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Why Did Humans Invent the Gods?

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Assuming for the sake of discussion that humans invented the gods, why did they invent the gods? What motivated them to do so or what caused them to do so?

I realize the question has been asked before, but that was sometime ago. There are plenty of people on the forum now who were not around the last time the question was asked.

As for myself, I think the human brain functions in certain ways that make the invention of gods a likelihood. For instance, we are all born with Agent Detection, Theory of Mind, etiology, innate respect for elders (at least for the first few years), and so forth, and these innate mental functions give us a predilection to believe in ghosts, spirits, dead ancestors, and -- perhaps eventually -- deities.

But what do you think? Why did humans create the gods?

Please Note: If you wish to argue that humans did not create the gods, then please start your own thread on it. That subject would be off topic in this one.
 
Probably many things (I'm not going to distinguish between Gods and religious belief systems): to help deal with the uncertainty of life, to pass down folk wisdom and learned experience, to better explain present realities and phenomena, to supplement gaps in knowledge, to provide structure to society, observation of successful groups who had their own Gods, to give themselves comfort, to fulfil cognitive needs for superstitions and gain a greater sense of control over their fates and probably many more things.

Ultimately people started to believe in the Gods because it worked. Through genuine benefits as well as things such as confirmation bias, mistaking correlation with causality and numerous other cognitive biases people decided that they were worth worshipping.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
Assuming for the sake of discussion that humans invented the gods, why did they invent the gods? What motivated them to do so or what caused them to do so?

Even if a theist, it's probably safe to assume some humans invented their gods. I mean, I've read the theories that disagreed, and thought all human Gods were actually the one True God, but they left me less than convinced.

I realize the question has been asked before, but that was sometime ago. There are plenty of people on the forum now who were not around the last time the question was asked.

And some of us can't remember more than 24 hours ago. So I might have been here. Or maybe not. But it feels like a fresh question to me.

As for myself, I think the human brain functions in certain ways that make the invention of gods a likelihood. For instance, we are all born with Agent Detection, Theory of Mind, etiology, innate respect for elders (at least for the first few years), and so forth, and these innate mental functions give us a predilection to believe in ghosts, spirits, dead ancestors, and -- perhaps eventually -- deities.

Hmmm...that seems like you've thought about this more than me. I'd like to submit, right now, that my answer is poorly formed and not very well thought through. However, near as I can tell, that doesn't stop other people from posting. Having said that, following up from Augustus sucks, because he appeared to be both sober and intelligent whilst posting.

But what do you think? Why did humans create the gods?

Why not? Globally, most societies have invented Gods. So it might be more sensible to look at why WOULDN'T societies invent Gods. Replace Gods with...let's see...monsters of some description. Something both more than and less than human. Which society hasn't invented those? Why do societies invent monsters?
The attribution of both good and evil to something greater than humanity, to something outside of humanity, serves the purpose of making other humans more understandable. In the particular case of Gods, they also fill a 'Gods of the Gaps' role, but they generally go far beyond that too. It seems completely within human nature to take the stories of the previous generation, and either dismiss them entirely, or build on them, no matter the context. How often are we content to take some knowledge from the past and leave it entirely unchanged and unchallenged?

In my defence, I was bullied into posting here by a handsome man with no pants.
 

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Assuming for the sake of discussion that humans invented the gods, why did they invent the gods? What motivated them to do so or what caused them to do so?

I realize the question has been asked before, but that was sometime ago. There are plenty of people on the forum now who were not around the last time the question was asked.

As for myself, I think the human brain functions in certain ways that make the invention of gods a likelihood. For instance, we are all born with Agent Detection, Theory of Mind, etiology, innate respect for elders (at least for the first few years), and so forth, and these innate mental functions give us a predilection to believe in ghosts, spirits, dead ancestors, and -- perhaps eventually -- deities.

But what do you think? Why did humans create the gods?

Please Note: If you wish to argue that humans did not create the gods, then please start your own thread on it. That subject would be off topic in this one.

Humans (probably) have an innate tendency to be philosophical idealists; our own subjective experience of consciousness is the first experience of the objective world. We therefore seek to explain the world in terms of consciousness as happens with animism. Simply put, it's a way of organizing our ideas. we project consciousness as cause on a material world and it takes a long time for us to develop material explanations. The motivation is that we need ideas of the world even if they are illusionary ones. By trial and error, we figure out which ones are right or wrong (or rather what ideas are the best fit and closer to the truth).
The god part is that in seeking to explain the world in terms of consciousness, we necessarily need a 'higher' and 'first' consciousness to animate that world. independent of our own God acts as an explanation for understanding why things take place and why they are the way they are- in both nature and society. God is a product between our actual knowledge and the requirement of an ideology for logical self-consistency. It just happens that we start of with a really big gap and therefore have need of a deity.
 

Theweirdtophat

Well-Known Member
I don't think they ever did. I believe "deities were on this planet long ago. I don't think a human just all of a sudden decided" You know, I'm going to just make up an all powerful person and people will believe me." I think there's something behind it. There were giants in those days, too as well as other beings. Who's to say that maybe the deities left? There's stories of them leaving, either because they were disgusted with humanity and wanted to leave or that they passed down all of the knowledge they could pass and left us with the tools we need to solidify our future.
 

BSM1

What? Me worry?
The obvious answer is that humans needed to have someone or something bigger than themselves to account for events they didn't or couldn't understand. As humans have evolved "God's will" has definitely become narrower.
 

Moni_Gail

ELIGE MAGISTRUM
We have a tendency to imbue agents with a living force or intentionality. This is what allows us to understand that others have beliefs, intents, and desires that may differ from our own and we can infer what they are (it is, at present, being termed mind-mapping). Furthermore, we evolved to favor type 1 errors because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they erred on the side of caution and assumed that the rustle in the grass was a predator and not just the wind.

Because of our tendency towards type 1 errors, we are said to have Hyperactive Agency Detector Devices (HADD) and are more likely to perceive agency where there is none. In psychological terms this is known as Theory of Mind and it is the basis for animistic belief as well as other belief systems which hold that, often invisible, agents control the world. An extension of HADD is that it is natural for us, prior to cultural inundation, to think of disembodied minds. Consider that half of all four year-olds have imaginary friends. While dualism is not amenable to scientific exploration, the most common idea among people is that there are separate entities: mind and body. This persistent view across all ages insinuates a default perspective of reality.

Children have a tendency to over read causality; yet, this extends well beyond children into the entire population and into the rest of the animal kingdom. B.F. Skinner proved this when he demonstrated the formation of superstition in pigeons. Within the Skinner box, he had set it to release food at regular intervals. He found that whatever action they had been doing just before receiving the food they would repeat in the hopes of triggering the release of more food. Yet again the evolutionary benefit is clear, type 1 errors are more advantageous because it is better to carry around relatively harmless superstitions that to miss genuine causations. Our brains are pattern seekers, and positive or negative reinforcements influence every aspect of our lives whether we are conscious of it or not.

The most definitive evidence comes from the 2008 study entitled Cognitive and Neural Foundations of Religious Belief. Using an fMRI and armed with a list of statements containing topics such as God’s level of involvement and God’s emotion. Participants were then asked if they agreed with the statements. The abstract best states their findings:
Our analysis reveals 3 psychological dimensions of religious belief (God's perceived level of involvement, God's perceived emotion, and doctrinal/experiential religious knowledge), which functional MRI localizes within networks processing Theory of Mind regarding intent and emotion, abstract semantics, and imagery. Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary adaptive cognitive functions.​
Previous studies focused on extremes, such as temporal-lobe epilepsy and other pathological religious manifestations. None of these had an acceptable degree of correspondence to any proposed psychological architecture underlying religious belief. By selecting participants that fell within the normative range they were able to establish that aspects of religious belief lie within neuronal networks that have been previously marked and accepted as a region of social cognitive mechanisms. (Kapogiannis, et al, 2009)

Before I ramble on for too long, one last interesting bit. There was an interesting study done by Peter Brugger that shows a correlational link between dopamine and belief. Those with higher levels of dopamine also had higher rates of causation detection. Participants included those who subscribed to supernatural beliefs as well as skeptics. Subjects with higher levels of self-reported religiosity consistently made more type 1 errors, seeing faces within the random patterns that were not present. Alternatively, the self-reported skeptics made type 2 errors and were more likely to miss the faces within the images. Brugger administered L-DOPA to the skeptics; it is used to increase dopamine concentrations within the central nervous system. Armed with higher concentrations of dopamine, the skeptics showed a type 1 error bias and significantly less type 2 errors. These results are compounded by the information that schizophrenics tend to have high levels of dopamine.

And for those that made it through all of that, thanks. This was the topic of my thesis for neuropsychology.
 
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Theweirdtophat

Well-Known Member
Why would think they made them just to say that there's other things bigger than us. There are forces out there bigger than us as well as alien races who are more advanced. Of course an alien can be described as a "deity" depending on who they contact and how advanced they are. It really depends on what your definition of a "deity" is.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
I don't think they ever did. I believe "deities were on this planet long ago. I don't think a human just all of a sudden decided" You know, I'm going to just make up an all powerful person and people will believe me." I think there's something behind it. There were giants in those days, too as well as other beings. Who's to say that maybe the deities left? There's stories of them leaving, either because they were disgusted with humanity and wanted to leave or that they passed down all of the knowledge they could pass and left us with the tools we need to solidify our future.

You realise that not all...or even most...of the world's religions include an all powerful person.
Nor giants.

How do you explain the lack of consistency between deities?
 

Theweirdtophat

Well-Known Member
You realise that not all...or even most...of the world's religions include an all powerful person.
Nor giants.

How do you explain the lack of consistency between deities?

I know that. A lot of the monotheistic religions feature someone all powerful but the pagan religions will at least have some main deity that;s in charge, even if they aren't actually all powerful. But many religions have their descriptions of "giants" not just Abrahamic religions but Dharmic and Pagan ones too.

What exactly do you mean by "the lack of consistency"?
 

Caligula

Member
Because it put the "I don't have the slightest idea" response into a whole new perspective. It's all about positivism. The white diffuse moving spots in sky were suddenly not a mystery anymore. ...And that gave people a huge ego boost.

In all seriousness:
1) I think it's been explained pretty decent in one of Dawkin's books (The God Delusion).
2) People have huge problems in admitting/declaring their knowledge limits.
 
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Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
We have a tendency to imbue agents with a living force or intentionality. This is what allows us to understand that others have beliefs, intents, and desires that may differ from our own and we can infer what they are (it is, at present, being termed mind-mapping). Furthermore, we evolved to favor type 1 errors because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they erred on the side of caution and assumed that the rustle in the grass was a predator and not just the wind.

Because of our tendency towards type 1 errors, we are said to have Hyperactive Agency Detector Devices (HADD) and are more likely to perceive agency where there is none. In psychological terms this is known as Theory of Mind and it is the basis for animistic belief as well as other belief systems which hold that, often invisible, agents control the world. An extension of HADD is that it is natural for us, prior to cultural inundation, to think of disembodied minds. Consider that half of all four year-olds have imaginary friends. While dualism is not amenable to scientific exploration, the most common idea among people is that there are separate entities: mind and body. This persistent view across all ages insinuates a default perspective of reality.

Children have a tendency to “over read causality”; yet, this extends well beyond children into the entire population and into the rest of the animal kingdom. B.F. Skinner proved this when he demonstrated the formation of superstition in pigeons. Within the Skinner box, he had set it to release food at regular intervals. He found that whatever action they had been doing just before receiving the food they would repeat in the hopes of triggering the release of more food. Yet again the evolutionary benefit is clear, type 1 errors are more advantageous because it is better to carry around relatively harmless superstitions that to miss genuine causations. Our brains are pattern seekers, and positive or negative reinforcements influence every aspect of our lives whether we are conscious of it or not.

The most definitive evidence comes from the 2008 study entitled Cognitive and Neural Foundations of Religious Belief. Using an fMRI and armed with a list of statements containing topics such as God’s level of involvement and God’s emotion. Participants were then asked if they agreed with the statements. The abstract best states their findings:
Our analysis reveals 3 psychological dimensions of religious belief (God's perceived level of involvement, God's perceived emotion, and doctrinal/experiential religious knowledge), which functional MRI localizes within networks processing Theory of Mind regarding intent and emotion, abstract semantics, and imagery. Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary adaptive cognitive functions.​
Previous studies focused on extremes, such as temporal-lobe epilepsy and other pathological religious manifestations. None of these had an acceptable “degree of correspondence to any proposed psychological architecture underlying religious belief.” By selecting participants that fell within the normative range they were able to establish that aspects of religious belief lie within neuronal networks that have been previously marked and accepted as a region of social cognitive mechanisms. (Kapogiannis, et al, 2009)

Before I ramble on for too long, one last interesting bit. There was an interesting study done by Peter Brugger that shows a correlational link between dopamine and belief. Those with higher levels of dopamine also had higher rates of causation detection. Participants included those who subscribed to supernatural beliefs as well as skeptics. Subjects with higher levels of self-reported religiosity consistently made more type 1 errors, seeing faces within the random patterns that were not present. Alternatively, the self-reported skeptics made type 2 errors and were more likely to miss the faces within the images. Brugger administered L-DOPA to the skeptics; it is used to increase dopamine concentrations within the central nervous system. Armed with higher concentrations of dopamine, the skeptics showed a type 1 error bias and significantly less type 2 errors. These results are compounded by the information that schizophrenics tend to have high levels of dopamine.

And for those that made it through all of that, thanks. This was the topic of my thesis for neuropsychology.

Thank you so much for that!
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
In general, I guess many fear the unknown. There needs to be a justification in the human mind (as in psychology) to make up the fear of the unknown/death the mind can't handle alone. Somewhat as if someone went through traumatic abuse with his father, maybe he seeks a "father figure" who is completely opposite, who is love and compassion.

Personification to make "nothing into something or someone" makes an adult imaginary friend (sorry theists, just speaking seriously). It helps spiritually, emotionally, and physically to know you can turn to someone that you pray to. The concept of faith justifies the friend to be real because the characteristics such as "it can't be understood; it can't be known; God is a mystery; we are just mere humans with limited understanding" gives that someone/being an excuse to exist without inherently needing to be proved it doesn't.

The need to find our origin. Our foundation in life is from where we come from. As you mentioned, this is innate; thus, the reason people believe in spirits and so forth because we believe that we do not disappear after we pass on, we live on. Psychologically, having that comfort that we "live on" in someways gives someone ease that dying is not "the end." I am not familiar with this in a deity point of view, just ancestral, but if I thought about it I'd say people feel they are created hence that's why they somehow "created" maybe in their mind, a Creator. Their mind fills in the missing gap so they won't be just floating around as if they just exist without cause. God gives them a reason to live.

If I did not believe spirits, relatives, and my ancestors exist I would want them or be motivated to "create" their existence because it helps me cope. I know I can turn to them (as people turn to their deities) to find meaning in life. As a lot of religious people find synchronicity in their life and relate it to their deities rather than edit coincidences (not consequence), I'd do the same with my family. Since life is not just about coincidence, I feel that spirits do have a role in our life. If I'm wrong, I want it to be real because I have a foundation it. I don't feel it is wrong to create your own deities. I just find it odd that if we are creating spirits and deities in our head, if we know it why not admit it.
Assuming for the sake of discussion that humans invented the gods, why did they invent the gods? What motivated them to do so or what caused them to do so?

I realize the question has been asked before, but that was sometime ago. There are plenty of people on the forum now who were not around the last time the question was asked.

As for myself, I think the human brain functions in certain ways that make the invention of gods a likelihood. For instance, we are all born with Agent Detection, Theory of Mind, etiology, innate respect for elders (at least for the first few years), and so forth, and these innate mental functions give us a predilection to believe in ghosts, spirits, dead ancestors, and -- perhaps eventually -- deities.

But what do you think? Why did humans create the gods?

Please Note: If you wish to argue that humans did not create the gods, then please start your own thread on it. That subject would be off topic in this one.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
All human understanding is maps of territory. God-concepts, like any other concept type, were created or caused in response to something in the territory, as mediated by our own nature. I'd argue that the gods themselves are the territory, and therefore in no way inventions of humans. But our understanding of them - the concepts and ideas we construct around our experience of the territory/gods/reality - most certainly is.
 

Looncall

Well-Known Member
Assuming for the sake of discussion that humans invented the gods, why did they invent the gods? What motivated them to do so or what caused them to do so?

I realize the question has been asked before, but that was sometime ago. There are plenty of people on the forum now who were not around the last time the question was asked.

As for myself, I think the human brain functions in certain ways that make the invention of gods a likelihood. For instance, we are all born with Agent Detection, Theory of Mind, etiology, innate respect for elders (at least for the first few years), and so forth, and these innate mental functions give us a predilection to believe in ghosts, spirits, dead ancestors, and -- perhaps eventually -- deities.

But what do you think? Why did humans create the gods?

Please Note: If you wish to argue that humans did not create the gods, then please start your own thread on it. That subject would be off topic in this one.

In addition to the above excellent posts, I would like to add one notion: scoundrels who pretended to talk to gods found that they could avoid the daily grind of survival. Hey, presto! Religion.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
I think it often got developed by individuals with shamanistic insight; an imperfect system no doubt. But I think they were perceiving beyond the physical realm.

I think people of earlier societies were more right-brained which made them more receptive to the non-physical around them.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Assuming for the sake of discussion that humans invented the gods, why did they invent the gods? What motivated them to do so or what caused them to do so?

Neurological predisposition. I know that you are aware of the hypothesis of bicameralism. I think it must be at least partially true.

I must read more about the hypothesis (I have just begun the book), but my current understanding is that it was not that long ago, nor that completely, that we as a species began to have more integrated brains. For most of our history our right hemisphere basically spoke as if he were the voice of some supernatural entity or another, while our left hemisphere took objective decisions.

For all practical purposes, God (and spirits, ghosts, whatever) existed as contents from our brains. We just needed to create the concepts in order to exchange some ideas involving them.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
I know that. A lot of the monotheistic religions feature someone all powerful but the pagan religions will at least have some main deity that;s in charge, even if they aren't actually all powerful. But many religions have their descriptions of "giants" not just Abrahamic religions but Dharmic and Pagan ones too.

What exactly do you mean by "the lack of consistency"?

He probably meant actual lack of consistency. Glossing over the actual specifics of religions in order to decree that they have a common origin does not cut it.
 
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