A Brief History of God
I generally refrain from comming out in open about my ideas of God or religion in public. I found this blog would be a good place to share my thoughts. These are rather theories I have about the whole concept of "God".
I remember reading in one of my textbooks that long long ago any inexplainable event in nature, like a lightning or an earthquake was beleived to be the work of an entity more powerful than us. The unknown nature of this "entity" perhaps made it seem more mystical and larger than life. I may be due to the observation of the people in general or an idea from a verey influential person in a clan, that people started beleiving that if they did something some of these "undesirable" events be avoided.The whole concept of God probably evoled in this manner. "God" was more powerful than humans or other creatures, God could punish those who did not "obey" a certain code of conduct and reward when the code was obeyed. "God" soon became associated with religion.
Religion by definition is "A set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law." (www.wikipedia.com).
So we now had a set of people who beleived in a certain phenomenon "punishment on doing wrong and reward for doing right" and the ideas of right and wrong matched for all the people in the set. Such grouping and acceptance of ideas by so many people may have given all of them more confidence and phsycological strength to beleive them further to turn it into faith. To strengthen this faith these people did some things together, like prayer or celebration of events, like the harvest, which was supposed to be God's reward for them (they had no idea where the crop came from or how to prevent it from floods or lack of water, it was "God's" grace he knew better) soon these events assumed the form of festivals."God" was a control system to maintain sanity and balance in the society, this very concept made us civilized. Infact "God"'s approval about these words gave them the meaning as we know now. Without this whole concept I gather the society would be a chaos.
I am curious to know from when and how personification of God occured. Another thing I am curious about is how is it possible that so many different people in same time but different geographical location could think of concept so alike, like the concepts of hell and heaven, or modes of prayers, which i feel in many religions has striking similarities.
I remember reading in one of my textbooks that long long ago any inexplainable event in nature, like a lightning or an earthquake was beleived to be the work of an entity more powerful than us. The unknown nature of this "entity" perhaps made it seem more mystical and larger than life. I may be due to the observation of the people in general or an idea from a verey influential person in a clan, that people started beleiving that if they did something some of these "undesirable" events be avoided.The whole concept of God probably evoled in this manner. "God" was more powerful than humans or other creatures, God could punish those who did not "obey" a certain code of conduct and reward when the code was obeyed. "God" soon became associated with religion.
Religion by definition is "A set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law." (www.wikipedia.com).
So we now had a set of people who beleived in a certain phenomenon "punishment on doing wrong and reward for doing right" and the ideas of right and wrong matched for all the people in the set. Such grouping and acceptance of ideas by so many people may have given all of them more confidence and phsycological strength to beleive them further to turn it into faith. To strengthen this faith these people did some things together, like prayer or celebration of events, like the harvest, which was supposed to be God's reward for them (they had no idea where the crop came from or how to prevent it from floods or lack of water, it was "God's" grace he knew better) soon these events assumed the form of festivals."God" was a control system to maintain sanity and balance in the society, this very concept made us civilized. Infact "God"'s approval about these words gave them the meaning as we know now. Without this whole concept I gather the society would be a chaos.
I am curious to know from when and how personification of God occured. Another thing I am curious about is how is it possible that so many different people in same time but different geographical location could think of concept so alike, like the concepts of hell and heaven, or modes of prayers, which i feel in many religions has striking similarities.
This is a interesting topic to study..and I am off to knowing more..ciao
