God - an invention of man - OR?

The importance of storytelling, all the oral tradition as it may be called, cannot and must not be underestimated in the preservation and promotion of the truth imparted to the community. Christianity itself witnessed the oral tradition of some 30 years after the death of Christ and if it were not so, the truths concerning the life and teaching of Christ, faithfully remembered and passed on would have disappeared. Certainly, the New Testament of Gospels and epistles would not have been written down.  It was persecution and dispersal of the faithful that occasioned their being committed to written records.

The Sharman then, took a place of spiritual leadership in the community.  It is largely by the activity of such spiritual leaders that human religion moved first as an individual activity into a communal activity and as tribes and peoples joined together to become nations so their importance grew as defenders of their own religion when the group came into contact with another group perhaps possessing different religions or, controlling the absorption of the better elements of another religion into their own. We have now arrived at the stage where tribes have become nations and moved on from a small group worshipping around a totem to a nation having national gods who were as fiercely protected by their worshippers as their hope was the gods would protect them as a nation. We must now look to the wider stage of national, civilised religions   and ask the question - was man still trying to invent God?