Why Adam and Eve Created GOD

This is where the mistakes begin.  The God I am discussing here is the God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Not the hidden away, absent, and abstract First Cause of the twentieth century, but the God in the holy books. Yahweh. Jesus. Allah. The Lord God Almighty.  This is the God who does miracles, answers prayers, and cares about people.  All theistic religions start out by assuming this kind of God exists.  They offer no satisfying proof, but simply assume God is.  Likewise, most believers in God simply assume(or hope) that He exists.  They have never met him, but for many reasons, they believe in him.  No experiment can be made to verify His presence, but the faithful are certain he is around somewhere.  No religion can demonstrate any hard evidence of Him, but they all claim to be substantiated by the evidence.  The Bible and Quran presuppose His existence and are most often cite as proof that there is a God.  These may be the most influential books on earth but to those of us who understand their origins, and won’t blindly accept them a divine, we must look outside of them to unbiased sources to validate the notion of God. 

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God.

We have come a long way now, visiting some of the history of religion and the many reasons why mankind has a propensity for the Holy.  For the unconvinced and the skeptic, as well as those of us who require proof, this chapter will attempt to address some of the more important fundamental beliefs of the popular western religions.  It is not intended to address the dogma of the denominations, but rather analyze the common beliefs that members cling to to sustain their faith.  It will especially focus on the illogical, unfounded, antiquated, and unsubstantiated beliefs that so many millions hold sacred.  These are the beliefs people use to justify spending their time, money, and energy on religion.  My efforts are not intended to be disrespectful of other’s beliefs, but it is inevitable when highlighting the glaring errors that men and women hold as their deepest, dearest, truths.  Some will take offense and others may be insulted, but religion is a personal matter and exposing personal flaws is impolite.  For this I apologize.  This does not change the facts, and that is what I am attempting to illuminate—the facts about religion.  Facts kept hidden in the shadows for eons by the faithful.  Facts about religious myths.  Psychological profiles of the leaders.  True histories as revealed in verifiable records.  These are some of the very important facts concerning religions which are often distorted by those who benefit by keeping them secret, or by those who feel they serve their God in doing so, or by simple innocent misunderstanding.

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God. 

So far, we have been discussion reasons why we have a propensity to believe.  Besides group dynamics, these have all been internal motivations—things within us that religion can trigger.  These internal motives give us a willingness to accept ideas that we may not have otherwise let in.  But there is one very notable external reason people accept a faith in God.  It’s also a primary argument that God exists at all.  It is the fact that God is everywhere.  I’m not referring to God, the spirit of the wind, water, earth and sky.  I’m referring to the God on our coins, on TV, published in books, pandered on radio, and printed on Christmas cards.  Since Sumerian with their cuneiform and Egyptians in their hieroglyphics recorded God, the faithful have utilized the modern methods of communication to tell their stories and spread their God.  Even when hand-copying was the only mean of making a book, the church had the most efficient system of producing and distributing them.  This made religious material, and particularly the Bible, the most widely available book.  The Protestant reformation started when true mass-media was invented.  Johann Gutenburg’s moveable-type printing press made books affordable, and knowledge became power.  Within the fifty years, the number of books inEurope went from 30,000 to over 9,000,000.  Martin Luther was one of the first to utilize the power of this new mass-media and printing became one of the most mighty man-made forces on earth.  A single person can easily reach millions by publishing a pamphlet or getting a story printed in a paper.  Radio and television came along and gave the preachers new ways to touch the lives of others.  Now with the emergence of the Internet, global exposure of any idea is almost a trivial task. 

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God.

Psychologists don’t have a unified theory on how men and women behave when placed in a group setting, but all will note that in such circumstances, people can and do behave in surprising ways.  When acting within a group, they loose their individuality and along with this, their individual qualities.  Common sense gets set aside.  Inter-group bonds become inordinately strong while friendships and family can become lost.  Even compassion, love, and understanding can be trod upon as the group stampedes down its isolated trail.  Group traditions often dictated what is right and wrong, leaving individuals who wish to differ feeling exposed and alone.  On top of this, the hierarchies and bureaucracies within a group shield members from taking personal responsibilities.  This combination of a loss of individuality, limited responsibility, and group-recognized ideals one of the most powerful forces on earth.  We found out that the power of group dynamics could turn a band of eager young American soldiers into ruthless baby killers inVietnam.  The cries of tormented Jews could not break the spell of the Nazi dynamics, as countless German citizenscarried out the holocaust.  The power of group dynamics is so enormous that we all must have some understanding of what is good and healthy group activity.  And just as important, we must be able to recognize their dangerous actions.

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God.

That which empowered a tribal shaman to cast out an evil spirit is in many ways the same force that Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Jose Luis de Jesús Miranda and others wield over their audiences.   The shaman was the tribal healer; with ritual magic to intercede with the spirit world.  These men sit at the top of their organizations, praying on behalf of their followers to mediate with God.  Just like the shaman, they are the healer, priest, and psychologist of their people, defining what is reality.  The same power changed the face of religion inAmericain the nineteenth century, at the spiritual revival meetings and camps.  For many faiths, such as The Assemblies of God, New Age movements, and Southern Baptists Trances, spirit voices, healings, exorcisms, visions of light, and prophesy are all part of every-day religion.  These religions don’t rely upon complex theologies and ancient creeds—they prove their worth with mystical experiences that everyone can undergo.  We still see them hold on to ancient myths, and particularly the Bible, but the theology is far less of an issue than is the importance of encountering God.  At Pentecostal services, people try to “speak in tongues”—and many do.  New Age groups try to contact other worlds though meditation—and many feel they succeeded.  Most Baptists are “Born Again”—convinced that a Holy Spirit touched their lives.  These experiences are not told by liars.  They aren’t slight-of-hand tricks played by charlatans.  They are the natural reactions by people who have experienced something they don’t quite understand.  An experience they were trying to create with all of their energy.  An experience they longed to have.  They have an experience their leaders knew would come, and the modern-day shaman were ready with mystical explanations for these very natural reactions.

Feeling good about oneself is probably one of the most compelling reasons people hold onto their beliefs.  In their search for a suitable religion, the religion that feels right is the one that people stick with.  So many believers tell how their faith in God makes them happy.  It makes them feel good about themselves.  The positive emotions are taken as proof that they found God.  It is described as a feeling of renewal when they totally commit themselves to their God—of being born again.  The emotion is universally reported, crossing all religious and national boundaries. No matter in which faith one looks, from Muslim to Mormon, the believers sustain their faith by citing this feel-good response as authentication of their spiritual beliefs.  It doesn’t seem to matter that believers of the “pagan” faiths also feel just a good about their god.  They disregard the fact that this harmonious good feeling could also be achieved through mediation or drugs.  By completing a difficult task, people get a good feeling of accomplishment.  Succeeding at a life-long quest can make one feel incredibly exhilarated—so much more than the accomplishment may justify.  ScalingMt.Everestis a quest of many, but reaching its summit means so much more to the climber than just hiking to the top of the world’s largest pile of rock.  Reaching the top, or accomplishing any personal quest, gives a sense of personal fulfillment much greater than the actual deed.  This is also true of the religious quest.  People spend considerable time and emotional energy struggling with their faith.  When they finally receive the sign from God that they found Him, the feeling is overwhelming.  The feeling feeds on itself, for their religion makes them feel good, and the good feeling numbs the intellect and makes them more religious.  To those who truly believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, words hardly can describe this excitement.  Could we blame them?  Discovering a way to eternal life and happiness would make almost anyone a new person. 

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God. 

When the facts don’t support the faith, and all arguments have been dispelled, when a person in 99% sure there is no God, there is still one last reason people want to believe.  The 1% chance that hell is real.  A hell where people suffer for eternity is too much of a terror, even if it is a remote chance, to risk being wrong.  To cover eternity’s down-side, if all we have to do is an hour of church on Sundays and a token adherence to some creed, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  It shouldn’t surprise us that this train of thought is named after a mathematician/philosopher, Blaise Pascal.  The return on investment is enormous.  Think of how long eternity is.  A trillion years is a blink of an eye.  Eternal bliss just for believing in God.  Now that is a great deal!  All of humanity is silly for not taking this bet.

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God.

We humans have certain psychological needs.  The desire to fulfill these needs is deep within us all, and much of our motivation comes from our quest to satisfy them.  Some needs we may be aware of, but others are subconscious.  These needs and desires spawn the feelings we have.  When we feel something is right for us, it often is because we have a psychological need or desire for it to be.  William James even places these motives higher than the rational ones in creating mankind’s desire for religion.  “I do believe feelings are the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products…”  We can see evidence of this mythology.  Over the ages, religions have come and gone, but the same old stories survive. The same basic stories may be retold by each new generation, introducing new casts, but the archetypal characters are remain in place. The legends of Sargon, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus, King Arthur, and Luke Skywalker all have parallel events. The positive feelings people have about stories such as these make the tales eternal.  Likewise, religions come and go, but the needs that they address are within everyone, of every age.

This is only a short summary of this topic.  To find out more, please get Why Adam and Eve Created God.