Delta4Embassy
Gold Member
I think the belief of gods came about to impose order onto society before large-scale governments and nations existed. Also, because much of the world works by way of counter-intuitive thinking, explaining things as being because God did it was more satisfying than microscopic germs caused the ifnection killing your kid. Demons did it because our village has been naughty was easier to accept.
And when you have a lot of discrete little settlements each doing their own thing, ensuring everyone works together instead of competing with each other and warring is only achievable if everyone's on the same page. So you invent a powerful deity who'll punish you if you do anti-social things until we all learn how to get along.
Fast foward thousands of years to now, and we have governments and laws doing what religions used to. But religions became so powerful that the ones earning their livings from them naturally don't want to relinquish that power so they compete with law and governments.
Bit by bit though, religions are falling away as people see the truth. If your 'all-powerful' god never actually does anything, then why continue to surrender your will to it? We surrender our will to governments because all the conjecture and disbelief in the world wont alter the fact that police can come arrest you if you start breaking its' commandments (i.e. laws.)
We've developed to the point where we don't need fairy stories to understand why things happen. We have science. We don't need justice in the afterlife because we have justice immediately and swiftly.
We don't need God any more.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11
...Well, except when wrapping up points with something clever.
And when you have a lot of discrete little settlements each doing their own thing, ensuring everyone works together instead of competing with each other and warring is only achievable if everyone's on the same page. So you invent a powerful deity who'll punish you if you do anti-social things until we all learn how to get along.
Fast foward thousands of years to now, and we have governments and laws doing what religions used to. But religions became so powerful that the ones earning their livings from them naturally don't want to relinquish that power so they compete with law and governments.
Bit by bit though, religions are falling away as people see the truth. If your 'all-powerful' god never actually does anything, then why continue to surrender your will to it? We surrender our will to governments because all the conjecture and disbelief in the world wont alter the fact that police can come arrest you if you start breaking its' commandments (i.e. laws.)
We've developed to the point where we don't need fairy stories to understand why things happen. We have science. We don't need justice in the afterlife because we have justice immediately and swiftly.
We don't need God any more.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11
...Well, except when wrapping up points with something clever.