Continuation...

As phunwheel presented, the idea of God was a necessary feature of ancient mankind's need to understand the world around him. He had no ability to grasp the vastness of the Universe, the things around him were all he knew, and it must have been made by somebody.

I would like to further posit that the idea of God is a necessary projection of mankind's inherent arrogance on the world around him. Those who believe in an interventionist God, the classical Judeo-Christian God who is always watching, judging, and persuading mankind in his journey have failed to truly grasp the size and scale of the Universe, and of their own bodies. When we consider that our planet is only one planet in our solar system, which is only one solar system in our galaxy, which is only one galaxy in our little corner of the visible universe: how could it be that the creator of so many millions of planets, suns, galaxies, and all organisms, particles, and energy that make up our universe be so concerned with our planet, our specific species, this particular mash of atoms, as to create US in his image? How is it that we are so important that he would speak to us in visions? That he would bear a son to forgive us of sins?

Ignoring all the obvious hypocrisies inherent in the Bible, along with the Bible's tendency to contradict scientific fact, it seems as if religion is born out of our arrogance. Out of our NEED to feel superior to the world around us...perhaps even our need to cope with our own insignificance. Why else would we need to prop ourselves up as being born in the image of gods? It seems even today, those with a tendency toward religious fervor are also those who tend to have a need to feel superior, above the heretic atheists, the heretic geneticists, the heretic muslims, and the heretic liberals. Once again we are brought back to this classical dichotomy of the infinite versus the infinitesimal. In the ancient world we could not find natural reasons to explain beauty, love, perception, evolution, space, and time: but as we move closer and closer to having complete descriptions of the cosmos, earth, and the universe, we must try to move away from that arrogance. We must realize our place in the universe, cope with it, and try to challenge it. This should be the goal of mankind, not to hold on to ancient perceptions of how we ought to act and where we came from. The thing that allowed the relatively weak body of man to triumph over the animal kingdom was his intellect, before we had created religion to stifle such endeavors.

As long as people are constantly concerned with converting unbelievers rather than poverty, with achieving afterlife rather than AIDs, with waging genocide on heretic Palestinians rather than human rights, religion has achieved to influence mankind through divisiveness while at the same time preaching unity and overarching love. The people must come to realize that the belief in a non-interventionist, non-judgmental God is just as crippling to the status quo as atheism. I am not calling for everyone to wage war on religion, to become militant atheists; no, I am simply asking that we move away from the idea that our species is so important to any sort of "creator" or "spirit" that we are made in his image, and are always being watched and judged by Him. I am calling for us to end the divisiveness of the sects of Christianity, of atheists vs. Christians, of Muslims vs. Jews, I'm calling for people to realize that the natural world is what we have to deal with, and instead of believing we are made in God's image, let us make ourselves gods by manipulating the world through the pursuit of science, philosophy, anthropology, history, and abstract thought.