God and the Theory of Everything

[_Gadianton]

Because God was lonely.

Is God alive? If so, then answering why there is life has to account for God's existence. I want to know the religious answer to why God exists.

Because it feels better than being selfish.

I think there is a lot of truth to that. While science might technically be prohibited from directly giving this answer, psychology might demonstrate that being good to people makes us feel good and biology, sociology, and economics might demonstrate that communities increase the chances of survival and quality of life for every member of the community.

From here, if it requires religion to take the prescriptive step of telling us that therefore we "should" be good to others, it's an awfully tiny amount of religion that we need.

[_ludwigm]

"Why is there life?"

Because God was lonely.

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[_DrW]

Many religions provide an answer to why there is life.

Does science provide any answers as to why we should be good to one another?

"Why should we be good to one another?"

Can you answer these, Moksha?

Being good to one another, especially to those in our own family, tribe or social group, conferred a clear evolutionary advantage during the development of humans as a species.

Fairly sophisticated forms of empathy and altruism have been observed and reported in other species as well, especially in a number of primate species, for many years. It is possible to find these behaviors even further down the phylogenetic scale - down at least as far as rats, as it turns out. Here is an abstract from an article regarding empathy in rats the December 9 issues of Science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1427.abstract

If evolutionary theory can explain empathy and the resulting altruistic behaviors, does it really make sense to then posit a God to explain why humans have these characteristics?

And, more importantly, does it not seem a bit curious that humans would then go so far as to ascribe these same characteristics to their God?

There is a great deal of evidence that unfounded belief in the supernatural (demons, evil spirits, etc.) conferred an evolutionary advantage to early humans because these provided a common narrative to explain things that could not otherwise be understood and helped to engender common belief, cohesiveness and a shared sense of purpose in social groups.

There is little doubt that there was a time when common unfounded belief (religion) conferred a survival advantage. There was also a time in human evolution when the appendix conferred a survival advantage.

Most would agree that the appendix is now a vestigial organ and is more trouble than it is worth (causes more morbidity and even mortality than it prevents.)

I claim that the same is the case for fundamentalist religions (those that require an overt profession of belief in their doctrine and dogma in order to achieve full membership or adherence.)