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Did man create God?

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In the comments to one of my last posts, Ankur Banerjee pointed me to a beautiful speech (even more so because it was made impromptu) by the late Douglas Adams. It was about the possibility of there being an artificial God — God imagined by man to fill in gaps in his understanding of the world. In one part of the speech, Adams suggests that early man, when he found that the world suited him so much, imagined that it must have been made for him, and that whoever made it must love him a lot therefore.

Let me start out by saying that I am not at all opposed to this idea. I have pondered this angle a lot and have even explored it in a post I wrote a few years ago. It is certainly possible that the idea of God came out of man’s mind and I would be lying if I said that this does not strike me as logical.

Having said that, let me also add that the idea does not negate anything in my belief system. I believe that God exists – either as an entity, or an idea, or a force, or a guy with a thousand arms and forty thousand heads – I don’t know. All I know is that he (or she or it) does exist. My personal definition of existence is very wide and allows for a whole lot of abstractions to share space with elements of the tangible universe. So when I say God exists, I may mean that he is in my head and that is quite enough for me.

But let us not make this about me. My interest in the question how God came to be is perhaps inferior to my interest in the question of why God came into being. The how-why divide may seem facile to some. So hear me out.

Regardless of whether God — a force superior to man — created him, or man imagined a superior force after he “just happened”, we are still faced with the inescapable presence of God in our lives, if not as a tangible reality, then at least as an idea.

My question is this (and try and think it over with an open mind): Why did man create God? Why did he imagine Him? What was the need for it? Why did he feel compelled to find a meaning in the world around him that there was no physical need for?

Animals don’t do this. They get along just fine without bothering with the meaning of things. Why is it only man that has this need to imagine things, to tell stories, to wonder about things higher than himself? Why does man have these fancy philosophical questions? Why does man feel humbled? Why is he always looking up? Why do we personify nature? Why do we imagine the wind to be a god? Why do we imagine the sea to be the thousand-eyed Varuna? Why to we consider the earth our mother?

Some will label it delusion of the mind. But I think that is simplifying it far too much. Imagining things is not an option that we exercise. It is a very deep-rooted human tendency. We indulge in little acts of imagination (acts of faith?) uncountable times everyday, mostly without even knowing it.

Many people cherish objects handed down to them by their parents. These can be a pen, or an item of clothing, or something like that. But to them, these are more than just simple objects. To them, these are something more. They imagine a higher meaning in them. Many people yell at their computer when it hangs. Many people find themselves considering certain places more significant than others – the house they grew up in, their first school, the bridge on which they kissed someone for the first time, etc.

These things, while they may not look related, demonstrate the same function of the human mind. Namely, the tendency to believe that the world is more than it appears to be. Belief in the existence of God is just a larger concept than imagining that the bridge on which you kissed your first girlfriend is somehow special and unique. It is all imagination.

My question (as if I have not asked it enough times already), is WHY. Why do we do all this? I have blogged before about our need for rituals and superstitions. Plus, there is scientific evidence of our brains being hard-wired to be superstitious. But that doesn’t answer the question, it only adds to it. Why is man built this way?

For the purposes of this post, I will ignore the idea of God as creator, because we started off with Adams’ suggestion of God being an artificial construct. Thus, we end up with the theory that man naturally evolved from lower animals and got to be this way. But even so, the god-damned why remains unanswered.

If man evolved from lower animals, and lower animals lack the sort of rich imaginative tendencies that man has, does it not naturally follow that what we have is something superior to what they have? Does it not say that the ability to believe and the ability to imagine meanings and the tendency to see things for more than what they seem to be, is something that we gained through the marvelously complex system of evolution by natural selection? May it not be that we evolved to believe in God? And if we did, the question that follows inevitably is – why. Why did we evolve to believe in forces higher than ourselves? Why can’t we just live our lives like animals without wondering about our place in the universe?

I don’t have an answer. But I will not pretend that the question doesn’t exist. So in order to show respect to the question, I will proceed to make some logical deductions.

Let us consider the human body to be a computer. It is a fascinating machine, capable of amazing feats. It boggles our minds. We grow curious and start exploring it. As time passes, our understanding of the computer grows better and better. We get to its very basics. We discover that it is made of metal and plastic. We go even deeper, down to the circuits. We find what makes the software work. We then sit content in the knowledge that our understanding of the computer is complete.

But what we conveniently ignore is (brace for impact) the why. Why is the computer there in the first place? Why is such amazing software installed on it? For what purpose? Ignore the question about who made the computer if you want to. What we should at least wonder about is why it exists at all.

This is, in fact, the single greatest philosophical question that has obsessed man since the beginning of time. Why does anything exist at all? What is the point of it? The name religion gives that reason, is God. Plain and simple.

And the question is not as hopelessly unanswerable as it may seem. We have the computer and we know what it can do. We know that there is an operating system (the soul?) and a web browser on it (imagination?). Does it not naturally follow that there may be a web out there, waiting to be browsed? I mean, why would we be given an Internet Explorer if there were no Internet to explore?

I think the problem here lies with our temporal way of seeing things. Humans have very definitive ways of defining concepts like “beginning”, “end”, “creation” etc. And as we have learnt more, these definitions have been challenged and, in many cases, demolished. For example, our ideas about “up” and “down” disappeared the moment we ventured into the weightlessness of outer space. Could it not be that the limitations of time (as we understand it) do not apply to the force that created us? Why does God have to be something that came “before” us? After all, there are objects in the known universe that mock “time” all the time (black holes for example).

The other idea is to look at the God concept as something resembling music. Music, as we know it today, didn’t exist till humans came around. But we definitely didn’t create music. It has always been around. What we really did was perceive it in a way that none had done before.

Why can’t this be the way man “created” God? The force that made all things may have always been around. All man did (when he got around to being able to do so) was perceive him with a faculty only he possessed — imagination.

Written by Vijayendra Mohanty

January 12th, 2010 at 4:32 pm

Posted in About God, faith

Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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22 Responses to 'Did man create God?'

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  1. I shall ignore the analogy of the computer for it seems like a digression! The rest of the post is very thought-provoking though. The Hindu idea of worshipping seas, Sun, Wind and other forces of Nature is to make the human humble towards things beyond his control. The animals that help him in getting food (cows) are also revered so that the sanctity around them saves them from being extinct.
    As for the “Why” a God is needed, that will remain unanswered. We just look around us seeing how things fit so well. How our bodies in themselves are such a technological marvel. How our eyes developed, how our hearing developed, how our skin adapts, etc is something we humans cannot emulate. We can’t even get a self-fixing mechanism in our machines, something the body does so well. When we look at such an amazing “machine” (our body) we wonder who its creator might be and we attribute it to “God”. As I put it in one of my 6 word story, “God created Man. Man created Gods”.
    Nice post :)

    Sudhamshu

    12 Jan 10 at 4:50 pm

  2. Nice write :)

    If u at all believe in the theory of Karma then God is which does not suffer from the bondage of Karma – the soul’s existence in its natural state i.e. in total freedom from Karma and purely as ‘Atman’ is the state of being God. It is, therefore, my positive belief that neither God created Man or vice versa – God is another name for ‘Atman’ and does not signify a different being of greater power.

    Gagrin

    12 Jan 10 at 10:26 pm

  3. Hmm appreciate the though put int o the article,however what about Higher Logic,which people call miracles,which are out of our current map of knowledge.The uncharted territory does bring out undeniable happenings which we stare awestruck at.We don’t have the luxury to say “No such thing as Miracles,every single one of them is a scam” come on yaar! even “logically speaking” we can’t ignore the deduction that something out there,which doesn’t depend on our thoughts can reach out and touch our world.

    Once again,it’s obvious u have invested time and thought inthis article,not undermining it just stating what i felt.

    Hitesh

    13 Jan 10 at 11:16 am

  4. Well, it’s got to do with the kind of species we are. What’s obvious is humans are physically weak and cannot compete physically with other planets that we share the planet with. Instead evolution has given us another path for survival — intelligence. This comes with it’s drawbacks, which are amazing levels of self-consciousness and over-analyzing things around us. The common man doesn’t have to spend time over-analyzing things. They can choose to live their short lives the way they want. Let scientists do their job and the rest of us do ours and live peacefully. This is easier said. As human beings grew more intelligent, we created the concepts of god, religion, superstition, etc to simplify things in way that the common man doesn’t have to worry about it. It’s better for survival that way. Religion and god also have their obvious drawbacks, but that’s for another debate.

    Reminds me of this comic: http://abstrusegoose.com/231

    Arun Reply:
    January 13th, 2010 at 11:59 am

    Oops, the second sentence should have been
    “…cannot compete physically with other *animals* that we share the planet with.”

    Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
    January 13th, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    Your point asks the same question actually. Only in a different way. If the commonest path to be the proverbial “fittest” one to survive was intelligence, speed and strength, why did man get the tendency to “over-analyse”? That bit still remains to be answered.

    And even the commonest of men have the tendency to wonder about higher truths. To find meaning in plain occurrences. Maybe they do not have the opportunity to do it with higher concepts they have never heard of, but in their own littles lives, they do wonder about the meaning of life, the point of existence,the cause of happiness and sorrow and philosophical ideas.

    And as for the drawbacks that religion has, I will be the first one to admit them. :)

    Arun

    13 Jan 10 at 11:57 am

  5. I have started reading more of your posts now. And you really make your readers think, I give you that. Reading the post makes me put my 2 paise of your thoughts as a comment.
    The question that comes to my mind would be why are we so much trying to prove our significance and bind it to something meaningful. We can be totally meaningless insignificant beings who just happened to be in a time, place and environment that supports evolution. We might be very similar to the rocks on Jupieter and Uranus, the only difference being we have something in us which evolves with time (evloves for what? Nothing in particular, just the environment here on earth affects some change , for good , for bad we dont know). The being and not being of humans or that matter life might not have any damn effect on the grander arrangement of things like the rock on jupieter, which I believe, might be insignificant. We might just be a residue or a by-product. The reasoning might be an evolution and might not hold any specific actual meaning. I sometimes believe the sages were so brilliant or great because they knew they didn’t know anything and even though they didnt know anything they were the most knowledgeable people among all, because they atleast knew that, while others couldn’t come to terms about that and fighting for all possible reason.
    Again, I don’t know if I make any sense to you. But a nice thought provoking post. I am a regular here now. :)

    Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
    January 13th, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    Cool point Deepak. I spent a long part of my agnostic phase thinking these same thoughts.

    We can scientifically trace the universe back to the big bang. Before that? God? Maybe. But what if God just farted and the universe came out of it? What if we are an accident? A by-product, as you said.

    It is a possibility. It is,in fact, a very strong possibility. Nothing that we see around us makes much sense in the way that humans may understand it. Maybe god just farted and we just happened and evolution just supported us on our way to being what we are today. I will not say that is impossible.

    But then I come to your point about meaning and the idea of accidental creation starts to look a little wobbly. Meaning is a subjective matter. And the easiest way for me to establish the fact that the world makes sense is to ask myself, “Does the world make sense?” The answer, in my case, is yes. In fact, I will bet that it is yes in your case as well.

    You wouldn’t have made this comment if you didn’t believe in the existence of meaning. Think about it.

    Our mental journey is not an aberration for the simple reason that we don’t think so. The rocks on Uranus (Jupiter is a gas giant without any rocks), as far as we know, lack this. They don’t think they matter.

    In the scheme of things, as science has proven, even by-products matter. So I don’t think our importance suffers because we are insignificant. It is all just matter and energy. If one small bit doesn’t matter, then neither does anything else.

    And that brings us back to the question again. Why does any of it exist?

    Deepak

    13 Jan 10 at 12:14 pm

  6. Thanks for the reply and also about the correction of jupiter being a gas giant :) . I am fairly satisfied by your argument and agree to your point “I don’t think our importance suffers because we are insignificant”.
    Your last question “Why does any of it exist?” might be impossible to be answered in an absolute way. But maybe just maybe everyone might get the answer to that “Why” in different ways and maybe they get completely satisfied with the answers they get though the answers might be totally different from person to person.

    Deepak

    13 Jan 10 at 11:05 pm

  7. hope is one more reason which is WHY god exists…
    That’s why such things too exist–>http://twitpic.com/xs0aq

    Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
    January 19th, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    Hope is again an off-shoot of imagination, isn’t it? When you hope for something, you imagine a possibility.

    Prathamesh

    19 Jan 10 at 12:50 pm

  8. Religion is a guide and rule book to life. However the reasons for it cannot be easily understood by everyone. So getting the ancient common man to follow it, would have been difficult. And thus Gods were created. (Irrespective of whether there was one or not)

    States have always looked to define God. Many have failed – Akhnetan (Atenism), Kavadh I (Mazdakism), Akbar (Din-i-Illahi) while many have succeeded – Numa (Roman), Constantine I (Chritianity) and Mohammed (Islam). Divine intervention gives the state a right to choose what that life should be as the state sees it best.

    Just a hypothesis, of course :)

    Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
    January 24th, 2010 at 11:11 pm

    Nice hypothesis. But history says that states never came up with religions. They mostly adopted them and used them for the purposes that you have made clear. To keep order in society is a useful side-benefit, but it is not the ultimate purpose of religion. The ultimate purpose is very personal — to allow man to come to the realisation about what his place in the universe is.

    Arby K

    24 Jan 10 at 11:05 pm

  9. Separate God and religion into different entities and look from that point of view. I agree with the purpose of religion, but do people follow religion or do they follow God? How many actually understand the intricacies of their religion or follow its human persona, the God, blindly?

    And I can argue that each of the people I have mentioned had a pretty strong say in the form the named religions took.

    Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
    January 24th, 2010 at 11:37 pm

    Each of the people you named played a great part in the forming and evolution of religions. I do not deny that. I am merely saying that they are not the reason religion exists. Religion is a need that man has and it has helped achieve many ends — give social stability, enrich man’s mental life by means of philosophy, entertain entire societies with myths that brought people together. But these are only functions of religion.

    As time passes, religions rot and die just as people do. This is because the focus shifts from the purpose of religion to the outer trappings (societal order, mythology, rituals etc). Religion is not form, it is purpose. Form often warps purpose yes, but that is not an argument against the purpose.

    Arby K

    24 Jan 10 at 11:26 pm

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