Post on 23-Dec-2015
© Michael Lacewing
The origin of ‘God’
Michael Lacewingenquiries@alevelphilosophy.c
o.uk
The options
• Where did the concept GOD come from?
• We derived it from experience.• We invented it as an explanation.
– Is invoking God a good explanation?• It is a projection of our unconscious
desires.• It derives from useful social
practices.
Religious experience
• How do we experience God? Not through sense perception. It is more like a hallucination…
• Do we experience God at all? Sense experiences are rich in detail; people have difficulty describing religious experience.
• Sense perception is common to everyone; religious experience is rare, and people disagree about what is experienced.
God as explanation
• Many concepts are invented to explain experience. The best explanations pick out things that exist.
• GOD is not derived directly from religious experience. But the best explanation for religious experience is that it is accurate, i.e. it is an experience of something divine.
• GOD is needed to explain the origin of the world.
God of the gaps?
• These may be accurate accounts of the origin of the concept; but should we keep using the concept?
• We now explain scientifically many events that GOD was invoked to explain.
• Why GOD as an explanation? Need to appeal to human psychology as well
Freud: The origin of religion• The Future of an Illusion: The
origins of religion in human history: a response to our vulnerability in the face of forces of nature
• The origins of religion in the individual mind: a development from our childhood vulnerability and our relationship with our father, whom we both fear and love
• “[man’s] longing for a father is a motive identical with his need for protection against the conse-quences of his human weakness.”
Religion is illusion
• Religion is an ‘illusion’, i.e. caused by the fulfilment of a wish (we want it – life, the universe – to be this way). Religious experience is like dreams, experiences caused by wishes.
• Reply: suppose God exists. Then our greatest desire would be a relationship with God.– GOD originates in human psychology. But human
psychology originates in God.
• Many religious people are strong-minded, not given to wish-fulfilment.
Durkheim: social explanation
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: religion is the basis of morality and authority, and of communal identity
• In early societies, it permeates life and is the first expression of society.
Discussion
• Durkheim’s explanation applies to religion, but not the concept GOD itself
• Perhaps this concept evolved out of religious practices, e.g. that started with ancestor worship, then as spirits, then one spirit with which a tribe identifies…