Was God created by Humans? I mean really. Is it possible that Humans actually created a real God?

No one knows if there is or isn’t a god. So I don’t think we’ll ever know lol.

I don’t understand why you’re equating thought with spirit by placing them thus: thought/spirit. Isn’t it enough to simply say that something resulted from a thought?

I believe thought and mind are identical concepts as spirit and soul. They just happen to be from different disciplines. Many thought/spirits create a mind/soul just like many bricks create a building.

Well, I read the question and the details. I have to say that given that information, I would answer yes. God as it is recognized by the vast majority of religious believers on the planet is a construct of the human mind.

But your question asks if people created a “real” God. No, it’s not any more “real” than red-ness is real.

Your proposal is very reminiscent of the concept of memes, isn’t it? Ideas that take on their own lives, with human brains as their hosts, thriving or fading in the great pool of ideas according to fitness?

Memes—and I would classify God and Satan as memes—do have a claim to reality, yes, but as memes. Still capable of influencing behaviors, certainly, and so not without impact in the world, but still only memes.

@thorninmud I actually crafted this Q originally including Memes alongside Archetypes and Platonic Forms. However, I decided not to include it for a couple of reasons. Memes require codified representation to manifest. Archetypes and Platonic Forms do not. I did not wish to get into my entire code rap that everyone has heard me preach for the past two years or more. And Memes, as you say, require a host to “live” or “die” in relation to their fitness. Again, Archetypes and Platonic Forms do not require a physical host. They are independent from the mediums which express them for reasons explained. They do not live or die so much as they are created once and simply exist independently forever beyond the physical realm. I guess we could mash Memes into this mix, but I see distinct differences and that’s why I edited the Q before publishing.

Another reason I left out Memes is because it hails from a slanted Dawkins perspective. I simply wanted to leave out any religious or atheistic arguments altogether.

@hawaii_jake “a “real” God. No, it’s not any more “real” than red-ness is real”

So is red-ness real or not?

I believe it creates something tangibly “real” for human beings only. In this case I am using “real” to denote that the collective “thought” can impact us along our various lines of reality.

I don’t believe that it impacts the reality of any of our non-human reality in and of itself. It needs us to function. For example, our collective belief and non-belief in the God we have created can effect our natural surroundings through war, architecture, and other societal upheaval/progress. The natural surroundings themselves (rocks, trees, animals, etc.) have no concept of our God. It doesn’t exist for them except in the way it effects them when humans are present. Take us out of the equation and God goes with us.

Red-ness doesn’t exist in a dog’s word.

That opens up an entirely new set of possibilities @Blondesjon.

Claiming that red-ness does not exist in a dog’s world suggests either that there are multiple realms of existence, or that red-ness is independent from the physical world altogether. Unless of course we deny the existence of red-ness altogether.

And let me point out the difference between an Archetype and a Belief. The Archetype is a culmination of all potential perspectives throughout all of history. The Belief in a God is individual based upon the limited exposure to the entire Archetype. We cannot know the totality of the Archetype. We only take a small portion of it to form an individual belief upon, and then a-ffect with “war, architecture…” as you say, thereby birthing new Archetypes all along the way.

Of course there are multiple realms of existence. A single, all encompassing realm of existence where “everything” exists simultaneously in a specifically shared reality is fraught with infinitely more paradox than the idea that we not only create and share our individual realities but also are ignorant of 99.9% of the rest of “creation(?)”. This “ignorance” is what keeps the whole works from simply becoming fully self aware, realizing that it can’t possibly exist, and returning to a single, quivering infinite moment just waiting around to fool itself again into believing that it needs to “exist”.

The Archetype is the consciousness of God, the abstract. Belief is the physical body of and the food necessary to keep that God alive.

I guess in a way, God exists because God is something we know about, whether we believe He’s real or not. I don’t believe in God, but I know what the idea of God is. So, in that way, He’s real, since I recognize Him in my thoughts, whatever my perception of God is. Despite a collective consensus. (which is also a factor in determining the existence of something, no matter its state of existence)
Everything we can think about exists in its own way, if you can think about it, and come up with it.
At least, it exists in that particular plane of existence; as being thought of. If I draw God on paper, there. God. Zombies exist too, in movies. I mean I can see them, even though they’re not in my present world. They exist on film. Zombies, there they are, those nasty buggers. A plane of existence is still a plane of existence, even if in its existence, nobody or nothing can ever go to it like you walk into a room, or it come to us like a stray cat. At least in this physical form, which I currently know and experience. Of course, when speaking of existence, we usually don’t take that kind of approach. But what is existence besides what we’ve defined it as, and all agree on? And this is where I’m lost.

Your question is complicated, and I don’t have the brains to really comprehend it. I hope I at least got some part of it. As for thoughts creating things; beyond what I’ve worded, I don’t know. Beyond components which make evolve societies, cultures and stuff, I also don’t know.
I suppose a bad environment can create a criminal, (as well as many other things can make a criminal, which aren’t actually ideas, besides the definition we’ve given said factors, you know, like innate traits you’re born with) and we as people have gradually created that to ’‘physical form’’ with our ideologies and opinions, which spawn from thinking.
We have thoughts, and create concepts around them too, even if they don’t exist in some other plane besides us following and living by them.
That’s the furthest I can go, and understand. Cool question though, even if I may have missed it by a mile. XD

Thoughts/Emotions = God.

No you didn’t miss it by a mile @Symbeline. I enjoyed reading all responses. This Q is more fun than anything. There are no right or wrong answers. I certainly don’t have any.

Thanks @Blackberry – who can know?

Great answers @thorninmud and @hawaii_jake. I appreciate your responses.

Tempting to fall into heavy debate with you @Blondesjon. But I’m unsure what I’d even be debating for or against. I’d probably just be talking to hear my own voice. Your voice is satisfying enough.

@linguaphile I suppose we can only imagine. May as well whyle we have the chance. ;)

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I wonder then how you distinguish between “real” and “unreal”. If something can become “real” just by virtue of having been conceived as a thought, then what can possibly be “unreal”? Doesn’t that render “real” and “unreal” meaningless? That would put the Satan of your details out of a job as the “spirit of deception”, since deception requires that there be a boundary between what is real and what is unreal, doesn’t it?

Lies are real. Just as real as truth. But truth always trumps lies because if a person is truly lying, then that is the truth.

The more I explore these topics (of which I find entertaining and challenging), the more I question what is actually “real” vs what is typically considered by materialists as “unreal”.

These discussions help me form an opinion about that. The challenge is overcoming my own preconceptions (dogma) of what is real. I do well to consider that your thoughts on the matter are just as real as my own… thus I have you to thank for expanding my reality.

Can you, then, give an example of what is unreal, in your view?

I’m not convinced I have the authority to make such a claim upon what is unreal.

Personally, my interest in linguistics has opened up entirely new possibilities to what reality actually is. The concept of Reality Tunnel has had a profound impact upon me. Almost as much as Bhartrihari’s Sphota Theory of Language. Religions that teach principles of The Word have also influenced my thinking.

Consistent throughout interdisciplinary studies has revealed to me that:

God = Truth

Satan = Deception

Now Here = nowhere

You give more credit to thought and language than I do. As I see it, thought and language are to reality as a map is to the terrain. They describe, differentiate and denominate that which fundamentally has no fixed form or difference or name. The cognitive map drawn by my concepts and codified in language may have some coarse-grained correspondence to the realm of raw experience, but I could discard thought and concepts and language, and the raw experience would remain undiminished. I simply couldn’t describe it. And, truth be told, I never actually can describe it; I only pretend to, using the impossibly clumsy instrument of conceptual language.

Raw experience encompasses thought and language, but thought and language don’t even come close to encompassing raw experience. They draw crude, lifeless pictures of that living experience.

I am an Agnostic.
All religion was made up by humans.
If God exists he,she, it would bless decent humans.

@thorninmud You can read through any one of my older posts and find that I believe exactly what you describe. Basically, the medium is not the message.

As I discover deeper, understanding that no atom touches another, and that coordinate and velocity can never be measured at the same moment, I’m questioning further with discussions like these. Not really replacing my current belief, but opening the possibility that more could be learned about it.

When you say “no fixed form or difference or name”, I’ve often described the universe as complete white noise until an observer experiences a phenomenon and describes it. I liken the universe to the static seen on a television or heard on an untuned radio. If we could slow down our experiences of them, we would notice certain peaks or random fluctuations. Those that really stand out long enough to observe are given names like planet, solar flare, black hole, quazar, waterfall, earthquake…, but as the convulsing static swirls, none of those “man made things” will exist in the same form as they did just a second ago. Entropy rules the day… unless…

…unless a mind harnesses that entropy and out of the pure realm of thought, authors a codified description upon it, thereby creating reality with every spoken word.

Look around you. Assuming you are in a room with a desk, chances are that every observable object was once nothing more than a thought in someone’s mind. Everything began with a set of architectural plans which represented that thought, and via sharing that codified representation with others, a computer is manufactured, and a chair, and a coffee cup. The realm of imagination combined with the process of information (thought in-to-form) has A-ffected a change upon the white noise of the cosmos.

We can confirm our authority over entropy by reflecting upon the code we author to affect it. We can go to the Macintosh plant and demonstrate the plans which construct a Powerbook Pro, or a Ford Taurus. The plans confirm that they are nothing more than physical representations of the thoughts of those who designed them.

And actually, the static we observe seems like static only because of the limitations of tools we use to observe it with. First with our senses, and then with the tools we craft to enhance beyond our senses, and then even more advanced tools allow greater observations. We look deeper and deeper and deeper only to discover even more complexity. At what point do we look so deeply that even the static disappears in lieu of attributing the infinite upon it? At what point do we accept the title of “I Am” to describe IS-ness of the whole which isn’t there?

Reality is information dependent. The “ation” denotes a process. The “in-form” denotes FORM from formlessness. Information is the process of manifesting thought in-to-form.

And I’m not speaking of the poor use of the word information that physics has butchered us into believing that information is everywhere. It is not. Information must be authored, and therefor may be transmitted if desired. The dumb cosmos does not author.

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word became flesh.

@philosopher You assume that God doesn’t.—You also assume that He would bless random people for being “decent,” when most (for you pan-theists out there) posted criteria involve some variant of service. Decency is to be expected, don’t you think?

@Nullo
I think all organized religion is mostly made up.. That does not mean God can not exist.
Somethings in religion may be true or not. No one religion is right.
Elitist are not decent or moral.

We once said that God created Man, now we say that Man created God. I wonder about a third way where Man and God are co conspirators in developing the Universe. We are more powerful than we think, nothing is beyond us and yet we have no power as our thoughts don’t come from ourselves alone. Man didn’t invent ‘redness’, Man didn’t even invent himself but we can develop the idea of redness through art and poetry and through the colours of the clothes we wear.

We are an idea, or an invention of God, but no less is God an idea or an invention of ours. Both can be true and I think both are true. Can we really think we created God when we didn’t even create ourselves?

Our genetic code confirms that we did not create ourselves. Our continued authoring of code beyond the initial code confirms that we create everything beyond ourselves.

When one considers the statement: Created in the IMAGE of God, we should consider that in terms of our potential to express God like abilities of abstract authorship, not a physical form.

It’s like a disc image on a computer. It is not the real disc, but it has all the capacity of the real disc nonetheless.