Did God invent Man or did Man invent God?

Question

For a long while i have searched for proof that there is a divine existence. I still struggle to find any real scientific evidence or reason for me to believe in something that someone can just say to me look there you go its real and there is no dispute.With a huge number of world religions what makes one more real than the other. Every day people are dying for what they believe. But is it all for nothing. Do people just need something to believe in? 2000 years ago was a very long time indeed and if you read the bible God was supposed to be very interactive with the population at that time. Not made any appearence since then. Very odd !
Help me believe in something. Tell me of one event concerning any religion in the last milenium that could justify the fanatical following that it has today.
You may struggle but i am starting to think that religion is just a system of control and the best way yet of controlling a mass population.
What do you think?

Answer 1

Man invented god.

Answer 2

If religion is the best way to control a mass population, then why have the past oppressive countries been atheist? The USSR and Nazi Germany must not have gotten the memo. Religion is a really bad way to control the masses anyways because they are going not going to be in agreement and are going to fight. So my point here is that controlling the masses doesn't have much to do with religion. People do need something to believe in. This hankering for religion seems very odd as far as evolution goes. If there is no God, then the first humans that came up with the idea of God would have been at an evolutionary disadvantage- having to sacrifice cows, spend time praying, when they could have been out doing something productive. The Egyptians put a huge amount of effort into the pyramids to ensure the emperor's good afterlife. A godless civilization would have a huge advantage over them. As far as motivating the masses, if there is no God any type of motivation should work just as well, so the glory of the country or tribe should have worked fine and been more efficient. Except it didn't. Almost every culture has had a religion, and those who tried to banish it like the USSR fell apart. So why does religion work so well? It couldn't have evolved over time to motivate people as demonstrated above, it not really practical, so the only other solution is that there is a God who has placed a need to worship him in people. Now people are not all knowing so it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to say that some people knowing that there is a God identified Him wrong and started another religion. So there came to be many different religions. No I know this isn't undeniable proof of God, just good circumstantial evidence. For some reason God has decided not to give undeniable proof, he wants us to have faith. It's understandable, if He revealed himself to everyone in full glory; everyone would be afraid and worship him out of fear. But God wants us to love him freely and therefore has given us a choice by remaining hidden, so that if we still worship him our love will be freely given and mean much more.

Answer 3

God invented man. The fanatical following is due mainly to personal experiences. I would expect that any Christian you ask can give you an example of what they consider to be a miracle in their life. As a Christian you learn to seek God in all things you do, when this happens some amazing changes occur within and around you. For us there is no other explanation. Believe me stuff just happens that you didn't think was possible. It's a beautiful thing. For a long time I searched for proof. But eventually I learned that I needed to try and gain this relationship with the Lord that everybody was talking about. Once I did this everything became a lot clearer. You feel it. If you really want to know, don't ask us, ask Him.

Answer 4

I believe that God is a code word which roughly translated means the unexplained. Religion, in my opinion, was created to make sense of things which didnt have a clear answer back when technology was at a minimum eg. Vikings, thunder was gods riding over clouds in chariots. Us, rainbows were god's way of saying that he would never flood the world again. We now Know that rainbows are actually caused by light being refracted and projected against clouds through raindrops...this new knowledge though now brings up a new unexplained wonder...which one is the truth??? The one which has scientific evidence or the one that simply doesnt, a contridiction, that is what that is called, and Our religion has recently become riddled with them but the christians point of view is that god created the rational explanation so he therefore exists but a new group has now formed, which is now aware of the possibility that maybe there is no devine being but just our own fear...

Answer 5

What is now perceived as God is an invention of the Churches as a method of population control and is no longer required as we are supposedly educated enough to rule our own lives.

Religion was invented by Man to make his own insignificance matter and explain what they could not then explain.

The existence of a "creation energy or life force' as a primitive god like presence is around us - the big bang happened and we all have souls which cannot exist without a living personality which cannot exist without a loving mind which cannot exist without a living body.. which cannot be created simply by adding the ingredients together indication a missing 'life force energy'

The church relies on dogma and doctrine over that which is writtenn in the holy books if it relied purely on what was writte it would be clear that telling us not to eat pork or shell fish was not a mortal sin but common sense until the refrigerator was invented. likewise not to spill ones seed (masturbate)or have sex with another man or animal was simply a guidebook on how to become pregnant. And Yet the church focuses on homosexuality while eating pork or prawn sandwiches!!

if we take Revelations literally on 144,000 Jews would be save and no-one else however Revelation is not in The Jewish Torah so it is of no use to anyone!

Believe in yourself and your own spirituality - man needs no doctrine or dogma from a church just the knowledge that doing it honest true and good id best. Religion is used by the Church as its last attempt to keep hold of the power it had over the masses

Answer 6

First we need to determine which God we are talking about here. Are you referring to the real God, the unconditionally loving God who we are all a part of? This is the one Jesus was talking about when he said the kingdom of God is within you. The one who is our dearest friend and closest companion.

Or are we talking about the angry little judgmental God that lives on some far off cloud called heaven. The one who seems to be more concerned with our errors than he is with our successes? You know the egocentric needy little God that always wants people to worship him. The one who is always unavailable because he is only a fantasy? You need to specify if you want a real answer

As for the second part of your question, Yes something happened that made me feel his presence. I was an atheist then one day I had a sort of a vision of a distant relative that lived over a thousand miles away. I convinced myself that it was just a case on an overactive imagination. Three days later I got a call telling me that he had gone into a coma and died the same day that I felt I had been contacted by him. I can honestly say that this changed my life completely. I felt like God had gone out of his way to help me find my way home. This is why I get angry when people talk about the judgmental God. The love I felt that day made me realize that God would never even think about judging or punishing anyone for any reason.

Answer 7

You want physical proof of a non physical Being. Is that rational? OTOH, 'what makes one more real than the other' is a reasonable question. You can judge a religion by what it does for people. After all, even if it is about control, it cannot work unless there is a profit in it for the people. So what do people get out of religion? Traditionally, religions fill a psychological need that everyone has for some sort of authority to look up to. You see, really, no one ever truly grows up. We all remember our parents, or those who raised us, and gave us our instruction. They also provided for our needs. As adults, it's very comfortable to feel that Someone is still looking out for us. Especially in such a wild world as men have always lived in. Any religion that fills that need will suffice in most situations. Religions that use their power to feed the poor, the widows, and orphans add to their value to society.

But I suspect that you are not asking about religion. I think you're wondering about the Christian God who showed up here about 2000 years ago. You're probably confused because it was the penultimate act of a *very* long-running play, and we are currently in what you would only recognize as an intermission.

Interesting that your question holds the answer within it. How is it that despite hundreds of years of silence, all of this religion stuff hasn't died out? Obviously, most messiahs who get themselves crucified are forgotten within days. So what was different about Jesus? First of all, He rose from the dead. This was admitted even by His enemies, and ALL of His disciples died rather than recant their story. That violates human nature, unless it really happened. But the very fact that this religion does NOT go away implies supernatural intervention of some sort. Maybe that's the event you should be looking at.

Answer 8

what a great question
I think that man invented the thing that they call God although there are many different forms of this and when things go wrong then people say 'oh it's gods plan' what a load of bullsh.it
it's that the human race is like a load of sheep, one starts something then others follow aimlessly, what does it say about Christ in the Bible he is the Shepherd, that as far as I'm concerned is the only true statement in the Bible, which is just a huge storybook wrote by very clever people centuries ago, what do people call it when you talk to God it's called praying but if you turn round and say God spoke to you then you're called mad and locked up
so that's my answer and it's just a way of controlling the masses and making people feeling that they have achieved something by going to a place and making your knees hurt every Sunday

Answer 9

regardless what you believe there is a higher power, maybe not the way every one sees it but to me there is a god, I'm not a church goer or even a religious person but i still believe in heaven and hell. God has helped me twice in my life and from the first time after that i believed i was 15 i ran away from homee i had been gone for a month i had lost 40 pounds had been raped and i was done i had no were else to go, i asked god if your real if you are really there help me and to top it off i gave hom a time, help me by midnight, and you know what he did, i spent six months in a home for run aways, it changed my life, the second time was when i had my daughter at 20 she was sick and having seizures maybe as many as 30 a day, i prayed it took time about 6 months but with faith that he heard me the doctors found out that she has tuberous sclerosis and even though it is a bad disease she is doing better than most with only a few minor problems, so see it doesn't just happen by itself there has to be a higher power believe what you want but just believe

Answer 10

Millenniums ago no one had an answer for even the most simple things, like rain, thunder, lightning, sun, moon, stars, daytime, nightime, death, so to explain them they put names and faces to these common elements and thought they had to appease them to survive. It's easy to see how gods came to be. Eventually someone in the group would say they had an inside track to this god, that the god would speak to them. Hence we have a clergy class. These folks wielded power over the people.

As time progresses the more enlightened and curious took the time to figure out how all these things work and exposed these gods for what they were, a figment of mans imagination. That process is slow moving and still continues today. The more knowledge we gain about how things work, the faster these gods disappear.

It's all just a natural progression.

Answer 11

You will never find any proof of God. If I said there was a gingerbread man called Trevor orbiting the sun, you could never prove me wrong. But religion as a whole is a scam. It is completley made up by man to control the masses. Avoid it at all costs!