Re: A Question for my Atheist pals.
One would only do that to brings harmony, justice, peace and the sense of security in a particular society. If we look at the history of humans, over a long period of time, he has used the thunder, the clouds, the eclipse and several natural disasters to deter people from doing what was not creating peace or creating injustice. Now one can say that people created the concept of God in the same manner. As human beings developed intellectually the concept of God became more refined.
One also has to understand that that the whole concept of god also stems from the fact that humans are* still unable to understand few very basic things about there creation, like how we came into being and where we are going.
So, now, the concept of god went a step ahead, by answering these basic questions to an extent, it not only created harmony within the human being but it also went ahead to achieve that harmony around human beings. A much difficult task, but the concept of god did provide, in different times different sets of external mechanisms to achieve that goal of peace and harmony.
So I would say that in every time period since this world has been created and since the Humans have achieved intellect there has been people who had been against the concept of god and the people who believed that there is a God. The wide spread affect of not believing in the concept of God has always been equal to the concept of believing in God.
I believe that the nature of human beings and its way of thinking did not change in the last 1400 or 2000 or 5000 years, rather their question has taken a different turn. On one hand its about the concept of god and on the other hand it has questions about the changes in the external mechanism of "concept of God" , which changed by time. Creating another heated "debate" among the holders-of-the-concept-of-God.