Post by Anthony J Sargeant:
The Tree in the Forest by Anthony J Sargeant
Post by Anthony J Sargeant:
The Tree in the Forest by Anthony J Sargeant
Answer by Anthony Sargeant:
The simple answer is because God does not exist in the sense of an external being – there is no external "him" or "her" "out there". There is only us. God is a 'construct' of a social animal, homo sapiens, and that 'construct' deludes the individual animal into patterns of behaviour which ensures that the gene survives – the individual's tribal gene that is – even at the expense of other tribes or sometimes of the individual herself or himself.
As long ago as 1842 Feuerbach noted that the secret of all theology was anthropology – and that religious beliefs were nothing but the projections of human qualities and human values onto a (non-existent) deity. We now have a better understanding of genetics and social and evolutionary biology and can put Feuerbach's observations into a broader perspective.
Why didn't God prevent the violence and bloodshed that happened in the name of him/her?
Answer by Anthony Sargeant:
The question is the wrong way round it should read "Why did humankind create God?"
(There is quite a good answer to that framed in the context of evolutionary social biology)
Also off course, and at least in the Abrahamic faiths (judaism, Christianity, and Islam), one could substitute 'man' for humankind which accounts for the misogynistic ground of much of that human creation.