By simply asking that question you’re perpetuating the lack of useful dialog. But you’re right, my comment two comments ago was me saying what was on my mind for no reason. Then Robert received a notice that this article had received a new comment and thought he would attempt to label me as partisan against what he had to say. I responded to his comment because I like to set the record straight.

Thanks for your time.

P.S. As much as I try to keep my site, this site, clean and free of useless information (jokes about my articles aside) I apologize to my visitors for those instances when I’m unable to do anything about it. Because If I delete posts, the posters will be offended or think I don’t want to you to see what they had to say. The truth is, I was just trying to keep this site efficient.

How do your most recent comments add to the conversation?

Your last post was you being an ass, you don’t know me, don’t act like you do. What I deleted was not a conversation between to the two of us, you wanted me to prove that man invented God and in doing so you seriously confused me with all your double talk and fantasy beliefs. The fact is that God didn’t invent itself. And then you brought up all of that crap about how do you know stuff is real. You are an absurd theologian that will say or believe whatever you have to so that way you can believe in the one God that you want to believe in. That assessment is based on everything you said through our lengthy private email conversation which I just re-read to make sure.

Based on our conversation through email I don’t think there is a single thing that you could actually prove or convince to a person is true. You simply confuse people to the point that you think you won. As do many other theology students. You don’t have facts so you hypothesize everything.

Christopher, when you deal with me you’re dealing with some who can be painfully honest and open to a real transfer of dialog. I talk with many of my pastor friends on a regular basis and our conversations always end pleasantly. I learn something, they learn something, regardless of whether or not we believe each other.

So to reiterate, I didn’t delete useful dialog that anyone could have learned from between myself and Robert Fischer. I did however, post a full response to Robert after I think I understood what he was asking of me.

Hey Robert, good job of bringing even more useless dialog to the article.

When I tried to call out Rob on the foundation of his analogy — that the Christian God is, at His core, an invention of humanity — he promptly deleted my entire conversation with him. Just so you know the kind of person you’re dealing with.

I worked for a guy for over 6 years that would do that crap and everybody knew he wasn’t confused.

Do you hear me guy I used to work for? No one thought you were confused, that was their cue to leave the room.

With regards to the claim, I understood the original entry to claim certainty for the non-existence of God to be based upon the invention of God by men. I was particularly interested in the claim about men inventing God. However, it’s possible there was a misunderstanding on my part. Given the nature of language, this would not be shocking.

It will always be easy to nitpick details that I get wrong. I’ve heard about people trying to have conversations with theologians about their proof of god and they almost always turn the conversation into something different because in the end they rarely admit that they have based their entire life on something that can not be proved.

Maybe this is my first experience with that. It would be easy to make me look foolish because of my lack of knowledge in certain areas of history. But I’m not currently educating myself to be one of those people, I have another career I’m working on. This is just a side project for me.

I’m not afraid of looking foolish, ask my wife, she would agree with that.

That said, how does the issue of the Winter Solstice support the claim that the Catholic Church invented Yahweh?

The Catholic church was in power when they hijacked the Winter Solstice claiming it to be the birthdate of christ.

And assuming the confusion regarding the deity being discussed will be cleared up, there has still been no empirical evidence presented to support the claim regarding the invention of Yahweh by the Catholic Church.

When I refer to there being no god I’m speaking of the christian god Yahweh, aka “The Living God” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh.

I apologize for not being more specific. There were Gods before Yahweh. Most of those gods were invented by man to answer questions they could not understand. Here’s a very long list of gods created by man http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_myth_gods_index.htm. Funny, christians won’t argue that those gods were created by man because that makes sense to them, yet the christian god is real. Those same concepts carried over to Yahweh in which it is used to answer questions man can’t. Yet as time has passed and we do answer those questions Yahweh continues to be believed in. Unlike Thor (God of Thunder), we know what causes thunder and no longer need a god to explain it.

There’s a story in “The Salmon of Doubt” about how man exists on the earth and assumed it was created for him.

I say:
There is an explanation exploring why people would want to create gods. There is an example where the author invents his own god. And with gods left undefined, the author could continue to create and point to his own creations as evidence. However, this is not acceptable. So, let’s narrow down the potential gods. How about we go with the Christian God? What evidence is there that the Christian God was invented by men?

[quote]With all of the divisions of religion at the time the church figured they could create a new god because they knew people would believe in a god as they had in the past. But unlike the other gods this one would benefit the church.[/quote]
The concept of God apparently existed before this time, whatever time it is. You seem to be arguing for a specific God. Yet your claim was “God was invented for crowd control”. Are you now saying that God, which already existed, was used, not created, for crowd control? Sure, religion has been used to maintain power. But, that does not prove that god was created by men for power.

[quote]Why were there churches if god had not previously existed? This wasn’t part of your question but I will attempt to answer it. People have always believed in one god or another, it only stands to reason that temples, places of worship would exist from one god to the next.[/quote]
Again you start by saying that god has not previously existed then you say people have always believe in a god. I’m confused. Did god always exist or was he created at this time you talk about? Just to be clear, what are you talking about when you say “god”?

Thanks.

With the basis of my answer set I will move on to the part where god was created for crowd control. Since governments did not exist at the time and churches ruled, they needed a way to stay in power. With all of the divisions of religion at the time the church figured they could create a new god because they knew people would believe in a god as they had in the past. But unlike the other gods this one would benefit the church.

With the church creating a god and dictating what that god wanted it’s people to do they set forth to preach the word of this god long before the bible. People, being mostly illiterate at the time and easily tricked by magic fell for the claims of the church. I would also assume the church was clever enough to plant some people in crowds to talk about what god did and what it was capable of.

The church created this new god to control the people with unsubstantiated claims that can not be proven. Such as life after death and the lakes of fire in hell. They convinced people these things existed even though they are completely unprovable.

The church continued on with tithe, how much god wants from you. Which went straight to the church and added to its ability to rule. Money is power.

God was created by the church to control people so the church could remain in power.

Why were there churches if god had not previously existed? This wasn’t part of your question but I will attempt to answer it. People have always believed in one god or another, it only stands to reason that temples, places of worship would exist from one god to the next. Therefore whatever building the priests were occupying would have become the new church of worship for their newly invented god. These men at the time were also the smartest, they were educated and they were philosophical. These men were leaders with ideas and they invented their own way to create power and to stay in power.

Got proof?