I’m sorry if everyone’s alredy gotten into this one, and i mean no offence to those who believe, byt whay do we need a god? all great cultures (to my very limited knowledge anyway) seem to have an accepted belief system which keeps them glued togather through war and famine and all that other loverly stuff that States need a religion for.
My Question:
Why? why do we need a god? i can see as a Roman we would need our gods for the maintance of the Pax Deorum (sp?) and i can see through the Holy Roman Empire we would have needed a god because there wasnt a whole hell of a lot more to look forward to then death, and i see as well that when a culture loses faith in its Gods that it beings to fall apart because after loss of faith in you God comes loss of faith in your Government, Army, values, bla bla bla, but WHY???
Why is it that we must have this thing beyond us? over us? watching us? is it some kind of desire to have an all seeing parent guiding us? is it because we’re to frightened of our sleves to accept what we do? simply put WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?? (yay bluntness!)
I’d love to hear anyone / everyone’s opinion on this, it’s a little fascination of mine, and other peoples insights are the second best way of figureing these things out
Anyway, thanks, later
Upham
“Remember, the world is only just becoming literate” -Aldous Huxley
What better to unify a religion by imposing a non-entity. Something so powerful as to hold all the cards. Something we can’t ever hope to fight. What more useful then something that can strike you down no matter where you are or what you can do?
Ok, ok, once again i seem to have missed the point (i blame pot). Why do YOU need a god, what is it in the human person that makes the idea of a perfect being so attractive?
University made me dumber i guess, should have been more clear earlier
“Remember, the world is only just becoming literate” -Aldous Huxley
During childhood, people have their parents to watch over them. This is comforting to most people most of the time. As a child grows up, the child becomes more independent of the parent. However, the desire for that comfort does not go away. It is comforting to believe that there is a god that watches ovem them like a giant father figure. In short, God is a psychological crutch.
“All men spoke of his prowess…except for a couple of people in his home village who though he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” -Terry Prachett - The Light Fantastic
Entrenched power-wielding institutions with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
A cultural habit, passed down through generations, that it is less trouble to keep than to turn away from.
A lot of it is just window dressing, anyway, and much of the time reference to “God” is just pro forma lip service.
Hypothetical situation. The flying saucer lands on your front lawn. The BEM (Bug-Eyed Men), don’t abduct you or tell you to take them to your leader; they just follow you around for a week and ask you to explain everything. What do you tell them when you’re at the supermarket, and they want to know why people are buying chocolate rabbit ears (not the whole rabbir, mind you, just the ears)?
*You: “Well, you see, the Creator of the Universe got real mad at the first two people He made, so he sentenced all people forever to burn for eternity, but then He also sent his Son to die for all the people so they wouldn’t have to burn, and His Son died but came back to life after three days, and it happened in the spring, when all the life forms on the planet start to go into overdrive, reproductively speaking, so the people decided that a good symbolic representation for resurrection is a particular mammal of the class rodenta because it breeds so prodigiously, so they started giving their children colored chicken eggs (which also symbolize reproduction) and pretending that this rodent brought them, and later when they discovered chocolate, they started making chocolate statues of the rodent that the children could eat, but the statues were so big that the children usually could only finish the ears, and everybody always ate the ears first, anyway, so it would not be uncommon around the springtime to catch sight of several earless rabbit statues made of chocolate, and then a few years ago, someone came up with the idea of just making statues of the ears, and everyone thought that was pretty funny, so the idea just kind of, stuck.”
BEM: “And this is accepted as a normal occurrence in the dominant culture on this planet?”
YOU: “Uhh, yeah.”
BEM: “And yours is the dominant life form on the planet?”
YOU {with obvious pride): “Yup, indeedy. The whole solar system, as far as we can tell.”
BEM (into communicator): “Landing party to Mother ship. Commence colonization activities immediately. No significant resistance anticipated.”*
Well said, well put, but i’m still wodering why it is the crazy Jesus freaks i encounter oh so regularly (and again, apologies to any crazy Jesus freaks who happen to read this) think it so damn important that they have a god.
Along those lines: Why does Gary, who does not actively belive in a god, nor actively disbelieve in a god still go to church?
“Remember, the world is only just becoming literate” -Aldous Huxley
Huh? Gary who? What church does he go to? How do you know that he has no active belief or disbelief in a Deity?
Be that as it may, perhaps he’s the choir director, and he goes because they’re paying him money to go. And yes, I have personal knowledge of real churches where this has happened.
I’m not named Gary, but I go to a church, and I don’t profess a belief in any such god as is usually referred to by, “Jesus freaks,” was, I believe, the term you used.
Is this the only concept of God that you can imagine?
Use your imagination and answer this: What is your god, and why do you need that?
If you just can’t come up with any alternate concept of God, and if you can’t answer my question except with the oh-so-predictable ‘I have no god,’ odds are that your own personal dogma has shut down part of your brain.
You’re generalizing - there are plenty of people who don’t believe in some almighty diety, and even more who believe in a less intrusive version of same.
Well, I actually don’t need a God. But, I’m willing to take a crack at your challenge anyway. (Cause I’m bored, and don’t need to leave for work yet.)
In the beginning, there was nothing.
Well, that’s not exactly true. There were things, even back then. Comparitively, since there was neither space nor time, there were really quite a few things. Unfortunately, when you’re trying to describe non-spacial, non-temporal, persistent forces, you really hit sort of a wall that the English language probably isn’t the best tool to break down.
“Were they bigger than a breadbox?” you might be tempted to ask. Well, no, but neither were they smaller than a breadbox, the same size as a breadbox, or really in any way breadbox-like.
So just envision the most breadbox-like thing you can imagine; now take away all the qualities that make it like a breadbox.
Now, take this new object and continue subtracting characteristics from it, substituting each and every thing that you know and understand for the breadbox. We’ll wait here.
Done? Allright, good. Now you’ve got this thing in your mind, which is mostly unlike every other thing that you know and understand.
They were nothing like that either. Sorry.
So for now, let’s just say there was nothing - withe the exception of one particular non-spatial, non-temporal whoosiwhatsis that we’ll get to in just a second, and will actually turn out to be fairly important to our story. Nothing will just be sort of a little inside joke for me and you.
Anyway, In the beginning, there was nothing.
And God said, let there BE.
See, I told you that one thing would be important. God, was / is / will be one of those non-nothings that we mentioned earlier. He will be referred to later on as a He by almost everyone since it’s easier to remember than the whole description earlier. He will be referred to as an It by a few of the more enlightened folks out there; and a She by people who really have the whole thing all together wrong.
He said let there BE, and there was. And although it turned out totally different than what He had in mind, it was still Good.
A couple billion years later, and a couple million tries, false starts, and waves of extinction later, here we are. And we actually think that we are The End Result. Again, if we were a little more self aware, it would seem obvious to us that every other dominant species that existed had, at least on the most basic instinctual level thought “I’m the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. . . .Hey, is that a comet?”
As for God? It’s hard to watch over us without eyes, so the let’s just assume he moved on to the non-spatial, non-temporal sports bar to have a few drinks. It’s always happy hour there, you know. And the Nothing Nothings are always playing a double header with the Nothing Nothings. I’ve heard that Nothing Nothing is pitching, and he’s having a great year.
I think it’s because mankind hates responsibility. We need something watching over us, so we know that everything’s in order, and everything happens for a reason. Basically the human mind needs to understand, but it can’t understand chaos, so it has created artificial order.
Or something like that. I dunno.
I’m beginning to think that I’m the only person who believes in God that is not scared of him. I’m not frightened of him at all, why should I be? I believe He’s my Heavenly Father and he loves me.
Also, am I the only one who believes in God and also believes he has no control over my daily life. I don’t blame God for anything. If I fuck up, I fuck up. That’s not His problem. I do however thank Him for all I have, because He DID create the world.
One of the scriptures in the LDS religion is “We believe men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s trangresions” therefore I’m not too worried about being damned to hell cuz of the Fall.
Ok, ALL that being said…
I think God is important because having a God means all the questions can be answered or explained. God is important because in can hold the greater society together, you know the country’s motto “In God we Trust?”
“The bitch, oh the bitch, the bitch is back…I’m a bitch cuz I’m better then you, it’s the way that I move
The things that I do…” Elton John
“People try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend…” The Moody Blues
“To start, press any key. Where’s the any key?” Homer Simpson.
I think most people “need” to believe in a God because they cannot accept that (good or otherwise) this life is it. It is much easier to get through the days when one thinks they have somewhere else to be when this life ends.
Pepperlandgirl: If you believe that God is benevolent, you have not read the Bible - and I mean all of it, not just the parts your Minister likes to quote on Sunday from the New Testament. You need to start at the beginning and critically read it to the end.
I think the modern Christian is hooked on the “It’s who you know, not what you do with your life” philosophy. According to their philosophy, they get to go to heaven and don’t even have to behave themselves on a day-by-day basis. You have to admit this is pretty enticing. No wonder so many sign up for this program.
My mother died from cancer, some 11 years ago. When it was diagnosed as terminal – and after all conventional treatments had been exhausted – she tried everything from magnets under her pillow to a diet of pure carrot juice.
I recently attended the funeral of an old friend of the family who had also died from cancer. When I knew her some years ago she was not particularly religious. Then she got cancer and became pentacostal.
So, consider this a second vote for the “psychological crutch” theory of theology.
I am truly happy for anyone who has true faith, and have often wished for similar certainty and peace, but find that I cannot accept the existence of the divine without objective proof.
I firmly feel that religion manifests in all societies because humans have a deep seated need for the universe to make sense, and because the realisation that there really may be no “point” to it all is a very scary thought.
