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Did Man Create God?

by David_E._Comings,_M.D.

In an era when politicians must prove they are religious to get
elected and the proclamations of their ministers can get them
into trouble, when schools are urged to teach creationism, when
presidents and main stream movies proclaim the virtues of
Intelligent Design, when fundamentalists want to destroy Western
civilization in the name of religion, and when ninety-five
percent of the people in the world believe that God created man,
we need to ask the question, do they have it all backward - Did
Man Create God?

If man created God then many of the precepts that humans base
much of their beliefs on, are false. Asking if man created the
theory of a personal God that answers prayers is not the same as
asking if God exists. It is impossible to absolutely prove or
disprove whether a supernatural being exists or does not exist,
since by definition, supernatural things are outside the realm of
physical laws. It is, however, possible to ask if man created the
theory of a personal God that created all life, and who answers
our prayers, judges us, and gives us eternal life in heaven or
hell.

Man has an insatiable desire to know the cause of all things. In
pre-modern times the theory of God provided a seemingly
infallible explanation of where the universe, the earth, all the
plants and animals including man, came from. God the creator -
created them. Man is unique among all the animals in knowing that
life is finite and that we are all doomed to die. Man is also
unique among all the animals in often having a fear of dying. In
addition to explaining were we came from, the theory of God was
also able to help alleviate this fear of death by promising
eternal life. A modest embellishment of the theory of God,
consisting of dividing eternal life into something pleasant
(heaven) or very unpleasant (hell), and being sent to either one
based on our behavior, thus providing a means of encouraging
humans to behave morally.

Man�s insatiable thirst for knowledge and knowing the cause of
things led to the development of science, wherein knowledge is
advanced by proposing theories and setting up experiments
designed to try to disprove the theories. This hard nosed,
experiment driven approach has led to astonishing advances in our
knowledge of the physical world. This in turn allowed man to
develop new theories of the origin of the plants and animals by
evolution and natural selection, theories of the origin of the
universe by the big bang and hyperinflation, and many other
theories that explained the workings of the physical and animal
world. These new theories did not prove that God did not exist.
However, it was clear that the old theory, that God created the
universe and man, was not necessary. Natural processes were
adequate for the job.

Being spiritual does not inherently imply being religious.
Spirituality can be broadly defined as a sense of being connected
to something greater than ones self. Genetic studies have shown
that a substantial part of spirituality is controlled by our
genes, evolved by natural selection, is pleasurable and is
essential for survival and will never go away. In addition,
altruistic and moral behaviors are inborn traits for most humans
and do not have to be forced upon us by promises of hell and
damnation if we do not behave. These and other observations are
consistent with the conclusion that man created God to explain
what was at one time unexplainable, alleviate fears of death, and
drive moral behavior. They also indicate that man was the author
of the sacred books.

If this is correct then one religion is not inherently better
than another, one sacred book is not inherently better than
another, and the reasons for religious prejudice and terrorism
disappear - allowing all humans to live in peace.

David E. Comings, M.D., author of Did Man Create God? is a world
renown physician, human geneticist, and neuroscientist, past
president of the American Society of Human Genetics and head of
the Department of Medical Genetics at the City of Hope National
Medical Center for 37 years. See <a
href="http://www.didmancreategod.com">Did Man Create God</a>.

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