(February 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Really, what is it about nature that suggests a god? The red in tooth and claw part? Disease? The vast amount of empty space in the universe? Beauty. Complexity. What? Because none of them indicate a god to me.
Frankly, it is not nature exactly, but man's lack of control over nature that seems to have caused man to invent gods, as a way of influencing nature. Unlike Christianity, earlier religions were not so much about morality or creation as about how do we: win this battle; make it rain; save this man from dying; safely sail across this water; survive the winter; get a deer; have a child. The idea was quid pro quo, we do this for x god and he gives us y. As a method, worshiping the gods didn't work very well. Having tested that hypothesis and found it wanting, perhaps we could move on? ----- Oh yeah, we have moved on. And while we are still not really in control, we have a lot more control and predictive power than we used to. But that came of discarding the god hypothesis.
I didn't come as a result of discarding the God hypothesis. It came from studying nature and learning to apply the knowledge we found to make our lives easier. I'm sure that as early people were praying to their gods, they were busy searching for food, constructing shelters, making clothes, etc. - just as theists do today.
