The Evolution of 'God'

Ever since intelligence was imparted to human beings, it has been

inevitable for us to give up the process of thinking. There are many
feelings, thoughts and emotions in the human mind which result in a
natural course of action when they occur. Its like a cause and effect
relationship that creates conditions within the mind which compensate for
the negatives that occur. Its like insecurity which is negated by the feeling
of support from another person. This basic built of the human mind, rather
a characteristic of nature was well pointed out by a renowned scientist
called Lenz. He eventually framed a law which is popularly known in
physics as Lenz's law. Framed to describe the effect of a magnetic field
around a coil, it can be applied reasonably well to other things as well. The
law (in simple terms) states that:

"Any effect caused due to certain changes is such that it tries to oppose
the change and hence obstructs the cause of the change"

A simple example that follows Lenz's law occurring in nature is the rainfall
that most of us witness. The cause of rainfall occurring is due to
evaporation. The evaporation is mainly caused due to the heading of the
land masses. So, we can simply say that more the heat, more the
evaporation, therefore defining a higher probability of rainfall. The rainfall
again results in cooling off of the earth which was its own cause.

The origin of the idea that god exists can be explained by such a concept
which is embodied in the subconscious as the physics of nature. Even a
small child knows that dropping a ball from a height results in it falling
towards the earth. The point needed to be focussed upon is that the idea of
god existing was an eventuality and a need of the human mind in the
primitive stages of evolution. The idea was a simple support system for the
human mind, like parents for a child, to evolve. The only difference in this
case is that the concept was created by the mind itself unknowingly. I
would say, the mind was simply following a natural course when creating
such a concept for itself.

The question that comes now is why was it natural? Life in the primitive
phase of evolution was not so easy. Man with all the power to think was
just let out into an open world full of mysteries which are still not known
completely. My personal view is that there is hardly a 30% penetration into
the mysteries of the universe as of today even after millions of years of
evolution. People in the scientific world are still confused and astonished
about the way the universe works. One can now imagine how the thought
process would have worked at a time when the penetration was 0%. Chaos
is all one would see. Lets try and imagine. Its day and a bright object
comes out in the sky and disappears with time. As the sun disappears into
the horizon, the sky is studded with tiny bits of glowing objects. Noises
made by wild animals are heard all around. Without what we call the basic
scientific sense of the mind today, no wonder one would go mad thinking
about all of it. The mind needed a reason to explain everything that was
happening around (the other side of the intellectual coin) and the inability
to explain obviously resulted in a feeling of insecurity from which relief was
sought.

The idea of god probably stemmed from such an urge. Apart from the
feeling of insecurity, there were also other issues. Considering that the pre-
historic age was populated by other animals which were nurtured by
Mother Nature in parallel, there was a serious competition. As the theory of
evolution says, it was the survival of the fittest. To think about all these
parameters logically and reason out was simply an impossibility at such a
stage of evolution. The intelligence was simply not good enough. The best
and simple option for the human mind was to forcibly believe in an entity
which was in control of all the things that constituted the world back then.
Such a belief therefore sprouted from a sense of severe fear. Again
according to Lenz’s law, it can be proved that such a theory opposed its
own cause as it clearly defied logic and reason and made man even more
stupid but yet stable. There was a phase of instability after intelligence was
added and now the transient phase was over, leading to stability. Thus the
concept of God which grew due to the changes brought about in the
human mind due to the growth of intelligence, also opposed the same by
inducing blind faith, thus retarding the growth of logic and reason. If the
retarding hadn't happened, life would have been chaotic and unstable and
perished eventually.

This was meant to be by the laws of nature and any other course to be
followed would not have been an option.

Beliefs:
The phase after this phase of basic belief was the phase of 'Observe and
Understand'. Anything that man began to observe was to be put under a
single blanket of understanding. Several rules were made up in due course
of the phase. Population had now spread to various parts of the globe and
different people observed different things and framed their beliefs
accordingly.
Different people at different locations on the globe had different beliefs
about their gods which spread around the respective regions and became
unified as different religions. Islam, Christianity and Hinduism are only a
few examples from today's world. Greeks and Egyptians had their own
religion. The aboriginals in various parts of the world had their own
religion. Examples being the Mayas and the Incas in Central America.
Going to the probabilistic nature of equality, it is important to understand
that no religion is supreme as some beliefs in one of the religions
contradict the beliefs in another. This actually means to say that religion
was an additional layer that was added on top of the god frame that already
existed on the basis of the observations made. A simple example which
testifies the idea is the theory of how an eclipse occurs in various religions.
The Hindus in India called it a demon while the Chinese called it a dragon.
People actually thought it was some kind of a punishment to mankind that
god showered due to the sins committed even though the eclipse used to
occur whether man existed or not.

Divinity was thus a simple way of explaining things that happened around
in the world to convince the not so intellectually mature human mind.

A bit about re-birth:

Re-birth was another concept which is based on the idea of each body
being controlled by a special energy called the soul. For the not so
powerful but curious human mind, the simple fact that everything ends
with death was simply too much to take. The curiosity was a result again of
intelligence which brought the ever existing love for life. This led to novel
methods of security. People became smarter and began to socialize for
they knew it well that it is necessary to make company with your own kind
in order to survive the other agents of destruction like wild animals, natural
forces etc. They built villages, towns, cities and even kingdoms. The desire
to live was increasing. Death was now perceived as an end of life in one
realm and the beginning of life in the other. Clearly no one wanted to
believe in the fact that one would end everything with death. If people did
then it would again lead to instability and fear. A concept which said people
would come back into the world as other living things or even humans
again was devised which gave relief from the threatening feeling of re-birth
not existing, for this feeling would add no meaning to life no matter what a
person tried to do. The bottom line was that it would be cool if a person
died because he/she would be coming back someday. This eliminated the
fear of death too.

Some people are atheists:

Its become a trend these days to say 'I m an atheist, I don't believe in GOD.'
Its supposedly cool when people say that. Most of them just say it because
its cool and only a few actually mean it. It is by overcoming all the above
inherent fears of the human mind does one become an atheist.
Now lets examine and analyze certain important plus points of the idea of
god.

Firstly it made people more social and interactive. It made them more
ethical and concerned and inducted morals. People began to care about
others because they didn't want to commit any sins for they feared god.
This actually brought out what was good for the entire society and thus
boosted the process of evolution. All the things that we see today are a
result of that evolution and if not for god, it would have never happened.
People would live like animals, fighting and killing each other. God made
them more civilized. As a result, what ever we see and experience today is
because of god. The concept of god is therefore the root cause of
evolution. It therefore deserves some minimum respect and people who
call themselves atheists should give it a thought before actually calling
themselves so.

(
Ultimate Question:
The ultimate question now would be whether to believe in god in spite of
knowing so much about his history. The answer is a simple yes. Evolution
has made us more intelligent and has made us realize the illogical beliefs
that we have. Since the concept has evolved over a period of millions of
years, it is important to understand that it cannot be removed from our
heads immediately. It wouldn't be wrong at all to say that it is in out genes
to believe in god (A slight exaggeration). The concept of god is attached to
the human mind just like a bandage to a wet wound. Taking it off now
would only cause more pain. It should be taken off only when the wound
heals. The wound healing is nothing but humans evolving and evolution is
a continous process. Our intellect is still not strong enough to account for
everything that happens around us logically. The day we reach such a
stage, we can give up the concept of god and proudly say that we don't
need it anymore. All we have to do is wait till such a time comes. It might
probably take a few more thousand years for that to happen.

Final Comments:
As of now, it is quite impossible for us to detach ourselves from the idea of
God. This is because; there are so many things in the world which we still
cannot attribute to with logical reasons and explanations. We therefore are
still in a phase where the world is mystical and not logical. In the little
world of ours that we live in, people put efforts to live happily than to live
truthfully and wisely. I am no exception to this rule either. For what we
know of the world right now, it is important to understand that there still
are forces beyond our premature intellect and that the probability of
something going wrong are more as the facts in the world are
incomprehensible.
(Here goes the proof of Murphy's Law which is an obvious consequence of
the previous sentence). It is better to be happy and leave things to blind
faith and wait for evolution to take its course.