VIII. At Our Best… ↑
70. We recognize gods and religions as human constructs.
Gods and religions are things we have made for ourselves.
This does not necessarily mean that they are bad, or inauthentic.
There are many religions, and even the same religion can be practiced in different ways by different groups, and different individuals.
Religions can be organized along very egalitarian lines, or in a very hierarchical fashion. And religions generally rely on shared stories and values, and have inspired a great deal of art. And most religions rely on social networks organized at the local level.
The concept of God is often used as a symbolic embodiment of shared ideals, a sort of placeholder for our common aspirations, and for a sense of overarching unity.
Images surrounding God (such as the Christian cross, or the Star of David) are often used as forms of tribal identification.
Words from Others on this Topic
In short, religions are great bushy trees that evolved, and continue to evolve, by cultural evolution.
David Sloan Wilson, 2019, from the book This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
James Baldwin, 1962, from the essay “Letters from a Region of My Mind”
It wasn’t God who introduced us to morality; rather, it was the other way around. God was put into place to help us live the way we felt we ought to.
Frans de Waal, 2013, from the book The Bonobo and the Atheist
We stayed with the blues and Francie, sensing a vein of covenant, sang in her scratchiest aching voice (the reason we cajoled her into the band to start with), and it began to resemble what I once imagined church might be like —a church you could bear — where people laughed and enjoyed each other and did not care if they were right all the time or if other people were wrong.
Leif Enger, 2024, from the novel I Cheerfully Refuse
We ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far.
Niels Bohr, 1971, from the book Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.
Albert Einstein, 1949, from the book The World As I See It
Next: 71. First and last, there is wonder