drill, which is air-powered.

When I, this primitive person, look around, I see other things that move. The wind moves trees, and is invisible. Ancient people often attributed agency to things like whirlwinds and would sometimes fire arrows at them, trying to injure those spirits. More importantly for our discussion here though is that almost all primitive and ancient people thought there must be some kind of agency behind storms, especially thunder and lightning. Notice that even today, we have this idea that God punishes by smiting the wicked with a bolt of lightning.

I have read about and seen footage of alpha male apes reacting to thunder by "presenting" or making as much noise as possible, as if to challenge the dominance of a threatening male. Even apes seem to imagine an agency behind those threatening rumbles in the sky. In our own direct ancestry, this probably predates our being human.

One of the most common sorts of gods in early societies was the storm god. Yahweh, early on, was not the monotheistic God we think of today. Rather, he was a warrior storm god belonging to a particular tribe. And he was a god among other gods and even had a consort named Asherah. People offered sacrifices to this tribal storm god.

Why do people offer sacrifices to gods? Primitive people lived in a world populated with many spirits, some small and some large and powerful. The smaller ones were dealt with by means of magic. People often tried to enslave these lesser spirits. Or they deceived them. Or they scared them off with masks. Or they used smoke or salt or light to be rid of them. But large, powerful spirits, the kind that could make the sky rumble and hurl destructive bolts of white fire from the sky were a different matter. You don't trifle with these great spirits! You kneel! You offer praise! You offer gifts! You can't fool the sky god who sees all! And he isn't afraid of your masks and noisy stomping around the fire!

If something bad happens, especially if the volcano threatens your village, it must be because the large spirit is angry. So you apologize for being too noisy. You do everything to avoid offending this power. You wash yourself, making your presence as clean and pleasant as possible. You approach with quiet and submissive, non-threatening gestures. Then you praise, give thanks, and offer gifts, often of things that rise to the sky, like the smoke of nice-smelling substances, including roasted flesh. Whatever you value, the gods probably also like. And to offer it up shows your serious submission and repentance. And you apologize for the wickedness of people and promise to do better.

You relate to this angry spirit in much the same way that a child relates to an abusive father. I love this Monty Python bit:

Growth and Learning

That clip is missing the part where they go on to sing songs where they implore God not to boil them in hot fat and so on.

I earlier spoke of things animated and things not animated. Notice that people attributed god-like agency to the stars that move, but not the immobile stars. Interesting, no? Thus we have Mars, Jupiter, and so on, named after the gods associated with them and their movements.

There is another dimension to this. Our arboreal ancestors lived in a situation where being up high in the trees, closer to the sky and sun, literally meant better food and safety from predators on the dark forest floor, including cats and serpents. Higher status members of the group got to inhabit the heights. Social rejects were often forced to the ground. Do we have here part of the origins of Heaven and Hell? And you can see the same social dynamic played out on the streets of Manhattan.

Not only were sky gods powerful, being able to hurl lightning, but they also had high status. They literally lived in the sky, untouchable by the corruption on the ground. And they appeared immortal.

One can see in my sketch here how the idea of a god probably originated. Once it was there, the idea of god was also exploited by political power as a tool for social control. Maybe to some extent these political powers even feared the gods and wished for the people to act in a way that would curry favor. Whatever the case, they legitmized their power through the awe the people felt for the gods, either by claiming to be gods or to be the earthly representatives of the gods. This gets very complex. Sometimes the shaman or priestly types were actually manipulating the kings. A claim to be able to talk to the gods was a source of power, influence, profit, and even basic safety. Some very interesting bits can be found In Fraser's The Golden Bough.

Over time, one storm god among many other gods evolved with the culture into something even bigger, higher status, mightier, more fearsome, and rather more abstract. He became the creator of all. And his jurisdiction was no longer limited to the region of one tribe. This God ruled the heavens and the earth. This also served to help explain the seeming design of the world. This belief served many varied functions.

But in all this ritual, all the prayer and incense and self-abasement, and often psychoactive compounds, people discovered something else: altered states of consciousness. And this brought both insights and delusions. People will disagree as what here amounts to real insight. But I suspect in all the inner searching, the ego-restraining gestures, the ritual, and whatnot, people may have come to glimpse certain deeper truths about our own inner nature, something that connects us to the universal. They sometimes felt their own rootedness in the ground of being, which they sometimes identified with God. Some of this mystical insight, in my opinion, is valid, but really has nothing to do with the old gods, even if ancients might have thought so. Such experiences and insight then blended with all the old magic and superstition, the tradition, the political power business, the worldview and old belief system under which these experiences were interpreted, and so on. We end up with something that doesn't yield to easy, simple explanations. Religion has many facets, some superficial, some deep, some old, some new, some worthless, some of great value. And I have only touched on a few points.

There is much more to say, but I'll end it there for now. This sketch might not be exactly correct in all details, but I think it provides a pretty solid candidate for an explanation of the origin of gods.

Fooloso4. What you are saying is interesting. With my reference to a special Being, neither singularity nor plurality is important, because the attempt is to point out existence - modes of existence are of secondary importance. (I am fully aware of the polytheism of, for instance, the ancient Greeks and Romans.) I'm not sure that I understand what you mean with "an assumption based on a notion of agency". What we do find among the ancients is an obsession with death and the search for immortality. Allow me to give you one example of this: the well-known "Gilgamesh Epic" - probably written around 2100 BCE. According to Jastrow (Jastrow, M. 1971. Religious beliefs in Babylonia and Assyria.) the whole poem can be summarised as follows:
"Gilgamesh, whereto are you going in such a hurry?
The life that you are seeking you will not find.
When the gods created man,
they determined death for man.
Life they took for themselves."
To me it is clear that one of the roots of this psychological need man developed for such a special Being can be found in his sense of own mortality.

To me it is clear that one of the roots of this psychological need man developed for such a special Being can be found in his sense of own mortality. — Daniel C

Of course. An old philosophical maxim is that if man were just an animal, then he would be the most unfortunate, because only man is aware of his impending death. What did the Buddha say was the underlying cause of dukkha? That everything dear to you will perish, that you won’t have what you want, and that you will have what you don’t want. Therefore seek refuge in the imperishable, the deathless, Nirvāṇa. I think it’s dismissive to describe it in terms of an ‘obsession’; it’s more likely that we simply have no conceptual space to map such an idea against.

I think a large part of the existential issue we have is that we’ve outgrown the similes and imagery in which religious principles have been clothed. The Bible is so clearly addressed to an agrarian, pastoral culture with all of its imagery of sheep and fields. Even the sacrificial death of Jesus only makes sense in a culture which did indeed sacrifice precious animals by way of atonement to God - that is what is behind the ‘lamb of God’ imagery. The crucifiction also represents the ‘final sacrifice’, that is to say, the one sacrifice that brings to an end the need for sacrificial offerings once and for all. But without that background understanding of the meaning of sacrifice, then the whole idea has become incomprehensible to many people.

So, as Joseph Campbell sagely noted,

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions ...are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves ‘believers’ because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as ‘atheists’ because they think religious metaphors are lies.

That describes a lot of what happens in this space.

With my reference to a special Being, neither singularity nor plurality is important, because the attempt is to point out existence - modes of existence are of secondary importance. — Daniel C

'Being' is an abstraction, or as Aristotle might say a subtraction from some particular "this" - the sun or sea or animal or human, for example. It is not a matter of modes of existence but the power of this thing appeased or appealed.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean with "an assumption based on a notion of agency". — Daniel C

The ability of the god to affect change - to help or hurt.

What we do find among the ancients is an obsession with death and the search for immortality. — Daniel C

This, of course, is true. But we find a great deal of evidence in the Hebrew Bible of the belief that death is the end. The breathe of life (Hebrew: ruach) is no longer present and the body returns to dust. In other words, there is no necessary connection between gods and some kind of human immortality or life after death. That there is something that does not die is a common belief, but I do not know if it is universal.

Thank you for all your constructive contributions to this conversation. We must remember that any conversation about "God" is nothing more than an attempt to find an "opening" - fortunately finalisation remains out of the question - a 100 years from now this discussion will still be continuing and running strong!

finalisation remains out of the question — Daniel C

‘God’ can’t be shown such that all would believe—
It’s all idle chatter that hopes conceive,
A blah, blah of what can’t even be preached,
Honestly, without a shred to retrieve.