The idea of God derives from our need for an absolute unobserved observer

Evidence

It might seem that there can exist an extra-historical and extra-human objectivity. But who is the judge of such objectivity? Who is able to put himself in this kind of “standpoint of the cosmos in itself” and what could such a standpoint mean? It can indeed be maintained that here we are dealing with a hangover of the concept of God, precisely in its mystic form of a conception of an unknown God. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1582 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

While real punishment is perfectly capable of producing, as its own appearance, the idea of punishment, the only real thing or reality capable of producing the idea of omnipresence, as its own appearance, is God. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 39 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

But if God is characterized as radical absence, the effort to realize humanity as ours is forever renewed and forever results in failure. Thus the humanistic “Us”—the Us-object—is proposed to each individual consciousness as an ideal impossible to attain although everyone keeps the illusion of being able to succeed in it by progressively enlarging the circle of communities to which he does belong. This humanistic “Us” remains an empty concept, a pure indication of a possible extension of the ordinary usage of the “Us.” Each time that we use the “Us” in this sense (to designate suffering humanity, sinful humanity, to determine an objective historical meaning by considering man as an object which is developing its potentialities) we limit ourselves to indicating a certain concrete experience to be undergone in the presence of the absolute Third; that is, of God. Thus the limiting-concept of humanity (as the totality of the Us-object) and the limiting-concept of God imply one another and are correlative. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1032 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The idea of extra-human objectivity is a leftover of the concept of God — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1582; The humanistic Us-object is an unattainable ideal demanding the correlative concept of God — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1032; Only God can naturally produce the idea of omnipresence — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 39 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The idea of extra-human objectivity is a leftover of the concept of God #corroborates (0.90) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1582
• Only God can naturally produce the idea of omnipresence #contradicts (0.85) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 39
• The humanistic Us-object is an unattainable ideal demanding the correlative concept of God #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1032