Is God man-made? Did man create the idea of God?

1880 155 etc. Nothing can be known of God, save as He is pleased to reveal. Man has projected an imaginary being, the creation of his own mind, the personification of the qualities he finds in himself — has clothed it with power beyond his own, has deified and worshipped it. In result he has worshipped himself, or a demon behind himself. The wisest among the old heathen could not go beyond himself, that is, he could not conceive other attributes than nature displayed. These were developed to perfection in his gods, but it was the perfection of sin. And if there were no other surer and better way, we could learn in measure what man is from the gods he has made and worshipped. Let the cunningly-devised fables of pagan idolatry bear testimony. The portraits of man's deities were sketched in his heart, and painted in the colours of a degraded imagination. Thus man is known from the character of his gods. His gods are the impersonation of his sin, the apotheosis of his vices. Man is not merely a sinner, but a worshipper of sin, a slave of Satan.

The effect of man's inability to go beyond himself is, that he never conceived the idea of an eternal God, though he ought to have apprehended through creation His eternal power and divinity. His gods may be called immortal, but he gave them a beginning, and put them under a superior power, whose decrees could not be set aside. So incapable was man to conceive the idea of self-existence, that he must have a fate to control his gods, and must hide his conscious ignorance in chaos.

The knowledge of God was given up. Men did not like to retain God in their knowledge. (Rom. 1) Never did the mind of man in itself conceive the truth of One infinite in power and wisdom, infinite in goodness and love. The cultured and the refined were as far from it as the rude untutored savage. The world by wisdom knew not God. He is only to be known from and by Himself — from His own word, and by His own Spirit.

The imagination, under the influence of Satan, created gods everywhere, but at the bottom the idea of God was there. And yet this God, the true, was unknown - deplorable state of mankind, deprived of God, of whom they stood in such deep need! thus enemies to His true knowledge, because the conscience, which makes responsibility felt, could not endure His presence, because the heart desired things which the conscience in the presence of God condemned. They made gods who would help men to gratify their passions. Man cannot suffice to himself; he has lost God, and fears Him; his heart stoops to that which is more degraded than himself. He seeks, but in vain, to satisfy the need of his heart by means of objects which degrade him, and make him forget God, of whom the thought is anguish to his heart.

The Comtean worship reveals more than this (for in truth it is humanity that man, fallen away from God, everywhere worships. He may invest this with more or less of the attributes of deity: because he is not a being groping his way out of native darkness, as so many would persuade us; the inspired version of heathenism is more honoring to God, if more condemnatory of the creature, that "when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." They had not to invent God, but rather to invent the god that they desired; and the god that they desired was one like themselves, a being who could sympathize with the lusts and passions of a corrupt nature. Hence "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the image of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man."

However man is not sufficient for himself. He must have someone upon whom to lean, someone to whom he can look in his misery and weakness. So having rejected the true God, and become a fool, he proceeds to fashion false gods according to his own tastes. As men's tastes differ, so men invented a number of gods to suit their different tastes. First they conceived of God as like to corruptible men; then sinking lower in their conceptions of God, they imagined God to be like birds or four-footed beasts, until they reached the lowest depth of degradation, when they conceived of God as like the creeping things — the serpents. Thus the worship of the serpent proved how thoroughly man had fallen from God to the devil.

Man must have his god, otherwise he would not be man. Nor can the object of homage be always a mere abstraction — as Brahm in India. That abstraction of eternal sleep developed itself into the triad of Brahma, Kishnu, and Siva (a parody upon the revelation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and these soon had their representatives in unnatural forms. From the mental image formed in a corrupt mind it is but a short step to the golden or wooden idol in the temple. Every shape and form had its prototype in the imagination, which to the philosopher was supplemented by the material things of nature; but to the vulgar, surrounding objects were the basis upon which the superstructure of idolatry rested. Through the senses their imagination was fed by the things seen and felt; and though these be not the sole source of idolatry, they greatly modify its form and multiplied its gods. For the mountain and the valley, the river, the grove, the heavens above and the waters beneath had their divinities, and everywhere that which in nature most impressed man soon took rank as a god. Nor let us forget the greatest factor which produced this confused mass of superstition and credulity. Not only did man not like to retain the know ledge of God and thus become the dupe of his senses, but over all was the delusive power of Satan who held man in captivity through his fear and lusts. The loss of the knowledge of the true God, to a creature endowed with religious faculties, must result in subjective idolizing. Satan, the God of this world, presented himself in a tangible form and made it objective.

It is impossible for man to divest himself entirely of the idea of a supreme Being, One all-wise, almighty, and omniscient. On account of the darkness in which he is by nature, and on account of the wretched conceit of his foolish heart he may change the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and to birds, and quadrupeds, and creeping things, but he will clothe these images with divine attributes, and pay to them divine honours, as the whole world has done at one time or another (Rom. 1:22-23). A god of some sort he must have.

The corrupt desires of the will of man, acting upon his imagination, and re-acted on by a darkened conscience, produced the varied forms of idolatrous worship. The same heart which is by nature fundamentally averse from holiness, is constitutionally prone to religious observance. There is an innate and indwelling consciousness of personal insufficiency, which renders man incapable of simple independence of some power mightier than himself. A god, in some shape, is a natural necessity of man. His natural desire, in his first apostacy from truth, is a god after his own heart. The image of himself is the outward expression of this. But the tendency of a mind once alienated from God is ever downwards. Birds, and quadrupeds, and creeping things display, when represented in idolatrous imagery, the progressive stages of that deterioration and debasement of the poor godless mind of nature, which finds no lifting power in itself capable of staying its descent into the low depths of utter infatuation and shame.

That mankind generally should have ideas of creation is to be expected, and that these ideas, filtering down from the earliest stage in the history of man through succeeding ages, should become mixed up with degrading and fantastic ideas is not surprising. Indeed, Romans 1 tells us how man, knowing God at first, did not like to retain God in his knowledge, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into images of corruptible man, of bird and beast and creeping thing.

Comparative religions agree in making their gods out of men. A late popular writer, Mr Grant Allen, describes the process in one of his books.

Such the condition of man. He feels the necessity of having a god, but is so ignorant of the true God, that he makes one for himself. The carpenter, with rule and compass, fashions his god "after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man." So it is the image of himself that he worships. Having chosen his tree, "he burns part thereof in the fire, with part thereof he eats flesh, he roasts roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warms himself, and says, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire. And the residue thereof he makes a god, even his graven image: he falls down unto it, and worships it, and prays unto it, and says, Deliver me, for thou art my god." (Isa. 44:12-17.)