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Goodbye Jesus

Is The Idea Of "god" An Outdated Idea?


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Is the idea of "God" an outdated idea?  Had Christianity (and its stepchild Islam) never taken off, how would the majority of the modern world have otherwise viewed the idea of "God"?  Sure, we'd most likely still have Judaism (Christianity's stepparent) around, but if polytheism seemed to give way to monotheism...would that eventually have given way to atheism?  Would the idea of "God" have been viewed by moderns as an ancient relic of our ancient ancestors, just like other superstitions?  (Hey, maybe it'll get that way some day in our future!  I'm an optimist, haha.)

 

Hear me out.  In our modern religious world with 2 billion Christians and 1 billion Muslims, the idea of "God" is accepted as a legitimate possibility.  But the other day I had the thought that in ancient times, the idea of "God" was simply meant as an ancient explanation for where everything came from, how everything was controlled (God sends lightning bolts and storms and meteors, etc), why everything kept running...basically, the God-of-the-gaps.  However, in our modern world, we have scientific explanations for all of these things and resorting to "God" explains nothing because we can understand these things by understanding the natural laws behind them.  I mean, obviously, the Christian can say God started it all...or that God is ultimately behind the natural laws and everything since He's sovereign...but I don't find that type of reasoning convincing.

 

I mean, all the philosophy of the Church since its early days, like Anselm or Aquinas' arguments for the existence of God, all stemmed from a desire to have a rational support/argument for what was already believed/assumed to be true.  So, in our day, everybody believes in the idea of "God" due to social conditioning and a long history of thought that sought to prove the "God" that was already believed in...at least in countries with lots of monotheists.  I'm not a world traveler, so maybe some countries like China or Australia or Japan or more like what I'm describing.

 

I don't know if I'm making sense or not.  The main point I'm trying to get at is that: what if the idea of "God" is not really a legitimate, intellectually-sound idea possibility (I don't believe so)...but, without our social conditioning where everyone believes in "God," we would have otherwise admitted that the idea of "God" is simply a Bronze-age outdated idea to attempt to describe our world and universe, who we are, where we came from, etc.  But maybe that's just me speaking as an atheist.  Hope my question and thoughts make sense.

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Goodbye Jesus

I'm not sure what you are getting at here but I will take a stab at it anyway.

 

If it turned out there was some kind of divine, say deism rather than theism or a divine that created us but doesn't really care about us, then it would make far more sense that there are many of these deities.  There might be trillions of them or more.  The idea of a single god makes as much sense as the idea that there is only one lady bug or only one dragon fly in all of eternity.

 

If our cosmos is the product of some other thing then that thing would probably be complicated.  God is a simple concept.

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My discussion question is essentially: is the "idea" of God actually an outdated idea, like the superstitions our ancestors believed (comets were bad omens, etc)?

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My discussion question is essentially: is the "idea" of God actually an outdated idea, like the superstitions our ancestors believed (comets were bad omens, etc)?

 

 

It definitely is for me.  Many others arrive at the same conclusion.  When the "none"s are the majority then our culture as a whole will have outgrown the god concept.

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My discussion question is essentially: is the "idea" of God actually an outdated idea, like the superstitions our ancestors believed (comets were bad omens, etc)?

 

 

It definitely is for me.  Many others arrive at the same conclusion.  When the "none"s are the majority then our culture as a whole will have outgrown the god concept.

 

 

Definitely agree with you.  And good point about when a culture has a majority of "none"s, showing they've outgrown the god concept.

 

I still continue to see many things in a new light as I read more and learn more and have more distance from my deconversion.  Sometimes certain things click in a way they hadn't quite done before for me yet, and this is just one example for me as seeing "God" as an outdated concept.  I think the idea of "God" is an outdated concept that should've stayed in history past as a way to explain what we observe in the universe, to explain our origins, etc.  I'm not saying I'm absolutely positively opposed to the possibility of a higher power, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence for the existence of such.

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It depends on how you define "god" and for whom. The mythic God concept is outdated for anyone with a rational mindset, but is still useful for those stuck in the mythic way of thinking. The word "god", if you divorce it from the deity concept, is still useful because it connotes that which is outside of the realm of rational thought. Sometimes god-language is easiest for describing things that happen in a contemplative state. For ExCs, who have just recently deconverted the "god" term is probably too loaded to use like that, but I'm fine with it because I find it useful.

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Trouble is, gods are moving targets. At first, gods were explanations for natural things people didn't understand. Later, gods became rule givers and policemen. Then gods were sources of inspiration and enlightenment. Now, at least in some cultures, gods are like a best friend. Next--who knows?

 

At least, this is my understanding of it--I'm not an expert in this, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

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Excellent points, Orbit!  Thank you for your input.

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Guest Furball

God is a superstition. In the old days people needed things like rain to help their crops, so they would pray or dance or whatever thinking there might be something out there controlling it all. Well, as coincidence would have it, rain would eventually show up, making the people believe that they had appeased whatever invisible thing (god, whatever) was out there. What people call god, i have learned to call coincidence. God is dead, as god never existed in the first place. It's all a human invention to help rationalize away the unknown. 

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Well, from the evolution stand point atheism seems a logical out come. You have to consider old animism and what gave rise to calling nature and the natural forces of the universe, Gods. Judaism and everyone else began with Gods. For political reasons the Gods were refined to just one God that accumulated everything that had previously been attributed to many Gods now all wrapped into one package. Then Christianity and Islam conformed to this monotheistic idea.

 

Science began to move towards secular, exposed the wrong ideas about scriptural literalism, and began a movement of disbelief. The movement of disbelief is still growing while monotheism has peaked and is in decline here in the states.

 

Simply put:

 

Polytheism > Monotheism > Atheism. 

 

Many Gods > One God > No God. 

 

This could well be the way of the future and a logical outcome. The spirituality of the future being a naturalistic spirituality free and clear of ancient superstitious God belief. 

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One a can only hope.. it does seem to follow though.

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Guest Furball

Well, from the evolution stand point atheism seems a logical out come. You have to consider old animism and what gave rise to calling nature and the natural forces of the universe, Gods. Judaism and everyone else began with Gods. For political reasons the Gods were refined to just one God that accumulated everything that had previously been attributed to many Gods now all wrapped into one package. Then Christianity and Islam conformed to this monotheistic idea.

 

Science began to move towards secular, exposed the wrong ideas about scriptural literalism, and began a movement of disbelief. The movement of disbelief is still growing while monotheism has peaked and is in decline here in the states.

 

Simply put:

 

Polytheism > Monotheism > Atheism. 

 

Many Gods > One God > No God. 

 

This could well be the way of the future and a logical outcome. The spirituality of the future being a naturalistic spirituality free and clear of ancient superstitious God belief. 

Informative post. Thank you.

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