Origin of God? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Sunday, April 17, 2016, 13:11 (3141 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Great answer. In s[h]ort humans accept cause and effect and want to believe in a first cause.
dhw: In short, humans want to know the answers to unsolved mysteries, and want hope and reassurance. “Want to believe”, however, would be an atheistic explanation of why people “invented” God. (First cause does not have to be your God.) As an agnostic, I must naturally point out that belief in a God or gods may be founded on the existence of such a being/beings! The OT teaches us that God need not be the object of hope and reassurance. He can also be the object of fear,.... Like so many things in this wonderful world, the concept of God is open to different interpretations, whether he exists or not. - DAVID: The OT has a forceful fearful god, the NT preaches love, a good advance. The Koran tells us to look for God is His works, a final more mature approach. It shows us that humans had to mature in their appreciation of who or what God might be. Whether mature religious folks realize it or not, they follow the Koran and look at works. - I wonder how you define “mature”. Two of the things in this wonderful world that are open to different interpretations are the books that are written about God, and the so-called works of God. All three books that you have quoted have been used to justify what you and I would consider some of the most barbaric acts in human history: wars, persecution, terrorism ("Therefore prepare against them [= the unbelievers] what force ye are able, and troops of horse, whereby ye may strike a terror into the enemy of God, and your enemy, and into other infidels besides them, whom ye know not, but God knoweth them” (Koran, Chapter 8). As for the works of God, let us by all means admire the beauty of nature, but let us not forget its indiscriminate violence and brutality. Maybe the three books and the works all capture the many different elements of God (if he exists). After all, if he made man in his image, then man must be his reflection.