Humanism, Rationalism and Religion

Humanism and God: In Judeao-Christian ideology, man is made from the image of God. Christians believe Jesus is perfect and is the human form of God. He possessed divine powers to heal the sick and walk on water. To me, these ideas don’t seem too far off from the Greek belief that gods, human like in nature & appearance and supernatural, came to Earth and interfered with humans’ lives. This close relationship between gods and men, linked in image, and in some other ways, though not in ability, is interesting to me.

Why are men compelled to compare themselves with a divine spirit or greater force? It’s almost like our minds are wired to think there might be something else out there that is incomprehensible that we feel we must explain, so we explain it in relation to ourselves which are terms we can understand. Here comes rationalism or lack there of, depending on your beliefs: Or maybe it’s the real world that is hard to explain so we need a tool (a god) to help us make sense of the world. God is the tool we, and the Greeks, use(d) for explaining and rationalizing those things, but the idea of God is so inconceivable, abstract and belief based, that the idea of God is not exactly grounded in facts/logic.

Throughout the ages, the civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea and others around the world depict gods in the image of man…why so focused on man? Also, it is interesting that dating back to the thousands BCE, humans have practiced rituals and religion for some reason…what reason? I know this is pretty theological and maybe not that related to Oedipus or specific to the time period we're studying but it is a question that relates to the human experience so...