What is God?
A Human Instinct or The Brainchild of Reason
How did God get started? An article published in the Boston university press caught my eye.
It presented a thought experiment. Imagine, if we can erase all religious text in all forms, as if they never existed, anthropology suggests and to quote, “it would rapidly reappear in new yet familiar forms — but probably without monotheism — assuming history is any guide.” Meaning the idea of one God is unique and must be passed on — for it to survive.
For non-monotheistic religions, it holds the notion of them originating from human instinct. That makes sense because across the World, every society, no matter how remote, has its own set of beliefs and gods. So, what is this God instinct?
Understanding human instinct, as defined by Britannica is, ‘ an inborn impulse or motivation in response to a specific external stimulus.’ For example, the most active human instinct is probably to procreate — thus 7.8 billion and counting, the external stimulus — the opposite sex. We know how to react to this instinct without the knowledge, and it drives our need to be intimate.
The inborn impulse is what an infant possesses; it knows from where and how it can get nourishment, a survival instinct, I guess.
In a BBC article, do humans have a ‘religion instinct’ — the cognitive scientist talks about HDD (Hyper intensive agency detection device), the human instinct that might correspond to religious affairs. It has the innate tendency to relate a cause to an effect, a non-reflective instinct. Like hearing a hissing sound, we think of snakes.
Similarly, in that fashion, through another build-in mechanism that is the MCI (minimally counterintuitive) concept like ‘I prayed and it healed my headache’, he says we relate our non-reflective instincts to reflective thoughts such as God. There is a problem with that, in my opinion. All phenomena HDD refers to are in the objective world. The subjective world and objective world simulate each other. In other words, what I observe in the material world, creates a thought in my mind of how I perceive it; whereas, what I think in my mind, outlines what I see, whether you see it or not.
An early human civilization that had never thought or seen God, can they relate to it?
Yes! If mindfully someone knew about the idea of God from his forefathers, he can try to visualize his philosophies in the objective world, in the sun, in the moon, in the stars, as gods.
The question remains, to relate, the idea of God must be invented first. So, that would suggest that the God instinct developed after the idea of God came and took many forms with the evolution of time.
The thought of God coming to someone is fascinating. It is where both articles agree that religion was a necessity to bring people together when they could not see another way to answer the Greek philosopher’s ‘second-order questions.’ That is why we come back to the Boston University article. Its experiment reminds me of scientist’s most celebrated argument for science VS religion.
If all science knowledge could be forgotten and swiped clean from the Earth, it would reemerge in its original form. Einstein’s energy-mass equation would still be true; the laws of thermodynamics would work because it is logical. These are the laws of physics built on pure logic and reasoning. And that is what the writer claims as to the origin of God. One God, itself is the brainchild of reason.
The writer suggests that it was the Greeks who came up with the idea. Their reasoning was also ‘second-order.’ To them, it was not a question of whether you believe or not, rather is what you believe in true or not? He talks of Thales, who thought of water as the divine spirit and originator of all.
The difference it presents between Greek mythology and the monotheistic religious view is the nature of God VS nature itself being God. The Greek philosophers saw God being the point from which it all came, a god within nature. Whereas the religious groups turned it into a spiritual being to avoid naturalism.
Even if we consider that as the truth for the moment, it does not answer the question. Greeks questioned the idea of God; they did not invent it. They only reasoned on its grounds.
Whereas the thought, the idea, the God itself existed before…
