by Grace Golds

Created on: December 07, 2009   Last Updated: December 09, 2009

"If one didn't know better, one would think that man, in fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image" Sam Harris.

Harris certainly holds a fascinating if not slightly controversial view in this statement. Many would agree with him - Dawkins, Freud, perhaps even myself to some degree and others would deem it an untrue and arrogant opinion demonstrating total lack of faith. But is there a truth to his claim? Is God merely an invention of mankind in order to make us feel we have a purpose in being here? Does the creation of a God provide us with comfort that life is not a brief and meaningless chance?

Sigmund Freud would certainly talk of God being a figure of comfort - a replacement for a father figure when we are cast into the world alone and vulnerable. He sees God as a "psychological crutch" upon which we depend to give our lives meaning and purpose. It is indeed a plausible account. There are many problems with the concept of God that someone seeking comfort would be prepared to overlook - his existence for one thing. Rather than prove there is something out there looking after us as it were and be met with disappointment and thrown into a life of fear, the believer would prefer the creation of the concept of faith.

The very concept of God seems to have been created so it cannot be disproved. Although this has its obvious advantages it necessarily entails the existence of faith - something required alongside God as, similarly, he cannot be proven to exist either. There is no sure, objective and factual way of knowing whether God does indeed exist or not - certainly not in this age anyhow. Faith, therefore is the crippling concept introduced by some genius in the past to add meaning to the contradictory nature of God. One cannot help but be reminded here of the well-known conversation between God and Man in Bill Bryson's - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where God states; "I refuse to prove that I exist, for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing". In other words, faith is needed for God exist. But surely a being as powerful as God should not have to rely on something as easily deniable as faith to exist. Faith is a human construction. We can easily deny it, unlike the laws of gravity or motion. If faith is such a thing then surely God is a mere human construction also? For without our construct of faith, we would have no construct of God. Without faith, God is "nothing". Indeed Freud was one to suggest that the idea of God was a manmade invention designed as a "security blanket" to protect us from the harsh realities that we face from life.

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