Through the Wormhole

[Chronos]

Did We Invent God?

[Graybeard]

Of course we did!

"Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms."
(Robert Green Ingersoll / 1833-1899)

"Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."
(Michel de Montaigne / 1533-1592)

[Nam]

The idea of man is the idea of god; except man wakes up every morning, and god only appears in the ink stained in the fingernails of the one thinking up what god's going to proclaim today.

-Nam

[Nick]

Not one of our better ideas.  Now the wheel...that was an invention.

[Mr. Blackwell]

Cause and effect. Why do our minds require answers to the question of cause and effect? What caused the universe to appear...what is the effect? Is their an end?

What started us out on this path of discovery? First, there was observation. Second, there was an hypothesis. Third, figuring out a way to test the hypothesis. Fourth, testing the hypothesis.

God...or a creative "being" is the first hypothesis. We are currently in the process of figuring out a way to test the hypothesis and testing it.

If there is a pattern to creation we are uniquely qualified to identify it. Could it be that our ability to recognize patterns created a false image? Or, do we see a false pattern?

Science and religion go hand in hand as far as I am concerned. I don't think we could have one without the other even if certain aspects of both deny certain aspects of the other.

People, humans with their "imagined" free will seek to bend or obscure the results or blend the results into a homogeneous philosophy or some sort of grand unified theory.

No matter how you slice it or dice it or blast it or dissolve it, no matter how much you magnify it or minimize it. No matter which direction you go, we find that everything is connected.

I ask...connected to what and why? In an infinite universe...anything is possible. In a finite universe the choices are more limited.

Has reality always existed? Will it ever end?

What about consciousness? 

Now...I think I may watch the video[1].

1.	I fricken love Morgan Freeman

[jetson]

Humans have always been curious.  We have always had a keen desire to understand why things are as they are.  What can we do collectively to get to those answers, or at least get closer?  I see religion and philosophy as more closely related than religion and science.  Although, religion was in charge for so long, and provided all of the "answers", I think it is obvious now that it was always wrong, and that it never really had anything but philosophical best guesses, some more accurate than others.

[jetson]

Just watched the video.  Pretty cool experiments by science. 

[Bereft_of_Faith]

I watched.  What occurred to me was that we might have to apply some understanding when dealing with believers.  They have not cooked up the notion of god for themselves, nor is stupidity (initially) a factor.  When a believer has a spiritual experience, the video shows that they are actually having an experience.  This, to them, is profound evidence.  We may get nowhere trying to devalue that experience.  They are (for the most part, if one is to be charitable) telling the truth, or in any case, not 'lying'. when they cite those experiences as a foundation for their beliefs.

The question left unanswered by the video, and is now presented to us, is how do we break through (what appears to be nearly everyone's) natural, human inclination to believe?  How can we effectively argue against the existence of god when people are hard-wired to perceive him?  I don't, as yet, have any answer to offer.

An answer might lie in that we have other hard-wired inclinations; to rut, to fight, to flee and so forth, yet we bring modifying concepts to bear to control those natural responses.

[jetson]

Bereft...there is another consideration.  Modern knowledge.

Many Christian believers have access to modern knowledge that explains the laws of physics, and explains most of the non-sense written in holy books.  What we need is a way to separate genuine human experiences from the BS written down thousands of years ago by the hopelessly ignorant.