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Fran65
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That wasn’t my point. I was identifying that the ‘reasons’ or whatever you would like to call them were all about* you *and not about the benefits to anyone else.
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johngh
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It doesn’t “prove” anything, but it definitely points towards God.
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j1akey
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Well I can tell already that this is going to be me saying one thing and you telling I’m saying something different than what I’m actually trying to say. Likes and dislikes about something are not why I’m a non-believer. The real reason I’m a non-believer is in the second paragraph that I bolded in my previous post. I don’t see any reason to believe.
I was under the impression the original statement was an argument for atheism, not why all of humanity should stop believing in a god or how it benefits everyone else on the planet. Geez, I try to be respectful and even throw in a little humor and you’re all over me about it and completely ignore the real argument and pick at the details.
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Cecilianus
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That’s not the origin of the belief in God though. The most ancient religious practices that we have been able to reconstruct (which were in Europe) were hunting rituals - where the purpose seems to have been not to explain how the world works, but rather make amends for the violence done to the natural order in killing animals, and to repair the relationship between the human and animal spirits.
In India, where Hindu mysticism seems to be older than primitive shamanism, we can trace the practice of yoga back to the Mohenjo-Daro civilization of Pakistan - one of the oldest civilizations, if not the oldest, in the world. (We have found drawings at Mohenjo-Daro of people in yoga postures.) In India mystical union seems to be the basis of religion. The oldest specifically theological notion is claimed to be held by the Jain religion (which purports to be a restoration of the primitive Indian religion against later Hindu accumulations); they worship a single, simple transcendent God much like deism and Abrahamic monotheism.
Native American religion, which is heavily shamanistic in origin, believed in a single Great Spirit who is the Father of the animal spirits (hence the attempts to foster kinship between animals or man).
Chinese folk religion also believed in the Emperor of Heaven, who was regarded as somewhat distant from the creation He had made.
Same goes with African religion, where God is universally believed in but never worshiped - He is too great, too awesome to care about us. Hence the worship of inferior spirits.
These inferior spirits may indeed be attempts to explain how the world works, but Christianity, as you might notice, never believed in them. That’s why Christianity was regarded as a form of atheism by the Roman Empire and persecuted as such.
My source of information for ancient religions is taken from anthropological studies (for Africa), testimonies by Sun-Dance Chiefs and other Native American spiritual leaders, mythological narratives (for China) and studies (for shamanistic interpretations of French cave-art), and historical/archaeological descriptions of Mohenjo-Daro. I can’t remember specifically beyond that, however.
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Benjamin8o8
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So this does in fact mean the belief and worship in one God one Creator was always around?
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Benjamin8o8
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I agree with you, you really were respectful and I want to say I understand a lot of your arguments for not having a reason to believe in God.
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Cecilianus
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Yes, that’s my understanding - but the Jews were the only culture that believed that they could actually pray/sacrifice to Him directly, because of His revelation to them.
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JDaniel
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Cecilianus:It always strikes me as rather curious that people can claim to not believe in God and yet they seem to hate Him so strongly - logically, the two attitudes shouldn’t be compatible. I really haven’t the slightest animosity towards Prester John - even though he probably did not exist throughout the entire ~400 year time frame that they were looking for him…
If it is just a case of lazy typing, it seems rather funny that God is the only grammatical victim.
All points are well taken!
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JDaniel
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Cecilianus
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Clarification for this statement in regard to Jainism: God for the Jains is not a “Creator” in the sense that this thread is supposed to be about - the cause of the Big Bang - since Jains, like most HIndus, regard the universe as being eternal. God, as with all Indians, is regarded primarily as the Ground of Being of the human soul. I believe I misspoke when I said the Jains have a theological notion of God similar to deism, since the deistic distance between God and Creation is gone. The Jain paradise is a conscious state of bliss,whereas the Hindu moksa usually involves the loss of individuality; the flip-side is that moksa’s Jain equivalent to moksa, kevalatva or “self-subsistence”, is more of a blasphemous identification with God through one’s own individuality rather than either the loss of individuality (classical Hinduism) or simply the humbling and empyting of one’s self before the face of God (as with Christian and Sufi sanctity). Because Jainism is an Indian religion I assumed that kevalatva involved setting aside one’s own ego for that of a pre-existing God; however I’ve been looking through my library trying to find where I read that and I can’t find it. So I was probably mistaken. Mea culpa.
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j1akey
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Cecilianus:
Well I can’t really say I know much about ancient religions other than the more popular ones and even then have never really studied them to the point of being any kind of expert. However every now-dead religion, minor or major is seen as superstition and to be false by every other religion around yet new religions have popped up all over the place which are somehow more “true” than those before it. The cycle has repeated itself over and over and over again throughout human history, we just happen to be on the most current cycle and there’s no reason to think that the current religions won’t be replaced by something else in another 2000 years.
I do understand the draw of belief in a being greater than ourselves. It’s kind of like a warm blanket that we’re important or special apart from everything else and gives us a way to contemplate our place in the universe and has promises of great happyness when we die. It all sounds too good to be true and there’s an old saying about that which I’m sure everyone knows.
Well I can’t really say I know much about ancient religions other than the more popular ones and even then have never really studied them to the point of being any kind of expert. However every now-dead religion, minor or major is seen as superstition and to be false by every other religion around yet new religions have popped up all over the place which are somehow more “true” than those before it. The cycle has repeated itself over and over and over again throughout human history, we just happen to be on the most current cycle and there’s no reason to think that the current religions won’t be replaced by something else in another 2000 years.
I do understand the draw of belief in a being greater than ourselves. It’s kind of like a warm blanket that we’re important or special apart from everything else and gives us a way to contemplate our place in the universe and has promises of great happyness when we die. It all sounds too good to be true and there’s an old saying about that which I’m sure everyone knows.
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JDaniel
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Chuck:
With all sincerity, I wish you the best for your future endeavors. As a one time educator, I know you are going to be successful. Honors in anything is a sign of having hustled your derrière!
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Benjamin8o8
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Saint Michael, pray for us!
Alright, Cecilianus I must say I would be quite baffled if there were NO set of believes in 1 God. They didn’t necessary had to be Jews but I always assumed the roots of Judaism came from scribes (or whatever) who believed in God alone whether they had any sacrifices/rituals/laws or not. This is how I always looked at it:
When Adam and Eve (metaphorically) fell, man had the chance to repent therefore he was saved from eternal punishment albeit had to pay the consequences here on earth. But as time passed and man separated themselves even more from God man lost their true faith in God and invented their own set of laws. This should have not eliminated the Abrahamic God completely considering there were always Gods people on earth doing what they were supposed do.
Doesn’t this explain Oral Tradition? I mean its not like Moses was the first one to invent the Abrahamic God, OT inspired him to write the first few books in the Old Testament. Because Oral tradition was already there before him. This makes perfect sense to me, so I don’t understand why atheist and other say paganism existed before Judaism. That is not true at all.
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JDaniel
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What preceded Abraham was over a thousand years of the descendants of Adam and Eve. The first two born to Adam and Eve, were Cain and Abel. Abel was killed by Cain, but, God allowed Adam and Eve to have another son, whose name was Seth. Since Abel was the “good” son (while Cain, the “bad” son) God allowed another son. It is the lineage of Seth that follows through to Abraham, through Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. But, the lineage actually continued on through Shem, one of Noah’s sons. Then, from there directly to Abraham, about 2,000 B.C.
So, God has been around since at least the beginning of (men and women, as we know them), if not before, the Copper Age, which was about 4,300 B.C. Prior to that we know from the fossil records of prehistoric precursors of men.
Paganism has been around for a couple of thousand years, give or take. It is usually associated with the Abrahamic traditions, as sort of an adaptation of the “gentile” from that tradition. So, “paganism” did not pre-date Christianity. That said, what were the non-religious people, or rural people, called prior to Abraham? Probably “heathens”. But, certainly, the line of history does not flow from pagan —> religion. People who bring that up in their logic for being anti-religious know very little history.
I could be wrong, but, I believe that the word comes from the Latin, something like “paganus”, or close. And, I think, Latin came about as the preferred language spoken by the Romans some time shortly after, 1,500 B.C.
It is important to get the history right, otherwise, one might continue to believe something that is incorrect, which could result in a huge error, down the road.
By the way, why did you say, “When Adam and Eve (metaphorically) fell,”?
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WillieWonka
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What is a pagan?
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Cecilianus
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The city of Catal-huyuk in Turkey dates back to 7500 B.C., so Adam and Eve had to have lived before then. History - that is, the history of Homo Sapiens - is at least 10,000 years old. Determining where to place the dividing line (human or no) for prehistoric man is difficult, but if “art is the signature of man” as Chesterton suggested, then we have to push the date back before 16,000 B.C. The paintings at Chauvet have been dated to 32,000 B.C.
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Cecilianus
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The word “pagan” came into currency around the late 4th century A.D. and means something like “of the countryside”. Christianity had taken root in the cities but not spread to the more conservative countryside yet; hence the appellation “pagan” for those who worshiped the old god.
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JDaniel
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I knew that there were older concentrations of prehistoric or, Stone age, men, perhaps going back to 40,000 B.C. But, when they became “rational”, or, homo sapiens, in that sense, has to be prior to, but not by too much, the Copper Age, which is usually considered to be 4,300 - 3,300 B.C. (I read somewhere that it might even have started about a thousand years earlier than that.)
I don’t know if there is any historical record of how long men and women lived during the earliest days. Biblically, they are said to have lived 700 - 900 years until God reduced it to 120 years. Is there any recent data on this?
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JDaniel
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Looks like you’re right. The word was around, but, not in common usage, especially in the sense we mean it.
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Cecilianus
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If they’re building cities, worshiping idols (female figurines), and painting horses, then they’re pretty clearly rational. The city of Sumer - which lasted until well into the “historical” period, was built before then (5000’s B.C.). Agriculture was also practiced in Egypt by 5500 B.C. - not something animals normally do. The Chinese have used writing (the Jiahu script) since 6600 B.C.
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