Is God just a human invention? There seems to be a common assertion made about God and religion nowadays by skeptics. And that is that God is just a human invention. The claim is that ancient people didn’t understand the natural world, so they made up gods to explain the things they were seeing. So, is God just a human invention?
This Is A Genetic Fallacy
This is what is known as a genetic fallacy. A genetic fallacy is a logical error in which the person claims that because we know the origin of a belief, that belief is therefore false.
The people making the claim that “God is just a human invention” think that because we know (or think we know) why ancient people created gods, it disproves God or gods. But this conclusion does not naturally follow from the argument. Ancient people may very well have tried to explain natural phenomena in this way. But that doesn’t mean they were wrong about God’s existence.
You Can Have A Right Belief With Wrong Reasoning
Just because someone arrived at a conclusion due to faulty reasoning doesn’t necessarily mean that conclusion is wrong. I could believe that the sun will set in the West every night because there is a man in the sky turning the earth on a giant spit. As he spins the earth, the sun appears to come up in the East and set in the West. We know my reasoning is wrong, but that I am still correct in my beliefs on where the sun will rise and set.
We Have Good Reasons To Think God Exists
So just showing that the origin of a belief has faulty reasoning is not enough. You must show the belief to be false on its own merits. And on this front, we have good reason to think that the God of the Bible exists.
We can use arguments like the moral argument, the beginning of the universe, the origin of life on the planet, the fine-tuning of the universe, and many more to argue for the existence of God. Far from using God as an explanation for what we don’t know, God is the best explanation for what we do know!
So is God just a human invention? While people may have erroneous reasons for believing in God, it doesn’t follow that God, therefore, does not exist.
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