BQ 10: Did God create man? Or vice versa?
The big questions of history
The origin of God might or might not be a question of history. If God exists, with the attributes usually ascribed to supreme divinity, then the question falls to theology, if it falls anywhere. This God is eternal, with no beginning. Case closed.
Yet there are historical angles to the question nonetheless. When did humans first become aware of God? How have human perceptions of God changed over time? How have these perceptions influenced secular human history?
Theology might be involved, if for example God deliberately intervened in human affairs. (Can God do anything undeliberately?) But that’s true with all historical questions. Did God will that the North win the Civil War? Historians, as historians, leave God out of the picture and look for earthly causes.
If God doesn’t exist, at least not in an eternal sense and independent of humans, then the origin question is fair game for historians. God could exist in the way democracy and cricket exist: as a human construct. The question then is how and why humans constructed God (or gods) the way they have. The fact that the idea of God is ubiquitous among human cultures suggests that it serves some deep need.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” wrote Arthur C. Clarke. He might as well have said “indistinguishable from the supernatural.” Perceptions of the divine have evolved as human understanding of the natural world has progressed. The relationship has been an inverse one. The more humans discovered about the workings of the natural world, the less they looked to the supernatural for explanations.
Before Darwin it was difficult to imagine how the observable world came into being without a supernatural creator. Darwin's theory explained how the natural world created itself.
Well, not quite. Darwin didn't say how the universe came into being in the first place. No one’s cracked that chestnut. This provides a foothold for believers in God who want to believe in science as well. God created the universe with certain properties. Then he stepped back and let things evolve to where they are today.
Humans evolved. So did their cultures. And as their cultures evolved, so did their gods. Twenty millennia ago, when humans were hunters and lived in small bands dependent on the resources around them, they were mostly animists, seeing supernatural beings everywhere. As they developed agriculture and cities and governments, their pantheons came to look like governments, with a king-like principal god and lesser gods beneath him.
Different groups identified with different principal gods, whom each group naturally proclaimed to be the greatest god, and eventually the only God.
The God of the Israelites and their heirs evolved over time. In an age when the Israelites lived and died by the sword, their God was one of vengeance, ordering his people to slay their enemies wholesale. They slayed successfully until they encountered the Romans, who slayed and scattered them.
Yet an offshoot group with a new take on God survived. The God of these Christians was a God of order and love, directing his followers to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, and to love one another.
This strategy was wildly successful. The Christians captured Rome without a fight. One branch still has headquarters in the Eternal City. Christians today number 2.5 billion.
As noted in the introduction to this series, the questions David Hilbert posed to the world’s mathematicians in the early 20th century included some that proved unsolvable. But the effort expended on them yielded insights into mathematics generally.
The question of the origins of God falls into the same category. It can't be solved by the methods and standards of history. But the attempts have shed light on human nature, human culture and human institutions.
Additional attempts should shed additional light. Theology is too important to be left to the theologians. Historians, have at it!
Thank you for this article. I really appreciate how you correlate the evolution of humans and their cultures with their theologies. I also appreciate that you write as an observer and analyst rather than as a proponent of a certain theology. Well done!
Good article- plenty to consider.
As an atheist who tried to accept religion- it didn't stick- I am firmly in the "Man created god" camp. When discussing the universe theists will say "you can't have something from nothing" and assert an always existing God created the universe. But if that is so- then it is a bit of supernatural magic since said god did indeed "create something from nothing." But when asked "well where did god come from" their explanation is a series of rationalizations as to how god always existed. I fail to see why we should accept god always existed but can't accept that the universe always existed.
Darwin and later scientists clearly explain how life evolved, not how it started. A good explanation of evolution is Dawkins' "Ancestor's Tale", btw. While it has never been replicated the Miller-Urey test did show that lightning strikes could create organic life matter from non-life matter and create early RNA. Who is to say how many such lightning strikes hit a primordial earth soup before this took place. Again, timespans beyond our comprehension.
But the next step to that is the Big Bang which theists latch onto as proof of god "creating" the universe. But that is just A big bang science has discovered. It doesn't mean it was the only big bang. Science has hypothesized that the universe, while currently expanding, could contract (the Big Crunch) . An always existing universe could have expanded and contracted numerous times over a span of time beyond our understanding with the effect of several "big bangs."
I think there is a cognitive dissonance in asserting a deity would create everything and step back. Indeed, nearly every religion asserts the opposite- that the deity(ies) intercede in human affairs repeatedly. From the gods riding in Hercules chariot in the Illiad (my version is translated by Stanley Lombardo), to the numerous intercessions in the Torah (old testament) and New Testament as well as any Norse mythology.
As to the evolution of our concepts of deities, Elaine Pagels in her book "The Origin of Satan: The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics"- she shows how Satan, the devil, evolved over time. Early Hebrews considered the devil the "satan" (small S) and translates to "the adversary" or "the accuser," a generic noun, not a proper name, and is derived from a verb meaning "to obstruct, oppose". Literally the Devil's Advocate- asking God "do you really think that action is a good idea?" Later the Hebrews came to view the snake as a symbol of evil because a nearby rival tribe worshipped a snake deity. Once we get into Christianity, Christians began anthropomorphizing the satan as Satan- a personified personality laid atop the hebrew angel myth using Lucifer.
As to historians having a go- I am all for it but you would get pushback from conservative theists who often derided Dawkins and Harris etal for delving into religion, claiming Dawkins should stick to biology even as theists were delving into biology themselves in order to try to support creationism. Theists- you can't have it both ways.