Sorry for not getting back to you on this, I've been sick and drugged.
OK, now I see where you are going with this line of reasoning.
Your idea has been hypothesized many times before but the evidence says, no.
This is part of my point. Follow the evidence. Forget the untestable god garbage which is not following the evidence.
Yeah, see, this looks exactly like cherry picking to me. "We've got some gods that figure heavily in myths, and we know people make up myths, so let's just "forget" about all the gods that people believe in that aren't obviously myths, and then we can say that "gods are myths"". I'm sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. You don't get to "forget" about the exceptions that undermine your hypothesis to make it work.
Here's the evidence in favor of your hypothesis, feel free to add to it: god myths are universally common.
That's it. That's all the evidence that supports the hypothesis, real god(s) inspired god myths.
We still have a fundamental unresolved difference in what constitutes a "real god" though. You are still insisting that a "real god" has to be something supernatural. Why?
Look at the cargo cults you mention- they are essentially "praying" to a
real thing- a C-47. There's nothing supernatural at all about it, and it works essentially like their religion says- One makes entreaties into a boxy thing and good stuff falls from a big thing in the air. That the people who formed the religion did not understand the mechanisms and entities involved - see "Clarke's Third Law"- and ascribed magical properties to these airplanes does not make them any less real- or any less gods.
Where you are falling down is assuming that "god" means something objective and universal. It doesn't. It means something different to every single person who thinks something about god. You simply cannot say that god beliefs are all myths for the same reason you can't say beauty beliefs are all about big tits.
Here's the evidence supporting god beliefs are all myths:
1) What Hoke said is valid. Not only are the god concepts too dissimilar to support your hypothesis, many of them outright contradict each other.
Exactly. But the fact that humans espouse some sort of "god belief" frequently, spontaneously, in such variety, and (nearly) universally points to something- and I think that something is the fact that human beings create "god" for themselves- just like "art" or "corporations". And in
that sense is very real.
2) The themes that are similar between god myths: explaining the world, wanting life after death, and trying to affect major events like illness, death and natural disasters, are all consistent with what we know about the psychology of human behavior.
Which is what, exactly?
3) The hypothesis, god beliefs are invented, was directly observed with the Cargo Cults.
So, a better hypothesis, that the consistent themes are due to natural human tendencies and traits, is consistent with the evidence, no magic intervention is at all suggested by this evidence.
Right, which is why I am saying that it is your assumption that "god = supernatural" is what is in error here. "God" can be almost anything to anybody. A sabretooth tiger, a C-47, a planet crossing the heavens, a housecat, the sun, the harvest of a food crop, or a sense of beauty and awe at the majesty of the universe. Those are not a myth, even if myths grow up around them.
Is a god which you hypothesize is sending messages to humans all over the planet consistent with the definition of a Deist god that isn't detectable?
When did I say anything about sending any messages? Gravity doesn't send any messages, but people are still aware of it.
You might as well just say god beliefs appeared by magic. Is that an hypothesis we would entertain using the scientific process to explain any other human belief?
Please. We already agreed that people make up stuff about things. What you're suggesting is that if they didn't make up all of it, it's not god. That's incorrect.
Is it proved that your hypothesis is wrong? No. But so what? I don't have to prove it. I need merely develop the best theory that explains the evidence.
...And the best "theory" does not "forget" about things that are inconvenient to its elegance- or truth value. That's wishful thinking, not science.
Making up special evidence categories and defining special untestable gods is not warranted by the evidence and is not consistent with the scientific process.
I'm not making up special evidence categories- if you think that I am, which are those?
I'm not defining any "special untestable gods". I'm talking about gods that other people claim to worship. That's the test of an entity's "godhood".
which was to show that, in the far distant future, scientists may have to admit that science, after having found the explanation of everything else, cannot explain how something came from nothing, even after another 10,000 years effort trying to solve this one last puzzle. After 10,000 years, there would be a case, don't you think, for concluding that the explanation is not discoverable by science. In other words that there is not a natural explanation for something from nothing. Meaning the explanation must be non-natural. Or, my original word, supernatural.
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