Why did humans invent the concept of gods?

[BojackHorseman]

Why did humans create gods?

The most rational answer to is something like, the search for a meaning in life (otherwise why else justify your life and actions).

The other one would be explaining things they couldn't at the time.

But then, why imagine "gods"? This is such a weird concept when you look at it from a blank start, not knowing the concepts like we do. Gods don't exist (supposedly) so they imagined something that don't exist? "there's this spirit, it looks like this and have these powers, etc..."
Would that mean that imagination and creativity is part of humans from the start?
But even then, why blend it with reality as if it actually existed?

I'm not looking for reasons to believe in gods or discredit those who do by the way.
I'm just trying to understand how such a concept started (and maybe, further on, became so popular like yeah ok this is our lives now) on from a rational standpoint.

Edited December 11, 2023 by BojackHorseman

[LastThursday]

I wonder if wildebeest believe in gods? 

When you're regularly hunted you have to be on your guard at all times. So you must have sharp perceptions and a good imagination. If the rustling in the grass could be a lion you'd better be ready to run. But it could just be the wind instead. The wildebeest must conjure up a lion from the movement of grass, and act on it. The wildebeest has to believe its imagination even if it's a false positive.

Humans are the same, except our imaginations are wild. We were prey to lions, snakes, spiders and scorpions when we lived out in the open. We let our imaginations get the better of us and can believe there are invisible entities everywhere. Animism was the first religion.

Either that or gods are real.

Edited December 11, 2023 by LastThursday

[An young being]

A set of humans realised that nobody is powerful enough to get them out of suffering. So they created god and satisfied themselves with faith. Another set of humans were never able to find out why or how they came into existence, so they also created god and satisfied themselves with stories.

Another small group who were intelligent enough to realise that gods are just stories and people believe them without any need for rationality, disguised themselves as gods.

That's how millions of gods were created. I don't know about the rest though.

Edited December 11, 2023 by An young being

[jimwell]

1 hour ago, An young being said:

A set of humans realised that nobody is powerful enough to get them out of suffering. So they created god and satisfied themselves with faith. Another set of humans were never able to find out why or how they came into existence, so they also created god and satisfied themselves with stories.

True.

But here's a deeper truth: Humans are naturally inclined to search for God because divinity is woven into the fabric of human existence. Every organ, blood vessel, molecule, and cell is made of divine substance.

Before a human is born, he embodies unlimited divinity. Upon birth, he transitions to limited divinity. However, a part of him retains and remembers this unlimited divinity; it's merely a matter of intensity. So, humans have the desire to regain what was lost. To say it another way, humans have the natural desire to reconnect to the state before they were born, which is the same thing as death. Death is unlimited divinity. Death is God; hence, humans have been searching for God for millennia. Humans fear death, but they also secretly desire it. It's a twisted paradox!

How did I know it? While defecating, I asked myself why I somehow "remember" the state before I was born. I was confused why I have an idea what pre-birth was. If I did not exist before I was born, why did I know how it was? I must have existed before I was born. But how could I exist before I was born? I was confused as fuck. I endured the confusion and contemplated for several minutes, or perhaps an hour. Then, I had an 'AHA!' moment, which I shared in the previous paragraph.

I became curious about chatGPT's interpretation of the spiritual insight I shared. It's also a good way to test its capability in terms of flexibility and accuracy. So, here it is:

  

WOW! Thank God for chatGPT!

[Parallax Mind]

10 hours ago, BojackHorseman said:

Why did humans create gods?

The most rational answer to is something like, the search for a meaning in life (otherwise why else justify your life and actions).

The other one would be explaining things they couldn't at the time.

But then, why imagine "gods"? This is such a weird concept when you look at it from a blank start, not knowing the concepts like we do. Gods don't exist (supposedly) so they imagined something that don't exist? "there's this spirit, it looks like this and have these powers, etc..."
Would that mean that imagination and creativity is part of humans from the start?
But even then, why blend it with reality as if it actually existed?

I'm not looking for reasons to believe in gods or discredit those who do by the way.
I'm just trying to understand how such a concept started (and maybe, further on, became so popular like yeah ok this is our lives now) on from a rational standpoint.

Im guessing near death experiences or psychedelics made people see "God" thousands of years ago and they ran with the stories.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Parallax Mind

[Thought Art]

I think they were mostly clever stories easy to share and remember about human life, existence, nature and reality.

[Davino]

Multiple reasons.

The unconscious plays a great deal. Carl Jung studied profoundly this topic if you really want to get to the end of it. Recurrent dreams and archetypes create gods and their stories.

Also, it can be a way to connect with God in a particular form. As everything is god this seems to work up to a certain point. All forms and formelessness are but shapes of the one. This has proven useful in the path and aslo reconforting, allowing to recontextualize everyday reality into divinity. Like with mother kali, that represents all the terrorific in nature and reality, so many people have found that in the midst of the most terrible situation, all full of blood and with their life in their hands, they have said thank you mother Kali, all this is you. We are nearer than the nearest right now, thank you, I love you. See how profound the tool can be? 

Also we all have gods in one way or the other, idols in different facets of reality. Even in the highest, the form of consciousness or love or presence, that is still a lesser god so to speak. There is only but the one in the end.

[Phil King]

Why did God invent the concept of humans?

[Hojo]

they deconstruct their mind and take single aspects out and call them gods. gods are parts of what you are made of.

[Breakingthewall]

because humans can establish cause-effect relationships, and for them it was evident that the cause of the reality alive had to be supernatural, something that is not perceived. Some realized that the gods were themselves, like the Native Americans, who thought that reality was a great spirit from which everything emanated and to which everything returned. Many also had true mystical experiences, more common if you are living in nature with small ego mind, surrounded life

Edited December 11, 2023 by Breakingthewall

[strangelooper]

humans have never inventend anything

[SeaMonster]

9 hours ago, Hojo said:

they deconstruct their mind and take single aspects out and call them gods. gods are parts of what you are made of.

Thank you.

"Gods" (in a polytheistic sense) are archetypes that are found in each human psyche.

Humans didn't "invent" Gods per se, they simply observed human behavior and anthropomorphized various aspects of it into a mythology.

"God" (in a monotheistic sense) is the Jungian representation of wholeness as characterized by The Self (which is different from The Ego, a superset of it.)

Edited December 12, 2023 by SeaMonster

[Soul Flight]

You think the world existed and you were born into it. But you are wrong. You are eternal and you created the world.

You are in the process of god realization where you realize you are god. You are avoiding this truth. You are god.

But you can play in this fantasy and say physical matter has slowly been waking up for millions of years. We are following breadcrumbs back to being god. Artists keep leaving clues in songs, movies, etc. Similar to The Matrix films. We are remembering who we are. So humans creating gods in ancient history is another step in this chain.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Soul Flight

[Devin]

Fear, culture of submission which includes the people wanting a leader and a leader wanting power, an example being Moses, and irregular natural events like droughts, long winters, meteors, people having seizures or birth defects.

Society started early on with a group Alpha, the mentality that comes with that fosters following a God when the Sun goes away for a long winter or it doesn't rain for a year, couple that with the Alpha looking for a scapegoat besides himself to blame for everyone freezing or starving.

It starts as something like hope for the sun to come out, to something like worshipping the sun, and devolves further and further.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Devin

[Parallax Mind]

I wonder how much of religion was originally ment to be just metaphor?  Perhaps the more gullible or mentally lazy members of the tribe took it literally? Or the smarter ones used it as a tool to motivate the more impressionable members to do things (go to war, be subservient?) 

[Devin]

All it takes is one pathological liar to make up or alter a story, look at MAGA for example, people love to 'know' stuff and tell others.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Devin

[Parallax Mind]

23 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

because humans can establish cause-effect relationships, and for them it was evident that the cause of the reality alive had to be supernatural, something that is not perceived. Some realized that the gods were themselves, like the Native Americans, who thought that reality was a great spirit from which everything emanated and to which everything returned. Many also had true mystical experiences, more common if you are living in nature with small ego mind, surrounded life

Another good answer

3 hours ago, Soul Flight said:

You think the world existed and you were born into it. But you are wrong. You are eternal and you created the world.

You are in the process of god realization where you realize you are god. You are avoiding this truth. You are god.

But you can play in this fantasy and say physical matter has slowly been waking up for millions of years. We are following breadcrumbs back to being god. Artists keep leaving clues in songs, movies, etc. Similar to The Matrix films. We are remembering who we are. So humans creating gods in ancient history is another step in this chain.

Deep and poetic AF very awesome

2 hours ago, Devin said:

Fear, culture of submission which includes the people wanting a leader and a leader wanting power, an example being Moses, and irregular natural events like droughts, long winters, meteors, people having seizures or birth defects.

Society started early on with a group Alpha, the mentality that comes with that fosters following a God when the Sun goes away for a long winter or it doesn't rain for a year, couple that with the Alpha looking for a scapegoat besides himself to blame for everyone freezing or starving.

It starts as something like hope for the sun to come out, to something like worshipping the sun, and devolves further and further.

True, easy trap to fall into it seems for clueless humans. Imagine living back then and not knowing what anything is! The world must have been so magical. Just like how you can tell a toddler literally anything about the world and it will be believed and taken on as truth especially when everyone is going along with it!

Edited December 12, 2023 by Parallax Mind

[cetus]

Why did humans invent the concept of gods?

-to solidify the concept of an afterlife. "Valhalla awaits you!"

[Jodistrict]

You do have an inner desire for “God” which is actually a search for a connection with your self.   Religions externalize it and make it out there calling it “God” in order to keep you from waking up to your power so you can be dominated and controlled in 3-D.   Christianity and Judaism in particular are political systems and servants of darkness.

[TwistedOntic]

Because God exists. 

However you can't put God into words so they turn into metaphors and stories. 

The problem is that these metaphors and stories turns into religion. Not God itself.