Is the need for God innate or derived?

6 Commentsby   |  09.20.10  |  Renaissance/Premodern (Part II)

I was once asked by a very close friend of mine why I felt like I needed God in my life. Indeed, why does the vast majority of the earth claim to believe in a “higher power” of some type? He asked me to contemplate an existence where it was universally accepted that there never was and never will be a god. After I thought for awhile in silence he said something to the extent of, “That’s right, you can’t even contemplate it. Our world has been so shaped by the various gods we have created, that a world without them is incomprehensible to our minds. Our need for a god or gods is instinctual to our very core.” He then went on to explain how he thought the world would look if humans had never had that seemingly universal need for God. It was one of the most thought-provoking, if not entirely mind-blowing, discussions I have ever had.
Anyways, talking about Descartes in class lately really brought this memory to the surface of my mind, particularly his thoughts on innate and derived ideas. Is the need for a God in our lives an innate idea that is programmed into our minds? Or, could it be a derived idea from different experiences we have had that have led us to believe in the existence of a higher power?

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6 Comments

  1. Courtney Price
    10:13 am, 09.20.10

    There is a book called “The Evolution of God” that kind of answers the innate and derived fact of God, or Higher Powers, or even Gods. I think it is more innate for our generation to believe in God because that is what our parents and the rest of our ancestors for that matter believe in.

  2. Brandon Schmermund
    10:19 am, 09.20.10

    Well I’m hoping that when you had this discussion with your friend you remembered to mention that we do indeed have artifacts that one can actually touch and learn from to have a full and most powerful faith in the true God, one in-particular, is the Bible. How many stories have we heard of people not wanting anything to do with a so called “god” controlling their life and the next thing we know that person has given everything they possibly could to God. One ministry that has many examples of lives turned around is, I Am Second. It is an online ministry that has real people explaining their “God story”, and how their life has changed by the things God has done for them. If your friend still has trouble believing in a higher being, let them check that website out.

  3. Austin Fontaine
    10:57 am, 09.20.10

    I believe that our need for a god is derived directly from a sense of insecurity and helplessness. We want to know that there is something bigger than us, because that measn when bad things happen, we can play them off as insignificant because we know there is another scale that is infinitely bigger, and that there are powers that we can plea to for help.

  4. Rachel Jinkerson
    12:03 pm, 09.20.10

    I believe that it is a little of both. For example,I think that our hearts yearn for something that this world cannot fill, this is an innate idea. We are born knowing that something is missing in our lives and God is the only thing that can complete us. If you want to look at it on an experience level, all you have to do is look at a culture that has been completely isolated from the world. Amazonian tribes believe in a higher power even though they have never read the Bible, or the Torah, or the Koran. Yet, their experiences with the wonder of nature and creation have lead them to know that something bigger than them exists in the world.

  5. Bradley Campbell
    12:25 pm, 09.20.10

    Great post. About 8 years ago a missionary named Marion Laslow came and spoke in chapel for a week. She was famous for enmeshing herself with an African tribe who had never been had any access to an individual outside of their tribe, especially a western individual. She helped them establish their first written language and over the 30 years she worked with them even translated their newly formed written language into a bible for them. She talked at some great length about what you have talked about here. they had a deep concept of God and had never had contact with a christian society. Although their idea of God had very worldly origins their cultural system built from their ideas of wrong or right mirrored many of our basic laws (10 commandments, shall not murder, steal, adultery and so on). She went on to say that she felt that these people had a deep basic communion with the Holy Spirit and had never realized this influence. It was very interesting that she suggested that the core human need to seek out a Godly understanding of the nature of mankind could go back to an lifelong interaction to the Holy Spirit.

  6. Hannah Hendrix
    12:42 pm, 09.20.10

    I am currently taking Psychology of Religions, and this is one of the first topics that we looked at. Why do we “need” God? Across time and space, humans seem to have always looked for a higher power, a creator, or a spirit world. I like the way Rachel put it, mentioning this void in our lives that only God can fill. This is seemingly universal. One possible explanation that was offered in this class was that this world is hard. Life is hard. Bad things happen. People get sick and die. Our belief in a higher power gives us some stability over the chaos that reigns in our lives. When we compare our troubles to this big picture thinking, we realize that our troubles aren’t as bad (, or God can save us, or whatever. It also gives us hope and peace in thinking about our supposed afterlife, in which all of our troubles will be gone. So do people know about God because they created him to make their lives seem more meaningful or do people know about God because he has made himself manifest here on the earth and we can see the tangible results of his presence in his word or in the lives of his followers? Personally, I believe in the latter.

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