"All gods are man-made" - evidence?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by wynn, Jun 15, 2013.

  1. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    "All gods are man-made."


    Do you agree with this statement?

    If you do, how do you support it, what evidence can you provide for it?

    If you don't, how do you support it, what evidence can you provide for it?
     
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  3. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I currently consider it to be the most rational position, and the position that I adhere to practically.

    All evidence we have of god has their origin with Man, whether it be those proclaiming to be prophets, or supposed scriptures written by Man.

    There is no evidence to reject the position.

    That is not to say that I believe the position to necessarily be true and that I won't later change my mind as I garner new experiences / evidences.
     
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  5. andy1033 Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    I totally disagree with this statement.

    There is nothing rational to science, other than alot of snobs whom think they know something.
    They always use the term rational, but what does that mean, oh that people thought about it, and the majority may accept it. Means nout in terms of fact.
     
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  7. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    God, in the purely philosophical sense of the word, and as an undefined quantity, isn't really a man-made concept. It's more like a word people throw around in the context of discussing the great mystery of existence and our desire to try to make sense of it.

    God, in the religious sense of the word, and as a defined quantity, is almost certainly a man-made concept. The single most compelling piece of evidence in support of this is that the sort of epistemology that is prescribed for those who wish to find out about God leads them to significantly different metaphysical and theological conclusions. In other words, significantly different conceptions of what God is (and the related area of the metaphysical mechanics of His relationship to creation) and who God is (and the related area of the theological mechanics of his relationship to human beings).

    To reiterate, the single biggest weakness inherent in all knowledge claims about God is that those who claim to be qualified (uniquely or otherwise) to make them don't agree with each other, and this leads to the very reasonable conclusion that we're dealing with conceptualizations that have been fleshed out and refined by man, and not truths that have been handed down from on-high.

    Note that this is not an argument against the existence of some kind of God, it is an argument against the existence of people who actually know anything about the subject, even if the subject (at least as an entity indefinable by human beings) does in fact exist.
     
  8. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    In order for that statement to be true you would have to understand every language of every creature, and then listen in on their conversations so that you know what they believe.

    What if monkeys, dolphins, or crickets believed in a god? How would you know if you don't understand their language?

    So if a spider believes in a god then all gods are not man-made, some gods would then be spider-made.



    God is a spirit that resides in those that believe!
     
  9. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Science is rational, if the scientific method is used correctly.
    To me, "rational" means that you have applied valid logic to the experiences you have, and that you have applied Occam's razor to conclusions.
    It is not "people thought about it... the majority may accept it". That is just an appeal to popularity.
    And no, being rational does not mean that it is necessarily correct.
    But in the absence of evidence one way or the other, rationality is a reasonable guide for practical purposes. At least for me.

    So you don't agree that "all gods are man-made" is a rational position to take?
    If so, what makes you think it irrational to conclude that "all gods are man-made"?
     
  10. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    13,968

    Man can make up gods, but 'gods' are not man-made.
    Man would have had to know about ''the universe'', what it is, our place in relation to the sun, moon, and planets. They would also have to know that the earth, mars, jupiter, etc... formed a solar system, from (at least) two and a half thousand years ago.
    If they somehow calculated that, would there be any need to make up gods?

    jan.
     
  11. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Why would man have had to know that (at least) 2.5k years ago?
    What evidence are you suggesting exists to suggest that Man knew these then that you seem suggests that gods are more than man-made?
     
  12. arauca Banned Banned

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    What do we know what man knew 2.5K year ago .
     
  13. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Sruptures.

    Jan.
     
  14. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps you would care to elaborate?
    Or are we to read every claimed scripture and try to guess which passages you refer to?

    What claims are there in scripture that you think Man could not possibly have known at the time?
    And perhaps you can quote chapter and verse, if not the actual passages.
     
  15. Balerion Banned Banned

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    Jan believes that every set of scriptures describes the same thing.

    Clearly, he's never read scripture.
     
  16. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    Jan is only concerned with the scripture he believes in.
     
  17. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    No. Within the constraints of your argument, there is still the option that one religion is indeed the revealed one, and all others are man-made.
     
  18. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    Your religion, right?
     
  19. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, I think so.

    I guess to start off, there's the word 'god(s)'.

    That isn't very informative, so the meaning of the word needs to be fleshed out descriptively or doctrinally. That's usually done in terms of one of the theistic religious traditions.

    Then there's the question of whether anything beyond human beings' imaginations actually corresponds to the word. We might ask whether anything satisfies the traditional description. Or, if conceivably nothing does, we can still inquire into whether word reference might be fixed in some other way. (Perhaps ostensively, as the perhaps-indescribable object of religious experience.)

    Now addressing your question more directly, in light of what I just wrote, I'll suggest that traditional descriptions of and doctrines about god(s) seem to me to be very contextual, very reflective of the cultures in which they appear. For example, the Quranic accounts of Allah present a deity that seems to me to illustrate a Semitic tribal chieftain on a cosmic scale. We see pretty much the same thing, in earlier form, in the Hebrew scriptures. Meanwhile in India, we find gods that seem very illustrative of the social mores and worldviews of ancient and medieval Indian cultures. In China, the gods seem peculiarly Chinese.

    That doesn't necessarily prove that the various culturally-specific accounts of god(s) are purely the products of cultural imagination and lack any further reference. It's hypothetically conceivable that some of these authors really did encounter some kind of supernatural being(s), and that later tradition then proceeded to dress it up and embellish it in terms of the conceptual vocabularies with which people in the authors' time and place understood such things.

    So the question then seems to be, is there any convincing reason to think that that's the case. Is there reason to believe that any of these accounts or descriptions, however culturally contextual the imagery and concepts in which they are expressed, really do point beyond themselves, to something that isn't just another idea from that culture?

    And that more properly epistemological question in turn raises all kinds of new problems about the evidenciary value of tales of miracles and wonders (and the Humean-style rejoinders to them), the evidenciary value of religious experience, and so on.

    I guess that my own view of all that stuff is that the argument from religious experience might be the best of a weak lot, but at best, that kind of evidence is only going to be accessible to the individual having the experience. And there's still the familiar problem that schizophrenics also enjoy experiences that they find totally convincing. So something else still seems to be required in order to distinguish between veridicial uniquely-personal experiences and simple delusions.
     
  20. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

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    I do not agree with this statement. I believe in many gods. Largely as a result of mystical, personal experiences or UPG.
    I do, however, agree with the proposition "All religions are man-made".
     
  21. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    The reasonableness of a conclusion is not compromised by the remote possibility that it is not 100% accurate (since you can force any reasonable person to make such a concession with regard to pretty much any reasonable conclusion about anything), therefore your "no" doesn't really make sense.

    For it to make sense, you'd have to explain why it's not a reasonable conclusion.
     
  22. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    I think a simple look at history shows that gods have "birthdays"(IE they show up at specific times in history, did not exist before that time and they eventually die, just like the humans who invented them). Also, there is a trend throughout history that gods get weaker and are responsible for fewer and fewer things in our lives. Once, if a lark farted it was attributed to a god, deity, spirit, d jinn, faerie or sprite, now we sort of vaguely attribute everything to one diety, but we know that thunder was not some Norse god's hammer(it's almost like the Industrial revolution, what had to be done by hand directly by some deity became automated by scientific principles), today we have a single god that programs the Universe by his Natural Laws so he can sweat the big things. Not only did man create the gods, he created them in his own image and with technology strangely congruent with the god's inventors.

    Grumpy

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  23. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Even 2.5 KYA it was known that people created the gods.
     

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