WHY do humans create gods?

If we could answer that question, we would know a great deal more than we do now about religion, and it might help some people get over it if they saw that they believe in god as a normal human trait.

People often see the light when their motivations and insecurities are layed out before them.

I think that athiests have been too willing to just give the religious their 'freedom to believe' without challenging them about this obvious fantasy. After all, we athiests are moral people and we do follow the golden rules... and we also demand to have our beliefs, or lack of them. It sems that nobody has ever really delved into why humans created gods in almost every civilisation ever.

Developing a fantasy like "god" is not restricted to religion of course. There was the famous Flat Earth belief, and people were hanged for treason for disputing it. The point is that people really feel strongly about their beliefs, no matter if they are right or wrong.

So, Why DO we create gods? -
There is a very strong human trait that wants to explain the unexplained, or unexplainable. From the first time a human saw the Northern Lights at night, we started to explain things we don't know much about by relating them to god, or gods, and their magnificant creations. Higher powers have allways been brought to the human mind because there is OBVIOUSLY something at work here on earth that is a higher power than we are.
Science has shown me, at least, that nature does all those things - Northern lights are so amazing to see, but are just natural phenomenon.

Explaining these things got humans to create god. And then Aliens as more things needed explanation.

This trait pops up in various places and times. I even do it, in small ways, when I play backgammon online:
I start thinking something is making the dice do these things to let me win so easily most of the time. But then I realise it is a software program that has its quirks, sometimes coinciding with my desires. When it does, it needs explaning, and I start to think of some force working through my mind that can affect the dice.... but that is not real, it is our human trait developed over millions of years that wants to explain coincidences and improbable events.

So when people start to think about death and birth, we will obviously create a god to explain it. "It can't be just death, so lets find some way to make it more tolerable", like that we don't really die [but of course, we still do].

I would hope that some intellectuals would take up this project and be able to really show people how and why we tend to create gods. The fact that every civiliisation has believed in god[s] might be a really scary fact for atheists, in that it shows that something is real about it. However, through intellectualising and exploring the motivations for creating gods, we should be able to show that it is merely a TRAIT and not that god is real.

If we do not, we can be sure that the human race will continue to have these major divisions between peoples and dis-harmony and of course more wars [although war wont end there because there are commercial enterprises that will also ensure that we have wars, as they are so great for profits].

As long as we believe there is a god to take care of us, we won't bother with global warming or other problems that are bigger than we are. Thats what gods are for!! [and thats my point]

Karlin
[an athiest, and darn proud of it, but I have compassion for believers, not scorn]