Sigmund Freud once speculated that “God” is nothing more than a father figure.
I want to take that notion further. I hereby hypothesize that religion – and in particular, fundamentalist Christianity – is an excuse for people to remain juvenile even after they’ve entered adulthood:
[ol][li]God is a benevolent father figure. He watches over you, keeping you from getting hurt by the big, mean outside world. Daddy will protect you.[/li]
[li]God is a judgemental father figure. He scrutinizes your every action and punishes you for your mistakes. Daddy’ll get you if you don’t behave.[/li]
[li]Jesus is your imaginary friend. He’s someone for you to talk to when you don’t have any real-life friends around.[/li]
[li]Back when you were a kid living with your parents, they tried to be “fair” with you at all times. If you got an “A” in math, they took you out for ice cream; if you stole a cookie, they sent you to your room without supper. You came to expect parental fairness in response to your every action. Unfortunately for you, the real world is not “fair” – good is not always rewarded and evil is not always punished. Heaven and Hell, then, are an attempt to make the world “fair,” just like it was when your parents were in charge. The good guys get to go to heaven when they die, and the bad guys get sent to hell. So there.[/li]
[li]When you first found out about sex, it probably sounded “icky” to you. The usual Fundamentalist attitude against sex allows you to carry that “sex is icky” feeling with you, even after you’ve started having sexual desires of your own. It also acts as the perfect vehicle for the feelings of resentment you might still be harboring toward people who, in your early adolescent years, had better sexual success than you did.[/ol][/li](I’ve singled out Fundamentalist Christian beliefs in the above points because, hey, it’s my hypothesis, and I can pick on any group I darned well please. )
There. Now, let the counter-arguments (and inevitable flames) begin!
tracer’s proposition is something I’ve long suspected.
Freud could not have said anything about the alleged “Bible Code” because this “discovery” was made long after he died.
The “Bible Code” is an invention by people desperately trying to assure themselves that death is not the end. They are cowards, afraid to face the truth that death IS the end. Or, they are arrogant, offended by the notion that something as remarkable as themselves will someday cease to exist.
Another counterarguement, this arguement has no value and is only to invite flames. Which means that your acting in a trollish behavior and o 0(don’t feed the trolls)
Tracer, it’s a well-known truism (psychological fact, theory, hypothesis, or whatever you care to call it) that many religious people “create God in their father’s image” – i.e., that they focus on that aspect of Him that most closely corresponds to their own father’s personality.
Secondarily, many look for, and find, in God the exact reversal of their father – the things they wanted to find in their father and which he did not provide.
I did the first for a long time. Then I did the second.
Then I encountered God. And the funny thing is, the reality of Him is skewed from either perception. He’s nothing like my father was, nor like the reversal of my father.
Further, your OP hypothesis is capable of a full reversal: Human interrelationships are what they are because a real objective God created humanity in such a way that they would seek in Him the things they most cherished in their closest relationships, that kids would have imaginary friends to teach them how to have a relationship with a real but spirit Jesus, etc.
Admittedly, that’s stretching it. But it’s within the realm of possibility, you’d have to admit.
In short, developmental psychology tells us of one possible explanation for why people look for a God, and find Him. It does not rule out the potential for there being such an entity; it merely gives Occam’s Razor a couple of fresh whets which those who, like me, argue for such an entity must overcome to posit such an entity.
i’ve watched a 2 hour program about the bible codes, read some websites about it and ordered the program and played with it. i have suspected the universe ran on reincarnation long before i heard of the bible codes, so i am already in the X-files, Twilight Zone class of humanity.
am well aware of the time difference between freud and bible code “discovery”, that was just my idea of a joke. the torah being a chosen people thing and all.
we have a problem with “occam’s razor” and analyzing 2nd hand information. improbable things probably don’t happen, but when too many improbable things start piling up then SOMETHING MUST BE HAPPENING. in revelations there is talk of a star named wormwood poisoning the land, air and water. CHERNOBYL means WORMWOOD. what’s the probability?
some “skeptics” reject wierdness out of hand and assume that is the intelligent thing to do. too much BS in the name of religion. maybe god made a universe more interesting than we think.
like Goldfinger said, “the 1st time you meet someone it’s happenstance, the 2nd time it’s coincidence, the 3rd time it’s enemy action.” watch out for those jewish guys. LOL!
No value? Only to invite flames?
Aw, c’mon, is that the best you can do?
How about something like: “The bible also has instructions for how you should raise your children (e.g. in Proverbs) and commandments to avoid adultery. Those don’t sound very infantile, do they? Why, the word ‘adultery’ even has ‘adult’ in it!”
Or: “A few Fundies out there do act rather infantile, and they give the rest of us a bad name. Don’t judge us as a whole by the actions of a few of our members!”
Or: “The Criminal Justice System is a secular institution, and it also tries to be ‘fair’. I don’t see you calling the Criminal Justice System ‘infantile’!”
Any other counter-arguments? (Or pro-arguments, for that matter?)
Come now, Tracer - if God is a human invention, than your explanations are plauseable, just like a hundred other explanations I can come up with, given time. However, if God does exist in some way or form, how exactly dos your post disprove him? Just because there’s a motive, there doesn’t have to be a crime.
Ya know it’s easy to find something in a book of any size if you skip letters “randomly” and then decide what is significant and what is not. Try Moby Dick for example;
This of course is a satiric way of debunking the supposed scientific method in finding a deeper meaning in that literary mishmash, the Bible.
Here is another web page that explains the falacious assumptions at work here and demonstrates that the famous “Rabbi Experiment” works in Tolstoy’s “War & Peace”.
Apparently, it’s not so much that “Chernobyl means wormwood” as it is that the name (or possibly nickname) of the mugwort plant (a close relative of the wormwood plant) in Russian is “chernobylnik”. What the significance of that is, I dunno; I wasn’t able to delve any deeper into the matter than that.
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