God and Knowledge and Souls

By Paul Martin | February 4, 2012

I was reading a bunch of the philosophy of religion posts that explore the idea of a triple O-god, and while wondering whether or not god exists, I started to wonder; if god doesn’t exist, then why would the idea of god exists? And this made me think about the idea that maybe god is the human interpretation of the absence of knowledge. If you look at the history of the human race, as more knowledge is accumulated and more about the world and its operations leave the outer limits of the human consciousness and enter into its wider view, the quantity of gods worshiped in religion decrease from a substantial amount in polytheistic systems to just one in the transition to monotheism.
Now if you step all the way back to animism, which is like the beta version of religion, it explains some fundamental questions that one might have while experiencing reality, such as why are somethings animate and somethings inanimate and what are dreams. And I feel like it’s the real pioneer of the concept of the soul.
This made me wonder If god exists, in whatever form, wouldn’t gods relevance some what be hinged on whether or not humans have souls? Because how can you be rewarded or condemned in an after life if you don’t have a soul?

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2 Comments

  1. barr4267
    Posted February 6, 2012 at 11:41 am | Permalink

    “maybe god is the human interpretation of the absence of knowledge”

    This is a very good point. I can totally see where you’re coming from with this. It’s true that throughout history, there have been all sorts of Gods. In Egypt they were Gods who specified in one area like the sun god, kind of like in India Greece and Rome. In India there was the trinity of Shiva Vishnu and Brahma. Creator Destroyer and Preserver. While in Rome and Greece there were Gods like Venus/Aphrodite, Jupiter/Zeus and Neptune/Poseidon who specified in one area. There have always been “Gods” for things we can’t quite scientifically understand fully.

    I believe that, as humans, we always try to find something/someone else to blame for our trials and tribulations, (Adam and Eve, Pandora, etc…) and someone to thank when things go our way.
    “Ugh, God hates me so he’s giving me the hardest tests to wear me down and make me quit.”
    “Thank God! I made it out of that accident alive.”
    “With the help of Aphrodite, I met my soul mate.”
    “Zeus is mad so he threw a lightning bolt at the Earth and that’s why my house burnt down.”
    “Poseidon made it rain so all the crops will grow.”

  2. cham7182
    Posted February 9, 2012 at 10:01 am | Permalink

    I have this knowledge base that the god I know is truth and truth corresponds to reality. While opinion corresponds to emotionality, absolute truth corresponds to things like the laws of physics and something to withstand paradoxes or contradictions. It is important to learn god’s originality as why it is timeless. This question, “Who is god?” or “Who is __ (fill in the blank for your gods/deities)” has been timeless. The act of questioning existence has been timeless as is the question of who is the intelligent designer…is there an inteligent designer? I’ve been thinking that this being must transcend all knowledge as we know it. Even for christians, according to this scripture Philippians 4:7 ‘And the peace of god which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts’ states just what the above is saying.

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