Quick intro

It's the return of the filty atheist and as I said in here I want to talk about how religion is a tool to rule and why it has had a good impact on society overall, or at least why it's not carrying a good or bad meaning as it is but how it is a tool we can use for good and bad purposes. These thoughts are mainly based on western philosophy and deism, stay aware that I'm not speaking the truth at all time and that you should build your own ideas, this is merely food for thoughts :)

Today, I want to tackle an other issue, the perception we have of God and why it doesn't matter if God(s) exist or not. We'll start a journey and see how different our ways were and so were our considerations about gods which will bring us to the final conclusion of why the existence of God doesn't matter.

God the Punisher

Here starts our journey through time and space and it will bring us to the first civilizations and human societies.

The idea of a higher power is most likely really old and even if we can't date it precisely, it goes way back, to Prehistorical times, the representations on cavern walls are the witnesses of our first steps to represent and show some things. The concept of god, spirit, supernatural beings is probably older than that but I have no proof of it, we'll have to accept it is at least as old as those first paintings.

The way people considered gods, acted toward them and represented them is probably of one the most interesting testimony of how our perception of gods have changed through time.

At first, gods were angry and vindicative. You had to make sure to go out of your way (put a lof of efforts) to please the gods. The natural state of a god toward humans was anger. If you didn't do anything for or against the said god, you'd be in trouble, like big ass trouble. You had to make offerings, hunt, kill, pray,... For you gods. This is a common point to all older civilizations. Gods wouldn't do something for you out of the blue, you had the make a deal and old myths show us how often gods asked humans to prove themselves to them and vanquish monsters, fears, other humans, etc. It was the way things were done and perceived for three reasons, in my opinion.

Firstly, people back then lacked the science and knowledge to make sense of the world. So, every instance where something wasn't explicable was a scary instance. Many powerful events like plagues, droughts, thunder, forest fires seemed to appear out of nowhere. Since things don't happened out of nowhere, someone or something had to be responsible for it, they thought. No human could have done it so it must've been a higher power, an angry one. Lack of knowledge and fear led to that perception of gods.

Secondly, "Survival of the fittest" or the strongest was still one of the main unspoken rule in those ancient times. You could beat or kill a man for many reasons which we won't deem good or bad here but it was the environment folks lived in. So if this was still one of the rules in society then, why wouldn't a higher power act the same way? I am stronger thus I make the decisions. You have to respect strength or face the wrath of the higher power.

Thirdly and partially implied by the second point, a lot of the interactions was dominated by strength so if you wanted to rule and use religion to your advantage, you had to give a vindicative figure to the gods so people would respect them.

Finally, we can see many examples throughout history but since it's he's the main second point, I'll talk about the Christian God who was extremely unforgiving. He casted Adam and Eve for Heaven and cursed them forever, wiped out the entire earth because he wasn't satisfied of how things were going. The notion changed and evolved later on which brings us to our second point.

God the Father

God(s) as father figures is the second point we will discuss here. Now, hear me out. It doesn't mean that this feature didn't exist before in some aspects and that the "God the Punisher" type is gone either. I just want to highlight that this form of Gods has become more proeminent over time and that's what we are going to talk about.

With humans spreading aroud the earth and creating bigger and bigger villages then cities, a complex organization started to appear. You couldn't possibly know everyone and your function inside of society defined a lot of what you were. Security began to appear, people were less afraid and the biggest threat you could possibly face wasn't an animal or thunder, but another human.

This is important because new rules have to be implemented. People start to ask questions and since more population gets exposed to more religions a new dynamic has to be found.

This will come in the form of the monotheist Gods, the idea of Heaven and Hell, a set of rules to know how to behave and a messiah which differs from the demi-gods in mythologies because a messiah is a messenger and not an actual god (at least at first). Heaven & Hell were already present too but in a manner that wasn't too related to the average person, it mainly concerned heroes and epic stories when the afterlife was quite bleak for a guy like you or me actually.

So what do we have now? We have a religion and a perception of gods that changed, people need an other story and that's what they're getting. There still is a strong fear because you don't want to end up in Hell but now you can be rewarded for your good actions by going to Heaven and on top of it when you commit a sin or a bad deed you can ask for forgiveness. This system has been abused by the Church to scare people and monetized to a great extent BUT people were ready to accept this new system as a possibility.

God is now a creator, a father figure, a person you respect and you shouldn't have to fear, where you could fear the religious authority instead. He's given a rules of thumb to live in society and a social frame to interact with other people... The perception of God(s) has changed and is slowly evolving to fit larger groups of humans with a more complex set of values and interactions than what they were used to.

God the Skeptic

This is our last and final point and I will try to make it as clear as possible.

The above perceptions of Gods ruled for a really long time, the forms changed again and again, the representation or absence of them, how implicated Gods were or weren't in our lives but a new trend appeared and it's the closest to our time period.

God doesn't exist, God isn't real. We don't want a father figure anymore, we have outgrown the concept of needing guidance and we can now fend for ourselves. This isn't arrogant or childish, we have reached a new era and the concept of God(s) has to evolve with it, grow along Humanity itself.

We can catch sparks of new original ideas here in there. Some people put their faith in other concepts, such as science or humanity, man made creations,... Some others like the idea of a God who created and designed life but doesn't monitor it, a God who isn't omniscient and omnipotent but merely the creator of the Universe (which is already a big deal). A God that actually doesn't have control over its creation and who's watching over it out of interest. You can hear about a God that is nature, the embodiment of nature if you will, of our surrounding ; the air we breathe, the water we drink like a huge ecosystem and melting pot of thoughts, feelings, animate and inanimate objects all together.

The conclusion of all that ; it doesn't matter. God doesn't have to be real or not, to make us think and reflect on our lifes. God doesn't have to exist or not, to consider new ideas and concepts. This is a matter where perception is so much more important than facts. Because the concept of God fuelled our debates and reflexions for so long, it's an interesting concept. Because it's an entity that changed our perception of life and relationship to others, it goes over the realm of religion and how religions act on earth. It's an idea that belongs to every single human who can share his or her point of view on it.

Trying to prove its existence or non-existence is irrelevant but debating the idea is important since it's such a wonderful source of paradoxes, ways to live, understandings of the world. If you keep your mind open, it doesn't have to come in opposition with science at all. To many, it can give a larger picture in which science happens. Many churches, gurus have tried to define the concept of idea and bend it to their interpretation so they could use it. You have to cast these interpretations aside to see what matters, the concept, the idea. It is healthy to consider the concept of God and how it can be an important part of the philosophy in your life.

Make sure it doesn't blind you, any idea, faith, concept, can be harmful and used to be close-minded, pretend to hold the only truth. But you, dear reader, you don't have to be like that ; you can enjoy debating, thinking, understanding and growing up through discovering new ideas and concepts.

Thanks for your attention to my crazy rants,

Stay Curious!

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