A Brief History of God

I have been spending too much time watching YouTubes and chatting on forums lately, so I’m getting behind in blogging. This will be a cross-over of all of that.

I spend some of my time on a site that is mostly populated with atheists. Occasionally an evangelist of some sort comes along with what they think is a bullet-proof explanation for the existence of God. Watching them get blasted is like trying to turn your head when there is an accident on the highway.

A recent one of these had several links to published papers by F. J. Tipler. Tipler is a physicist with a Theory of Everything. I won’t provide the links because I don’t think it is worth it. I have no way of evaluating if his theory is any better than anybody else, other than that he has been peer reviewed and his methods appear sound. I can’t correct his math however. His theory happened to contain a trinity, and he has made some allusions to how it could be compared to Christianity.

Obviously this is a huge leap, but the guy posting at this forum felt it was an obvious correlation and kept repeating his claim. I spent a few years believing that quantum mechanics had some spiritual aspect to it. I learned a lot about physics, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time, but there is no connection. This guy really went overboard, claiming that the universe was coming to an end within 50 years and that his interpretation of Tipler’s theory would allow all of us to live forever. As alluring as that is, I won’t repeat any of it, because it is not worth my time.

In my attempt to debate him, I needed to explain how I think humans got to where we are now, including some humans that have a need to use science to prove Christianity. I wrote this brief history of religion, hope you like it.

So here’s my understanding of how we got to the kind of logic you are claiming. Religion developed as a psychological response to the unknown. Before language, humans started to perceive a past, present and future and attempted to make sense of it. Every teenager who has any sense of responsibility goes through this still today. They realize someone went to a lot of trouble to get them to adulthood and that someone before that did it for their parents and so on. And many (unfortunately not all) also understand that there is a planet that supported all of them and a universe in which it exists.

I called it a psychological response, but this is perfectly consistent with the idea that the Christian God is slowly revealing himself to us, if you want to express it that way. Not everybody sees it that way, as you are well aware. Some people feel the awesomeness of creation and simply take pleasure in it and can see the humor in the odd things that came out of it, like males and females and the awkward fumbling that goes into procreation. Some people see the mystery and want to figure it out. Some people have a need to tell stories to relate to it. Sometimes one person can see it from all perspectives.