People need fantasy. Religion proves this. The opposition of religion to scientific fact underscores it. In previous ages, people answered broader questions about reality, as best anyone could, by filling it in with fantasy, myth and religion. So, where did the originators of the myths get them? Purely from imagination, with the writer so proud and amazed by his insight that he wanted everybody to read it and believe it.
I can understand that. As a writer, you often surprise yourself. Writers call it a muse for a reason. You sit down with a blank page and when you finish, little or none of it had been in your head at the start. They ancient scribe/myth-maker must have been impressed, and not necessarily with him/herself. With few exceptions, the names of ancient writers did not survive. I have a writer friend that despises the whole idea of a muse. Yes, it is in a way, insulting to the writer. Because if there's one thing about writing, and that is it's work. Even when imaginative ideas are easy, they have to be conveyed in words, which requires rephrasing, correcting, making the right word choice. The muse lore is misleading about that, but if we expunged the notion of a muse from our minds, writers would recreate it tomorrow.
However, so, an ancient writer comes up with the myth, such as the Garden of Eden story (I have to put on In-a-gadda-da-vida now.) How does the myth go from entertainment to religious dogma? Part of the answer might be that people just didn't have a better explanation for how the world came about and how things sucked so badly. However, I think the greater part is mental illness. Where anybody's guess is as good as anyone elses, the one who believed their story the most probably spread the account to all those who knew they didn't guess. The one who acted fanatical enough won, especially if he could make a good show of talking to something supernatural. Then things really get moving when other, more lucid people realize that forming cults is lucrative business that gets you money and power.
Imagine personalities like L. Ron Hubbard, David Koresh, Jim Jones and Leonard Jeffs in the ancient world, where science was non-existent and where the idea of empirical fact was theoretical at best. Such people had have existed then, too, and they would have been competing in making cults.
I like to point out to Christians that in Classical Rome, Christianity was the Scientology of its age. If you go ahead 2,000 years from now maybe Scientology, or its successor, will be dominant, and Christianity would go the way of Mithraism-- extinct. (I don't want anybody to think I hope this is true.) They can't accept the notion. They hate to think that the principles of evolution and extinction could apply to their faith, and really, to all human thoughts and myths. Of course, their main objection would be that Christianity is the real truth. When declaration fails, they'll insist that it must be the truth, because without "the truth" humankind would fall into immorality and chaos. What they fail to grasp is that if God doesn't exist, then people have living without God for millennia. In fact, always, and we have fallen in and out of chaos. World War II was an example of chaos and strife on a truly colossal scale.
I will concede to the Christians one thing: yes, perhaps there is one truth. But what is it isn't Christian? What if your belief about it doesn't directly effect your destiny? Once more, what if it's a truth your mind isn't adapted to perceive? That's the way the universe looks to me.
There may be something that you could gods, or something I can call God in this universe, that of course, I can't perceive. I'm limited in space and time, and I have only so many senses. Gods would be superior beings, ones that could say, move planets. Whereas God would be a supreme being, something that created the universe.
I strongly doubt there could be a creator, though, and I there's no way that creator could be anything like Yahweh/Jehovah in the Bible. Why? Because he's too small-minded and ignorant to create anything like this universe. Maybe the character worked when we thought the heavens were above, and the sun rotated around the earth, which was flat. In that universe, all he had to do to create the universe people thought they were in was separate light from darkness, separate waters, put the plants and animals in place. He could concern himself with the geopolitics of a single faction of humans and give his approval to their crimes and power or punish them for their disobedience. God the Father fits in a small flat world. However, along in the 19th century, once "the world" became the universe and we realized there were no heavens up there, and we determined we're on one of a trillion worlds in an expanding universe, the idea becomes untenable and those clinging to it look like buffoons who take themselves and their own cause too seriously.
So, let's look at the Old Testament God. He's totally ignorant of what he's purported to have created. Instead of telling them about sanitation, he provides them Kosher Law. Instead of telling them about bacteria or viruses, he eventually sends his Son to heal people, for three years out of four thousand. He doesn't describe any stars for us to later discover with telescopes, and thus prove his knowledge. He receives blood sacrifices when really, blood isn't any different than any other animal tissue. That and much more.
My opinion is: whatever, if anything created this universe is nothing like a human mind, nothing we can communicate with like a Father or a human being. In fact, most likely it wasn't created. Creation is a human notion, and we do it with our mind. All a human does to create is find something in the world, or some notion derived from the world and alter it. This concept cannot be applied to creating something from nothing. I know Christians will say that's because God is so much better. No, that's because their divine notion of creation is false, does not exist in this universe.
Declaration: no human being has ever encountered the Supreme Being or anything that "created" this universe, and it's going to be a long time, if ever, before any human being knows where it really came from..
And "belief" isn't going to change those facts.
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