God - an illusion? E-Book

Ronald Wild

• Herausgeber: novum pro Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 124

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Is it possible that since the beginning people have worshipped and adored deities that never existed and were based only on wishful thinking, because there simply must be higher powers for all inexplicable phenomena and so that life makes sense? The author explains plausibly on the basis of the texts of the so-called "holy writings" like Bible and Koran why deities spring from the wishful thinking of the people and not as described in these books, the human being was created after the image of God. Because an "all-wise" God would certainly not have created such a defective being as man, who ruthlessly exploits and destroys nature, on whose existence he depends, and also leads barbaric wars even in the name of God.

Leseprobe

Ronald Wild

Is it possible that the people since the beginning have worshipped and adored deities that never existed and were based only on wishful thinking, because there simply must be higher powers for all inexplicable phenomena and so that life makes sense.

Since one finds on all continents and in all cultures earliest testimonies that people believed in deities and built places of worship in their honor, these gods must have a real background and be deeply rooted in the human soul.

If I now claim that God as well as the gods of antiquity only corresponded to human wishful thinking, then all places of worship were built on illusions. But it cannot be that the places of worship of early man, as well as the temples, churches, synagogues and mosques that are still visited by believers today in honor of God, are based only on wishful thinking. If it should prove to be true that God is only an illusion, then people have invested enormous efforts in vain in the construction of these places of worship since the beginning.

Since Homo sapiens has populated this planet, he has at all times worshipped and adored deities. For Stone Age people, natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning as well as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions were a constant threat to their existence. Moreover, they could not classify these natural phenomena in the natural course of physical conditions as we do today. They suspected that higher powers must be behind these threatening events. Therefore, they built places of worship in honor of these gods, where they offered sacrifices as well as prayers. They hoped that with these gestures they could appease the gods and make them merciful so that disaster could be averted. They also could not understand that with death everything should be over, which is why a belief in the afterlife arose early on, as evidenced by grave goods.

Deities have been worshipped and adored since time immemorial in all cultures and on all continents, regardless of skin color and ancestry. Although in modern times natural phenomena are no longer a reason for the justification of a higher power, now above all the belief in the hereafter is in the foreground. The gods of the Stone Age people as well as of the advanced civilizations of antiquity, i.e., the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, were replaced by the one true God, proclaimed by the prophets, attested by many alleged personal encounters of chosen people, such as Moses, with the face of God in the thorn bush. The Israelites brought the new faith to Jerusalem, and there, a good 2,000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth founded a new faith movement that still belongs to the largest world religion alongside Islam. The founder of Islam also allegedly received personal messages from Allah through the archangel Gabriel, which served as the basis of this religion.

When I ask the question - God an illusion - I feel a bit like a nest-destroyer, because in our enlightened Western world the question of faith and consequently religion is an absolute private matter and therefore untouchable and not open to discussion. Even the American president would never dare to blame Islam, i.e. the faith of the terrorists, for their motivation to carry out attacks. So the religious attitude cannot be the reason, but the so-called preachers of hate, who can attract young people without perspective to terrorist attacks. Everyone always emphasizes that religion is free from hatred and racism, and therefore religious attitudes cannot be blamed for the extremism and fundamentalism of certain circles. However, many religions claim to proclaim theultimate truth, whichis why non-believers and those with different beliefs are marginalized and sometimes fought against - even threatened with death. Therefore, one should not be surprised if there are always tensions between the individual denominations.

An all-wise, benevolent God would make peace among people and would not allow so-called holy wars (including crusades) or terrorist attacks to be carried out in his name. God, Allah or even the gods of antiquity originate from human wishful thinking. People try to give meaning to their lives by believing in a god. The meaning of life, however, consists in shaping the earthly life to the best of one's knowledge and conscience for one's own and others' good and in respect for the great nature, which was made possible by a happy interaction in the universe and with the favorable placement of our planet to the sun. Of course, many people still attribute these special conditions to a creator.

In today's enlightened times, the gods of antiquity have lost their importance, but still the majority of people believe in deities, because otherwise life seems meaningless to them, because it can't be that life simply ends with death and that there is no after that is supposed to allow us a supersensible power, one believes the promises of religions and doctrines of salvation.

God is dead!

With this statement Nietzsche wanted to make clear that there is no superior, eternal instance. Man is thrown back on himself.

Nietzsche's statement is meant to be deliberately provocative. If God is dead, he must have existed once. In my opinion, however, he never existed at all, in any case not in the form in which God or Allah is worshipped and adored by people, i.e. not the God of the Bible or the Koran. So God is not dead, but an illusion to which many people turn in the belief that he helps to master life. Of course, many people are firmly convinced that God has helped them in many situations in life and has given their lives support and meaning. Testimonies of people who have found the way to God and have mastered life better as a result are said to confirm the existence of a higher power. It is undisputed that people feel lifted up and carried in a religious community and from this feeling they conclude that behind it a God must stand. However, we can also experience the feeling of acceptance and being lifted up in another community of people, e.g. in a club, during sports, among friends, in the family, at the workplace (if there is a good working atmosphere), and so on.

And then there is the multitude of people who feel a divine calling and place their entire life in the service of God or Allah, be it as a priest (minister), rabbi, imam, monk or nun, etc. They feel called to proclaim the Word of God and to preserve and spread the faith. They feel legitimized to do so by their theological education, i.e. their profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and usually by an ordination in which they commit themselves to absolute fidelity to God and their faith. They derive their being chosen to be allowed to perform religious rites and to lead services from statements in the Holy Scriptures, according to which God has given the explicit order to do so through his messenger (Jesus Christ) or his prophet. However, since I deny the existence of a God, he cannot have ever given legitimacy to a son or a prophet either. More on this in a later chapter, where I will discuss the life and mission of Jesus. I will also briefly illuminate the origin of the Koran.

God arises from the wishful thinking of people in search of meaning or, as Ludwig Feuerbach put it: God did not create man in his own image, but man has created a wishful image of a supernatural being who must account for all inexplicable phenomena and who directs and determines all life and especially that of us humans. This being, called God or Allah, is responsible for our destiny and is benevolent towards all people who believe in him and worship him.

The proof of God respectively the facts which speak against the existence of a higher being.

All believers derive the existence of God from the Holy Scriptures, which in their view were written down directly from divine inspiration and are therefore to be regarded as absolute truth. Other interpretations are therefore already perceived as blasphemy, since the word of God needs no interpretation, it is infallible.

The holy scriptures, first and foremost the Bible and the Koran, are used as proof of God, since there are countless passages there that would clearly establish the existence of a higher power. In all direct contacts of a person or prophet with God, however, the respective person was always alone, i.e. without a witness who could have confirmed the encounter. From Mohammed one knows that he received the first revelation by the archangel Gabriel in a cave at the mountain Hira in the proximity of Mekka on 1 February 610. Only he was also alone just like Moses on the mountain Sinai, where he received allegedly the Ten Commandments from God. More about this later.

I take the liberty of using these "holy scriptures" as evidence that God springs from the wishful thinking of people in search of meaning.

Every child knows the story of Adam and Eve, who were created by God and are considered the original human beings from whom we all descend. In the second chapter of Genesis (the story of creation), it is written:

- there were no bushes yet on the earth, and no field plants grew yet; for the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man yet to till the ground;

but moisture rose from the earth and soaked the entire surface of the arable land.

Then the Lord God formed man from the earth of the field and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus man became a living being.

Then the Lord God laid out a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom He had formed.

So the Lord God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and tend it.

Then the Lord God commanded the man: of all the trees of the garden you may eat,

but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you must not eat, for as soon as you eat from it you will die.

Then the Lord God said: It is not good that man should remain alone. I will make him a help that will suit him.

The Lord God formed from the soil all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air and brought them to man to see what he would name them. And as man named every living creature, so it was to be called.

Man gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the sky and to all animals of the field. But a help that corresponded to man, he did not find.

Then the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man; as he slept, God took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

The Lord God built a woman from the rib he had taken from man and brought her to man.

And the man said, This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; and she shall be called Woman, because she is taken from Man.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and binds himself to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Both Adam and his wife were naked but they were not ashamed

in front of each other.

With exact view therefore God has put on once himself hand and has formed the man from earth, like an artist makes a sculpture and models. Then he has joined him still animals and so that he has his equals, he has created a female being again by hand, namely from a rib which he has taken from the man. This creator God was therefore a craftsman and, besides, the first who has cloned a human being and has still changed genetically. Of course, many will say now that the text must not be interpreted so literally, but nevertheless a supernatural, divine being does not need to kneel down on the earth to create a being after his image (as is to be read further in the Genesis), but could do this with a kind of magic wand. It is not only a very childish conception of the creation, but one too much attached to the human thinking and is to be assigned therefore hardly to a divine inspiration. Besides this creation history contradicts that from the 1st chapter of the Genesis, which we know also all, with which God is to have created the world in 7 days, resp. in 6 days, since he rested on the 7th day. Here the wording of the origin of the earth according to the Bible:

The creation of the world

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

But the earth was desolate and confused, darkness lay over the primeval flood, and God's spirit hovered over the waters.

God said: Let there be light. And there was light.

God saw that the light was good. God separated the light from the darkness

and God called the light Day and the darkness He called Night. There was evening and there was morning: first day.

Then God said, "Let a vault come up in the midst of the waters and separate water from water.

So God made the vault and separated the water below the vault from the water above the vault. This is how it happened.

And God called the vault heaven. And there was evening, and there was morning: the second day.

Then God said: Let the water underneath the sky gather in one place, so that what is dry may become visible. This is how it happened.

God called the dry land and the accumulated water He called the sea. God saw that it was good.

Then God said: Let the land grow young greenery, all kinds of plants that bear seed, and trees that bear fruit on the earth with their seed in it. Thus it came to pass.

The land brought forth young green, all kinds of plants bearing seed, all kinds of trees bearing fruit with their seed in them. God saw that it was good.

It became evening and it became morning: third day.

Then God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night. They shall be signs and serve to determine feast times, days and years;

they shall be lights in the firmament, shining above the earth. This is how it happened.

God made the two great lights, the greater ruling over the day, the lesser ruling over the night, also the stars.