What did Voltaire mean when he said that "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"?
Yes.
We can kill God thousands of times for the sake of reason, but the same will lead to its evolution again and again.
When we think of God, we ask ourselves, who is God? Where is it? How it works? To all this my answer is "I don't know".
But what is more important is that we need God. Even if we try to eradicate the concept of God and burn every other sacred text book mentioning about it, we will find that humans will invent it again.
A) We need someone to listen and help us when we are completely helpless, so that we can invoke our inner strength.
What we will do when we know that things are out of our control. Suppose when the plane is crashing? When someone close to you is in ICU? Some people will reason about uselessness of praying and worrying, but the truth is that this is the only thing you can do. Prayer is something that gives me strength. I don't know why?
Ghalib, once wrote in a ghazal: I (who) believe in prayer but could never in God.Elsewhere Shahid Ali countered Nietzsche, asking: When even god is dead, what is left but prayer?
B) There is a certain kind of pleasure or joy in believing something mystical:-
Ever wonder why mystical stories enthralled us? There is some joy, some undefined enthrallment in believing in God. God is one of the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creature, that may or may not have been created by the humans. But it has this ability to enthrall us all.
C) We need to justify things when we don't understand them:-
Tsunami? Earthquake? Random events of catastrophe? God's will is the answer. An act of God. We can discover the reasons behind their origins but we cannot tell why they happened at that particular moment to that particular person.
D) To rule over the weak, to maintain order and create set of rules that needs to be followed in the name of God:-
We called the set of rules as religion and we referred controller as God. To rule over masses, powerful, strong needed Gods. In Plato's Republic, you will find the concept of the "Noble Lie", that which is told to the masses of people who believe it for it's unifying effects on the community..it could be religion, but it could also be threat of a common enemy, or idea (nationalism) that would result in the solidifying of a larger mass, his point was that a "Noble Lie" was an invaluable tool for governments to employ to maintain order and stability, and that the breakdown of such solidarity was the cause for great states to eventually crumble.
Reference:-
1)Was religion historically used to control the morals of the masses to suit a ruling elite? ?
2) Search results for "men used God" (showing 1-20 of 122 quotes)
We can kill God thousands of times for the sake of reason, but the same will lead to its evolution again and again.
When we think of God, we ask ourselves, who is God? Where is it? How it works? To all this my answer is "I don't know".
But what is more important is that we need God. Even if we try to eradicate the concept of God and burn every other sacred text book mentioning about it, we will find that humans will invent it again.
A) We need someone to listen and help us when we are completely helpless, so that we can invoke our inner strength.
What we will do when we know that things are out of our control. Suppose when the plane is crashing? When someone close to you is in ICU? Some people will reason about uselessness of praying and worrying, but the truth is that this is the only thing you can do. Prayer is something that gives me strength. I don't know why?
Ghalib, once wrote in a ghazal: I (who) believe in prayer but could never in God.Elsewhere Shahid Ali countered Nietzsche, asking: When even god is dead, what is left but prayer?
“I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands
B) There is a certain kind of pleasure or joy in believing something mystical:-
Ever wonder why mystical stories enthralled us? There is some joy, some undefined enthrallment in believing in God. God is one of the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creature, that may or may not have been created by the humans. But it has this ability to enthrall us all.
“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
― Albert Einstein
C) We need to justify things when we don't understand them:-
Tsunami? Earthquake? Random events of catastrophe? God's will is the answer. An act of God. We can discover the reasons behind their origins but we cannot tell why they happened at that particular moment to that particular person.
"There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything."
— Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
D) To rule over the weak, to maintain order and create set of rules that needs to be followed in the name of God:-
We called the set of rules as religion and we referred controller as God. To rule over masses, powerful, strong needed Gods. In Plato's Republic, you will find the concept of the "Noble Lie", that which is told to the masses of people who believe it for it's unifying effects on the community..it could be religion, but it could also be threat of a common enemy, or idea (nationalism) that would result in the solidifying of a larger mass, his point was that a "Noble Lie" was an invaluable tool for governments to employ to maintain order and stability, and that the breakdown of such solidarity was the cause for great states to eventually crumble.
Reference:-
1)Was religion historically used to control the morals of the masses to suit a ruling elite? ?
2) Search results for "men used God" (showing 1-20 of 122 quotes)
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