Quote - It's not an attempt to live in a fantasy. Imagine the desire to describe an inexplicable experience and resorting to the metaphors available in that time and base them all on the best technical knowledge your ancestors could pass down to you. 

 

Well yes, this is very true. I'm kicking myself right now for not having gone in that direction by now because I've long said that same thing in many hundreds of discussions over the years.

People created gods and magic and all kinds of metaphysical superstition to explain that which their limited knowledge simply couldn't touch.

But also, humans have always needed some vastly superior and omnipotent and omniscient entity or entities to ask for help from when things got tough, such as during droughts or plagues.

And equally, we've always needed some powerful entity to blame, or to have to appease in order to set things right again.

For example, death can be a terrible and frightening thing for some people if the knowledge is that if one dies and that's it, end of story. But death can be a joyous thing, something to almost look forward to, if there's a god and a heaven, a place where everything is perfect and none of the problems of the mortal world are included, and life  and health are eternal.

So some gods were created by man to explain the mysteries of the world, to help when times were bad through prayer and sacrifice, and to supply a glorious reward after a life of tribulation.

 

And of course, other gods were created for very specific reasons, who had their own departments to manage in their dealings with humans, but I'm focusing largely on the god of the Bible here, and similar monotheistic religions.

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