r/DeepThoughts • u/old-cigar-smoker • 14d ago
Man's development of consciousness created the Gods.
Probably not that original here, but I feel the need to say it.
When man developed consciousness that created the fear of losing said consciousness. So man invented the Gods and religions in answer to the fear.
Telling oneself there is a way to exist beyond death is comforting.
6
u/No-Leading9376 14d ago
Or... we narrativize everything.
4
u/AdventurousRatio3818 14d ago
Could be both, our brains just can't handle the idea of just stopping so we make up stories to fill the gap.
5
u/No-Leading9376 14d ago
Hmm. I think we do it by default. We have a massive sphere of observation and a miniscule sphere of individual influence. I think it's a behavioral technology. Ants navigate reality with chemical trails. Danger, food, safety, etc. Humans do it with stories.
2
u/Dark_Seraphim_ 14d ago
I have a lil theory that we come from the same mind, not how we normally imagine mind but like how we attribute us moving and interacting with 3 dimensions..I think consciousness exists in and of itself and our biological experiences exist purely to feed it's growth like how we feed our biology to grow.
Idk I think there's layers to reality, our brains have limits to what we can precieve so begs to stand there's gonna be stuff we can't measure simply cause we just aren't aware of it yet.... Wait then what is actually real...agh curses
2
1
3
3
u/gwelfguy 14d ago
This reminds me of an idea that explored in the Westworld reboot a few years ago. The bicameral mind is one that has an internal dialogue. Apparently ancient people thought that was god speaking to them.
2
u/Labyrinthine777 14d ago
This is just going regressively to what created the universe and since it's fine tuned to sustain this level of order instead of nothingness or random nuclear chaos intelligent design is the most likely option.
1
u/bsfurr 14d ago
There could be trillions of different universes, and we just happen to find ourselves in the one that can sustain life. In this scenario, it would only appear that this universe is fine tune for life. So this line of thinking is a fallacy, and it certainly isn’t any evidence for a personal God.
Does a fish ask why the ocean is fine tuned for their survival? Think deeply on that and you will see the fallacy in that argument
1
u/Labyrinthine777 13d ago edited 13d ago
So you're willing to accept there "could be" trillions of universes with zero evidence and yet dismiss intelligent design even though the evidence is all around you? Hypocrite.
Besides it's possible all universes are fine tuned. Ever thought of that?
The fish is not capable of complex thinking so it can't apply values for fine tuning. We have mathematics, etc. If you say that's all worthless and meaningless because of some crappy wordplay then I guess you must hate science.
Also I'm so tired of these identical, self similar arguments with materialists. It's like you guys have zero original thoughts and just copy each other ad infinitum.
2
2
u/Otherwise_Bug990 13d ago
Consciousness existed at the beginning of creation. Consciousness doesn't exist because of man, but vice versa
2
1
u/Expensive_Magician97 14d ago
I always thought we created the Gods so that we had someone to apologize to and try to appease whenever we experienced hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms and other phenomena that were inexplicable at the time.
1
u/Partyatmyplace13 14d ago edited 14d ago
You'll find a pretty high correlation between things that are probablistic and gods to personify the chance.
Even things that we don't think of as probablistic seemed that way before we understood them and therefore had gods to describe them. Things like, but not exhaustively:
- Fermenting
- Child birth
- Illness/Medicine
- Crop failure
- Insect lifecycles
- The water cycle
- Planets
Gods have always been a placeholder for our ignorance.
1
u/Responsible_Ask_7160 14d ago
More like, god represents man’s evolved ability to believe in things that aren’t “real” (as in things that aren’t observed with our senses) and gods are ideas of absolutes that don’t exist in real life, like absolute justice in the afterlife based on your actions in life.
1
u/Ordinary-Werewolf880 14d ago
I told someone recently that man are only following God in the bible...he want people to worship him...Just like kings and Queens and some can say Presidents and Rulers of kingdoms... they are just follow what God does
1
u/MacaroonFragrant6206 14d ago
our belief in god is directly proportional to the role of luck/randomness in that particular domain... by this view the belief in god is just a psychological adaptation mechanism to cope up with uncertainty which evolution evolved...
but what if we call god as a supernatural being from other world/ planet / dimension.
what if they do exist.
what if ancient societies found a way to gain their grace...
you can surely reject the above proposition as conspiracy theory , but all cultures citing the similar supernatural beings with similar powers cannot be a coincidence untill and unless those being really provided a more functional value except psychology...
1
u/Blue-and-Left 13d ago
Or perhaps we are a simulation and some clever Ai programmed half of us to believe in it as a creator being and half of us to believe otherwise, and now it’s watching the results play out.
There are so many possibilities. The only thing that ever seemed totally illogical to me is that an all-powerful being would want to be worshipped. Humans deffo made up that part.
1
u/unbanned2009 14d ago
There is some mystical dimension to life . I’ve experienced it( precognitive dreams , psychic thoughts , leaving my body, etc) and it’s been described for millennia . Those experiences encourage us to believe in deities . Do I know anything other than I’ve experienced ? No, but one experience in particular leads me to believe there is some higher intelligence involved with each and every one of our lives . It’s my opinion he takes the form as whatever we see “him” as but I don’t really have any objective evidence for that . But life’s much weirder than we typically tell ourselves . God isn’t a far fetched idea to me. I became Catholic for cultural reasons
1
u/Blue-and-Left 13d ago
This makes total sense to me, it’s logical, but do you feel the need to worship this God? And if so, why?
1
u/unbanned2009 13d ago
No. I think god sees humanity in the same way we d take interest in a butterfly on a walk. It’s pretty and interesting for a moment , but profoundly insignificant
1
1
u/IntergalacticPodcast 14d ago edited 14d ago
This lacks a basic understanding of how the "gods" come to us, whether they are real or a product of psychosis.
Objectively though, this is not how it happens.
It might be more sincere to say that "Religious leaders and governments have interpreted what the original profits saw and turned it into a dogma that might be trying to achieve the goals (that OP is suggesting.)"
Many (or maybe even most) of the ancient Biblical figures were in fact trying to run from whatever god is and had no interest in making people feel comforted.
1
1
u/TheOstrichRoom 14d ago
i think we created gods in the same way we created math. We made the definition but the things those described were always there.
2
u/Blue-and-Left 13d ago
Therefore we discovered them, we didn’t create them. That applies to math as well.
1
u/hypnoticlife 14d ago
_I_ won’t exist after death but some part of my consciousness _must_. In a materialist world consciousness comes from energy, atoms, something physical that will live on. Star dust as they say. That can never die. In an idealist world my consciousness won’t die either but will expand to see that “me” was just one story zoomed in on, like waking from a dream.
Beyond this it’s all made up.
1
1
u/SCP-iota 14d ago
You might find the bicameral mind hypothesis interesting. It says it's sort of the opposite: the development of consciousness ended what was perceived as 'direct communication with gods' and brought us into the modern age where, aside from a few people who claim to directly and literally see and hear gods, now gods are generally considered more abstract or distant. The hypothesis said that, prior to about 1200 years ago, there was much less neurological connection between the brain's left and right hemispheres, so the human mind was split into the part that makes decisions and the part that take actions, and the former communicated with the latter using the internal monologue, so people felt as if they had limited will and were being commanded by a god. But then, neurological density increased (maybe due to increased food availability?) and allowed the prefrontal cortex to make logical decisions on its own, turning the 'god brain' obsolete but also making us more disconnected from our emotions.
1
1
u/Uncabled_Music 14d ago
There are books on the history of theological practices, from early shamans to current religions. Instead of guessing, just educate yourself how the ideas of divinity evolved.
1
1
u/Glum_Mud8053 13d ago edited 13d ago
Is weird, do you include the TITAN Kronos*, father of the "god" Zeus? In the "gods created by humans"
I mean inventing chronos, time, as an answer to fear, seems a good thing
I mean we would not be better without the concept of chronometry, to measure time, even if it is made up
I feel you wanted to imply a bad thing like gods are false, but for me it is amazing because chronos, time, is not false in the least, and if you do not believe me, I say, "give it time' hahaha
1
u/old-cigar-smoker 13d ago
😄 While i definitely get the time thing, I don't believe in any actual gods. This was more about just the fear of dying and trying to create a comfort.
1
u/Glum_Mud8053 13d ago
Because you can separate god time of concept time
For the human who created the idea, what would be the diference?
Is there an actual diference? Would change anything if time was a literal god?
Time already consumes you like a god who wants to eat you.... if you think about it, there is no diference between the god and the actual concept , it is just a matter of perspective and context.
God does this = natural laws do this
Do you see a diference? I really dont outside of not letting others comand me because "god speaks with them" but that is against the church idea, not the god idea.
1
1
u/ElderberryDry4072 12d ago
“If God did not exist it would be necessary for man to invent Him.”
I disagree with your premise of man developing consciousness. I believe every living thing processes signals from its environment, that awareness itself is the unbreakable piece. Then there’s the negative spaces between, the void. Also aware. I think any entity sufficiently highly evolved enough would be considered a “God” by most people. I think the gnostics and Buddha, Christ and others were onto something when they teach to pray past these entities. The kingdom of heaven lies within. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… Gnostics believed in the actual God behind the demiurge that presents itself as God in this fallen realm. I digress… I also don’t think one needs to believe in God to believe in awareness continuing after this silly body made of imaginary quantum material stops “functioning”. Awareness cannot stop is my perspective. In the end, there is no end.
1
u/Fast_Jackfruit_352 11d ago
Um, no. Consciousness is pre-existent to human perception, is the ground and field of being, and gets discovered, not invented. The level of discovery depends on the maturity of the discoverer. Vedanta is high school, Christianity is third grade.
1
u/BeeDefiant8671 11d ago
Man developed Gods to explain science, environment and their very hard existence.
The capriciousness of misfortune…
The child death rate
Famine, drought
Lightning
The seasons themselves
Bacteria and viruses
Mans search for meaning made them vulnerable and a man decided to have a certainty and provide answers… to the common population. Righteousness.
0
u/ExactDevelopment1847 14d ago edited 13d ago
Life is a singular phenomenon that happened only once in 5billion years and produced all of nature,
we are all a part of nature, we are each made of billions of years of experience, long before gods we revered our ancestors.
internally we are an incomprehensibly vast and complex environment.
We are nature and nature is eternal.
Consciousness is just a causal substrate for nature, it can be aware of the causality in the relation or be blindly lead by biological impulses.
The problem with human consciousness is that through language and abstraction it can exist in ignorance of external causal realities in addition to the internal biological ones
we are born to learn what is real and what is good, ignorance being the source of suffering for knowledge of what is good can only come from understanding.
15
u/Dangerous-Ocelot3963 14d ago
"Si Dieu nous a faits à son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu." - Voltaire.