Why do all cultures have a concept of God?

Why do all cultures have a concept of God? Scientists have concluded humans are "hardwired" to believe in God and can even stimulate certain parts of the brain to create an experience akin to feeling divine presence. Again, this begs the question "why?"

deep down inside every being feels this, for every emotion their is physical mental and spiritual involvement. It hasn't been proven but their are other energies. some that could infact link to our soul's energy, I mean, we are electrical beings, but what is powering that, just food an water? How do we get electricity from food? Wheres this never ending Generator of life comming from?

Makes you wonder if we are wirelessly routed to something.

Makes you wonder an then realize we are all connected then. Meaning thousands apon millions of things,

So Why do we all feel this..... Same reason we feel air, water, earth an fire.... Becuz its there. We just haven't Proven it yet lol....

Its a simple answer.

Humans, as a group, can not believe that things just happen. There must be an underlaying cause.

This was true in olden days and still true today. Religion today has modernized, as mankind has, to still accept the notion of God.

You see a different aspect of this reasoning here every day and all the time. People, as a group, believe there has to be a master plan for anything and everything.

Some people can not accept the very fact that one or a few individuals can have a profound impact on society when an event happens. Regardless of the evidence, they have a religious belief that there is a grand conspiracy involving secret societies, hidden governments, powerful groups of industrialists, alien entanglement, and the list goes on.

People want to believe that weather can be modified or changed by praying, chanting, or even just anger at it. The weather Gods must be upset with us or else it would rain, or stop flooding, or the hurricane / typhoon would go elsewhere, or the drought would end, or it would heat up or cool down. It's weather in cyclical patterns that mankind doesn't understand. Again, though, someone or something must control it. It just can't happen but it does.

just some thoughts...

Because people want to believe there is 'more' to their miserable existences and they are gullible enough to "believe," when someone gives them the story to satisfy that need.

Just live your life. You're a slave in enough of this life... don't be a slave to one more false master.

Originally posted by Trance Optic
deep down inside every being feels this, for every emotion their is physical mental and spiritual involvement. It hasn't been proven but their are other energies. some that could infact link to our soul's energy, I mean, we are electrical beings, but what is powering that, just food an water? How do we get electricity from food? Wheres this never ending Generator of life comming from?

Makes you wonder if we are wirelessly routed to something.

Makes you wonder an then realize we are all connected then. Meaning thousands apon millions of things,

So Why do we all feel this..... Same reason we feel air, water, earth an fire.... Becuz its there. We just haven't Proven it yet lol....

Please, allow me to let you all experience ID.

After minding a couple breaths with your eyes closed, watch this video:Tell me, did you experience tender feelings? You found them adorable, didn't you? You wanted them to be well? That, my siblings, is ID.

God wanted you to feel that way. Innocence in a child is more attuned to this, usually. You were created to feel that way. Not just to take care of kittens; humans are designed to ensure that life flourishes.

You just experienced intelligent design firsthand.

[edit on 25-4-2008 by reject]

The roots of religion are older by far than any recorded history. They go back to that moment in time when we first began taking note of dreams and visions.

from The Mind in the Cave by David Lewis-Williams (Thames and Hudson) Pages 132-135

Amongst hunter-gatherer (and some other) communities the sort of experience that the Tukano describe is called 'shamanism'. The word describes from the Tungus language of central Asia. Today this is a disputed word. Some researchers feel that the term has been used too generally to be of any use and that it should be restricted to the central Asian communities of its origin. Although I appreciate the point these writers make, I and many others disagree. We believe that 'shamanism' usefully points to a human universal- the need to make sense of shifting consciousness.- and the way in which this is accomplished, especially, but not always, among hunter-gatherers. The word need not obscure the diversity of worldwide shamanism any more than 'Christianity' obscures theological, ritual and social differences between the Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and the many other Protestant Churches. Nor does 'Christianity' mask the changes that have taken place over the last two millenia. Too intense a focus is in danger of losing sight of the wood.

-snip-

I am not alone in emphasizing the importance of making sense of altered states of consciousness in the genesis of religion.

-snip-

(Weston La Barre states)

...hallucination, trance, possession, vision, sensory deprivation, and especially the REM-dream state- apart from their cultural contexts and symbolic content, are essentially the same psychic states found everywhere among mankind; ...shamanism or direct contact with the supernatural in these states...is the de facto source of all revelation and ultimately of all religions.

spelling edit

[edit on 25/4/08 by masqua]

No one has really responded to the hard-wired comment. I read that as well, and found it interesting.

What does religion give a person? Well, one interpretation can be made as "hope". If a person is struggling to find food, not be eaten by lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), a belief in something larger them himself can make the difficult times easier. Faith will carry you through.

Now, approach this from an evolutionary tract. Since this can be perceived as an advantageous evolutionary trait, it could have persisted until the modern day.

reply to post by TLomon


We're not hard-wired to believe in God - we're hard-wired to try to understand our surroundings. When our collective knowledge wasn't good enough for it, which is a situation every single culture around the world has been in, we attribute the unknown to God, as that's all the human mind can come up with to explain it - some divine being who can cause everything that we can't understand. Hey - he's divine, after all!

So, my understanding is the notion of God is created by our own desire to understand our world to fill in the gap.

As for the idea of religion giving us faith to continue, that's true. We don't only get this faith from religion, though - it's possible to get it from anything, if it means enough to you.

To me, religion is an anachronism, a vestigial relic of a much earlier time in human societal evolution, when the rule of law could not be enforced by anyone other than "God". Write down your laws, say God will send you to hell if you break them, and you've got yourself the very first social contract that outlines expected and allowed behaviours. If you don't have a police force to maintain the peace and to protect people, then you need God to do the enforcing for you. Human development has rendered God useless, to everyone other than those desperate to believe in him.

The news article stating this came from CNN:

www.cnn.com...

It is rather interesting. Especially the analysis by atheists, etc.

Occam's Razor would suggest that all cultures have a concept of God, because there really *IS* a God.

I think it's similar to instinct, we have a desire to know and to understand everything around us. Wise people would be asked questions about the Sun and Moon and everything else, the only answer they could offer is that it's from God or God did it.

I feel it's also related to having extra time on our hands, giving us time to think about things we don't understand. When your not using 100% of your time to survive you have time to sit and ponder, and for a long time God was the logical answer to all things unknown. At one time God was behind that terrible storm that killed so many, now we know it's weather that caused it, and we even understand why weather happens.

As science advances and humans learn more about ourselves and our universe, I feel we will understand someday that God is in us.

So in a nutshell I feel the belief in God is related to understanding all that is around us and the whole question of what is our purpose and why are we here. The more we understand these things the less we will believe in a God.

[edit on 19-5-2008 by LDragonFire]

I think its to retain some sense of control over ignorance.

Humans can logically discover things with almost limitless potential. However there are some questions which are unanswerable.

Humanity in general finds it rather hard to admit ignorance. So we invent an answer which may be correct.

I happen to think that the existence of God is a logical extension of existentialism, in that existentialism will inherently fail to explain "what next".

Considering that we exist, is cause enough to conclude that there is more to life.

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Nope. Occam's razor would suggest they are all wrong, as a god is far more complicated than no god.

there are atheistic cultures

example: en.wikipedia.org...

The Pirahã have no concept of God or religion. They believe in spirits, though these are not the same kinds of spirits in other cultures. These "spirits" can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things.

a culture that doesn't believe in anything but the material world...
they're a purely atheistic culture.

Im not bible religous, but i do believe we were created and i know from when i was little and to this day i have a gut feeling that something is out there, not cause someones thrown religion at me from every direction, but because i feel within my body i feel an energy that lets me know something else is out there, its like have you ever met anyone and had the feeling they were bad news or feel a strange presence around you from an unfamiliar face. my point is whether or not you want to call it god,aliens,whatever! i think everyone has that same feeling because we're all connected somehow,everybody has their own story or preception of god because they feel something is out there in they're mind body and spirit [energy]

Originally posted by TLomon
The news article stating this came from CNN:

www.cnn.com...

It is rather interesting. Especially the analysis by atheists, etc.

What Dr. Newberg is suggesting must be lost somewhere to make the article accessible for laymen, because I don't see any evidence of any ' hardwiring for faith' there. A number of brain areas are listed along with their functions involving religion. He found that across cultures the frontal lobe helps us concentrate during prayer for instance. The frontal lobe is however generally responsible for focusing, attention and task delegation, so finding this area to be involved with focusing during prayer is a no-brainer.

To second Madnessinmysouls post: I have spoken to members of the Bushmen tribe in South Africa (through an interpreter) and I asked if they were religious in any way. They told me they conduct ceremonies to honour their forefathers. The interpreter added that they have no concept of God.

I therefore dispute both the claim that all cultures believe in some form of a God and the claim that we are hardwired to do so. Finally, as also noted in the CNN article, the fact that feeling a divine presence due to artificial stimulation of brain areas suggests that divine experiences can be explained through natural overstimulation as well, rather than through an actual diety.

reply to post by truthseeker816


Your feelings can lie to you. You wouldn't pin the entire reason behind the universe on your own feelings, would you? Would you pick medicine for a sick family member at random, or would you want to at least understand what the drugs do first? If you treated the rest of your world with the heedless abandonment you afford the creation of the universe, I fear for you and those around you.

God, if you think he exists, gave us our brains for a reason. And I'm pretty sure the reason isn't "don't use it".