© 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…