The evolution of God...

[ignoramus]

Guys, been thinking. (Nah, not really).

Did man create God(s) as an evolutionary coping mechanism?
Throughout history, do you think the God(s) present and past have had a total net sum positive effect on our species as a whole?

OK, a lot of people were killed through superstition and ignorance. We cannot blame the God characters entirely for this as woo has been part of our evolution from the start.
It is really only relatively recently that science has been able to dissolve most woo with better, more effective answers to "mysterious" questions.

Maybe without our God crutches, we wouldn't be here today?
Maybe God is a necessary evil? (pardon the pun) we needed to get to this point.
But my real question, is have we as a species matured enough to confidently say that the crutch is not needed anymore?
Considering human greed, etc, and the % of suffering in the world, I'd say God is needed more than ever? Ironical isn't it.

[Foxaèr]

You don't think we'd be more advanced than we are now had we rationally evolved quicker to the point where we did not create an unhealthy dependency on fictional, delusional superstitions?

[Minimalist]

All religions are scams and their various gods are the products they sell to the simpletons.

[ignoramus]

Agree... The simpletons, the hopeless, the desperate, the unfortunate, call them whatever you will.
Maybe this crutch is all they have to keep them going another day. And they're growing by the thousands every day.

Why would you want to take this crutch away from them if hope is all they have?
No-one said life was ever going to be easy, or even fair ... I find it's getting harder every day, and we're the middle class in a first world country.
I can't even imagine the horrors going on in war torn and poor third world countries riddled with corruption, famine, disease... etc
I'm looking at this "God" crutch as a tool (yes, God has always been a tool! lol!). And how this tool can help the desperate.

Forget all those religious people in first world countries for the sake of this thread...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Considering human greed, etc, and the % of suffering in the world, I'd say God is needed more than ever? Ironical isn't it.

Odd, given that belief in gods is responsible for a large part of the human misery in the world.

Boru

[Minimalist]

Agree... The simpletons, the hopeless, the desperate, the unfortunate, call them whatever you will.
Maybe this crutch is all they have to keep them going another day. And they're growing by the thousands every day.

Why would you want to take this crutch away from them if hope is all they have?
No-one said life was ever going to be easy, or even fair ... I find it's getting harder every day, and we're the middle class in a first world country.
I can't even imagine the horrors going on in war torn and poor third world countries riddled with corruption, famine, disease... etc
I'm looking at this "God" crutch as a tool (yes, God has always been a tool! lol!). And how this tool can help the desperate.

Forget all those religious people in first world countries    for the sake of this thread...

Part of the problem is that religion sells false hope but they sell it for real money.  Something the poor have in short supply.  These fairy tales are not "harmless" fantasies.  They go a long way to keeping the poor poor.

[vorlon13]

Guys, been thinking. (Nah, not really).

Did man create God(s) as an evolutionary coping mechanism?
Throughout history, do you think the God(s) present and past have had a total net sum positive effect on our species as a whole?

OK, a lot of people were killed through superstition and ignorance. We cannot blame the God characters entirely for this as woo has been part of our evolution from the start.
It is really only relatively recently that science has been able to dissolve most woo with better, more effective answers to "mysterious" questions.

Maybe without our God crutches, we wouldn't be here today?
Maybe God is a necessary evil? (pardon the pun) we needed to get to this point.
But my real question, is have we as a species matured enough to confidently say that the crutch is not needed anymore?
Considering human greed, etc, and the % of suffering in the world, I'd say God is needed more than ever? Ironical isn't it.

Just the effort expended in Christianity's tens of thousands of schisms by itself is a huge waste. Jesus inflicted a bewildering and confusing witches brew of mish mash and folderol. The efforts could have been almost infinitely more usefully and efficiently utilized.

[ignoramus]

Would, could, religion exist at all if we took the business aspect out of it?

[The Grand Nudger]

Absolutely.  The earliest things we can point to as evidence of a nascent religion are instances of people literally burying shit with their dead relatives.  No one was making any profit on that - exactly the opposite.  Obviously, at some point, someone had the bright idea of standing between sacrificial goods and their intended recipients..but if you did away with those people..folks would probably still bury their money in holes or burn it or any number of other ridiculous things.

[Minimalist]

Speaking of the evolution of superstitions, we have this from  Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle.

Christianity was born in a thousand places, in the broad fertile soil
of Hellenistic Judaism. It sprang up in many independent communities and sects, expressing
itself in a great variety of doctrines. We see this variety in everything from Paul to the writings
of the so-called community of John, from the unique Epistle to the Hebrews to non-canonical
documents like the Odes of Solomon and a profusion of gnostic texts.

Pg. 49

This explains the multiplicity of xtian sects in antiquity.  The multiplicity of xtian sects today is best explained by the greed of the clergy.