Why bother with Religion?

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Can you describe in more detail what their facts were (the supporting evidence) for coming to the conclusion that it was “memory” and not “opinion”? This sounds very similar to Jung’s ideas on a collective unconscious.

In a sense, I consider Jung’s ideas to be the antithesis to Schmidt’s ideas.

I’ve had this conversation before with others on other forums, so I’ll make sure in advance to note that I’m not talking about all gods in the past – I’m only speaking of the “primitive sky gods” which seem to abound throughout human history.

The things that many of these primitive theologies (or henothologies if you wish) have in common is the following:

He lives in, or above, the sky. (Anthropologists refer to him as the “Sky-God”, although the name the peoples have for him is more commonly one meaning “Father” or “Creator”).

He is like a man, or a father.

However his form cannot be physically represented, and so there are almost never idols of him.

He is the creator of everything.

He is eternal (i.e. He existed before anything else, and He will never cease to be).

He is all-knowing.

All that is good ultimately comes from him.

He is the giver of moral law.

He is good, and abhors all evil.

He is all-powerful.

He judges people after their death.

People are alienated from him due to some misdemeanor in the past.

Please note, this simple point-form list doesn’t really do justice to the work that Schmidt did. While his theory of primitive monotheism is not generally accepted by modern scholars, Schmidt’s contributions to linguistics are numerous.

For example, he did crucial research in other fields of anthropology-- extensively studying ethnographic particular “cultural circles,” the 4 main stages that the base cultures of this world went through: Primitive (hunter-gatherer), Primary (horticulturists), Secondary (pastoralists) and Tertiary (modern society). And while Schmidt was not the first to propose such a theory, he was instrumental in making it a well-known and generally accepted one.

Nonetheless, the primitive monotheism hypothesis basically notes that, as history proceeds, and the cultures are fragmented into more and more special interest groups, God is often supplanted in religions by gods which are “more accessible”; yet these religions still often carry a distant memory of this “Sky-God” whom they have lost most contact with.

So this isn’t quite the same as Jung’s collective unconcsciousness whereby parts of a person’s unconscious are common to all human beings. Rather, in the sense of a ‘primitive monotheism’, it is hypothesized that there really is a common experience that was shared by humanity in the distant past and conveyed consciously throughout the religions of the world, essentially pointing back to a real divinity which revealed itself in a way remarkably similar to the Judeo-Christian concept of God as found in the Genesis account.

As Peter Ballard notes, the obvious response to all this is, “Where have I heard that before?” because it sounds suspiciously like the Christian (and Jewish, and Muslim) picture of God.

This is a rather complicated subject. But if you’re interested in finding our more, I would direct you to The Origin and Growth of Religion by Wilhelm Schmidt, NY: Cooper Square Publishers, 1972.

Interestingly, if these accounts do speak of a primal revelation whereby some ‘sin’ on the part of humanity resulted in some kind of disruption in the fabric of the cosmos, I would ask: If all things indeed were created from an outside force, then what are the characteristics of the outside force?

If that force has been around forever, then the things that were created by it would most likely share that same characteristics. However, since the created thing now resides in a lower state of being (or dimension), the created thing lacks the stability of its creator. If something goes wrong within the created thing – its “eternal connection” becomes removed somehow – it seems to me that the created thing would tend to break down and either a) return to its source, or b) degrade into its environment to the point that its “created form” becomes void.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Are you saying that because monotheism may have occurred independently in different primitive cultures that it is inherently true? Correct me if I’ve misinterpreted your point.

See my post to mmortal03 above.

Imagine23:

I don’t see that as real evidence. I’m sure there are many incorrect assumptions to which primitive people independetly subscribed. That does not make them true.

Assuming that there is nothing supernatural in the world doesn’t make those things which are claimed to a supernatural experience untrue either.

Imagine23:

If one wants to look at religion from a scientific or critical perspective, in the way that we look at everything else, then you have to wonder why religion really has not advanced much over the years. If you were to bring a medievel Christian here, his views on science and medicine would be laughable and completely wrong. His views on religion would not be much different than yours. Why have we advanced so much in all other areas of learning but religion if it were not for the fact that there is nothing scientific or rational about religion?

I’m really trying hard to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

Are you actually suggesting that religion has played no role in the development of science?

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

I thought I explained this before. I am willing to accept that there was a man named Jesus who lived around the time the bible was written and claimed to be the son of God and was killed for it. I accept many accounts of human history that relate to periods well before Jesus’s time.

Fair enough.

Imagine23:

What I don’t accept are the supernatural or mystical stories. There is no comparison to our modern day to which I can relate. Neither you or I have ever seen anyone rise from the dead or witnessed evidence of this happening. I’ve never seen on fish feed thousands of people. I don’t believe a man in a red suit could fly around the earth with the assistance of flying reindeer in one night delivering presents to the world’s children.

So you’re comparing belief in God to stories about Santa Claus?

Imagine23:

I don’t know what “militant atheism” is, as opposed to “atheism.” Do “militant atheists” carry guns?

Yes. They carry weapons at least.

Militant atheists are the types of atheists who fueled the communist revolution in Russia and the bloody revolution in France for example. And I think that groups like the ACLU are using similar softer ‘legal methods’ to remove religion from the public square. They are the kind of atheists who deliberately seek out to destroy other people’s faith, or at least hinder their ability to publically express their faith-- because they think their faith is dangerous at worst or else delusional at best.

Imagine23:

As for regular garden variety atheists, they are quite unlike Holocaust deniers.

Yes. I know. I have a couple friends who are atheists, what i would call passive atheists. I think they’re actually some of the most intellectually astute people I’ve ever met. They also often display a tender kindness which regularly reminds me what I have to do in order to be a Christian too.

Go figure eh?

 

[setitstraight]

Imagine23…it is simply this:

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Thomas Aquinas.

Best of luck to you…

 

[mmortal03]

How would Schmidt with empirical evidence separate the following possibilities:
1.) That there was an event that actually happened that people retained memory of through the passing down of knowledge.
2.) That there was a qualitative evolutionary change in the development of the human mind at some time in the past that gave humans a greater awareness of their ultimate surroundings and forced them to have to cope with the complexities of the universe within terms that thy were familiar to, and so they created for themselves, and personified themselves in, some higher power with greater knowledge that they could both easily relate to and use as an answer for all the causes of things that happened around them that they could not otherwise explain.

What I am basically getting at is that correlation does not imply causation.

Maybe those characteristics that Schmidt described are just the most simplest description of a god that can provide an answer to all the ultimate questions within the human mind, based on the primitive knowledge of the world that they had. Kind of like a catch-all schema (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_%28psychology%29) for what is not understandable.

Let me provide a rough general breakdown of how the characteristics you mentioned would fill the holes of understanding in a newly conscious human society, in terms of the second case:

“He lives in, or above, the sky.”

This was the distance that primitive humans couldn’t reach or travel to, so it is the best place of residence for a god that was most of the time not going to be accessible to them directly.

“He is like a man, or a father.”

We are all going to be like children when compared to a higher power. This again allows for his grandness to be inaccessible directly to these humans, and would follow a very human schema that was already developed in their heads.

“However his form cannot be physically represented, and so there are almost never idols of him.”

Because they don’t often actually get to see him, they don’t know what he looks like. Seems like they were being honest here.

“He is the creator of everything.”
They can’t answer or categorize certain ultimate questions in within schema that they do understand, so they place the “proof” in an existence that is greater than them that they can’t understand, but can still relate to. There are also seemingly random occurrences in nature that could both be easily rationalized by simply placing them outside of human bounds.

“He is eternal (i.e. He existed before anything else, and He will never cease to be).”
Easily answers the above if one’s perception is transient (limited amount of time on earth for each individual) and one’s or society’s prior knowledge is small (which is where it would be when starting from zero collected knowledge.

“He is all-knowing.”
“He is all-powerful.”
Are more logical requirements for the previous two to be true.

“All that is good ultimately comes from him.”
“He is the giver of moral law.”
“He is good, and abhors all evil.”
These are quite encouraging and produces a good feeling of hope in human beings. A belief that all of the good in the world, which is something they like, comes from something bigger than them is something very consoling. Also, having a set moral law from above would help deal with forming a larger productive society from the no agreed upon structure and relative anarchy of the larger primitive human world.

“He judges people after their death.”
Another something to look forward to and work toward (a purpose) in what is otherwise an unknown.

“People are alienated from him due to some misdemeanor in the past.”
We don’t have all the absolute qualities that he has, and our world doesn’t function in these heavenly terms, therefore our very lacking of what he has makes us alienated from him, not necessarily the other way around.

 

[mmortal03]

Imagine23…it is simply this:

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Thomas Aquinas.

Best of luck to you…

Wow, to someone who is an atheist, I think that quote would sound like Aquinas was admitting the Church’s very method of controlling the masses: requiring faith for something they can’t prove, and then proclaiming that having that faith is something moral or good. The very definition of faith within Christianity is that its source is from God. This concept of faith makes it very easy to alienate people who don’t have it, and through peer pressure and their wanting to conform, force them to choose it just so they can join the Church. Along with all the things in the church that I DO find logical, this last step could be quite easy for most people who are driven by their emotions. For me, it is the hardest step to make and I am always struggling with it, because it is the one intangible thing that the Church just tells us to have, and from what Aquinas and others on this board are demonstrating, doesn’t care much about helping us along the way of developing this trust in tangible ways.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

How would Schmidt with empirical evidence separate the following possibilities:

He wouldn’t.

He didn’t use this to prove that all religions had a trace of a distant memory the same primal revelation of God (although he did believe this to be true-- and so do I).

The reason why he pointed these things out was to counter the evolutionary claims that the rise of monotheistic religion had generally been described as an evolution, an outgrowth, of some more primitive religious belief that parallels the evolution of man.

It was not until the nineteenth century and the arrival of the German rationalists that the theory reached its full-grown proportions.

Max Müller, orientalist and philologist at Oxford, was chief among them, with his theory that religion originated with “a henotheistic Nature Worship, degenerated into Polytheism, sank into Fetishism, and then rose in some cases to new forms of Pantheism or Theism” (Zwemer, 1945, p. 33).

Tylor, a colleague of Müller’s at Oxford, rejected this, and claimed that animism, the worship of spirit beings, was the well-spring from which all other religion flowed;

Herbert Spencer, the English sociologist and close friend of Charles Darwin, readily accepted this evolutionary hypothesis in his Principles of Sociology (1877).

Others thought totemism (the belief that there existed a mythical relationship between man and certain plants or animal), to be the original source of religious beliefs.

Similar theories were submitted, though the aforementioned were the most popular.

Schmidt’s work was mainly published as a counter-point to the these evolutionary hypothesis’ of religion evolving from these ‘lesser forms’ (such as polytheism for example) to the ‘greater forms’ (such as monotheism for example).

And to the extent that he did his research, he did vindicate primitive forms of monotheism well before Müller’s, Tylor’s, Spencer’s theories allowed. In other words, he displayed many forms of primitive monotheism which exemplified the opposite of what Müller’s, Tylor’s, Spencer’s theories predicted-- Schmidt displayed monotheisms or various forms predating what these other theorists predicted should be.

Consequently, when one adds these other theorists failure to accurately predict the development of religions, and when one adds this information to the greater body of potential evidence for the belief in God, this adds significantly to the compelling reasons to believe that God has been active in humanity from the beginning.

Isn’t that how predictions work in science?

 

[mmortal03]

Thanks! It makes a lot more sense now as to what your purpose was for bringing Schmidt up. I can see how his arguments for monotheistic religion to have come first to be definitely a valid source to read, and critical to the Christian argument that our God really did come first. It sounds as if reading some of his work would be crucial to digging further down to determine what the underlying source of monotheistic religions, especially Christianity, really is.

However, even if he makes good arguments based on historical and archaeological findings that monotheism came first, that still leaves us with a question of “What caused monotheism?” Was it a real interaction with God, or was
it a psychological byproduct of our human/evolutionary development? That question is a chicken or the egg dilemma of which came first, a real God creating and communicating with man, or man creating the idea of God.

What work has been done on this from an apologetic standpoint? Have the writers’ names that have already been mentioned in this thread the best to read as far as covering this issue as well?

 

[Rabbititus]

The problem is that you have failed to show causation. If scientists used your kind of causation analysis in their research we would still be putting leeches on our body to cure illnesses.

While Stalin and Hitler did awful things, their atheist beliefs were not the cause of their actions. A non-belief in a supernatural God does not cause one to be violent. The Netherlands is one of the least religious countries in the world. Under your logic you would expect it to be the most violent. This is obviously not the case.

One may not be able to make a connection between atheism and genocide, but the murders of Stalin and other communist leaders still prove that atheists are not somehow more concerned with making the world a better, more peaceful place. Several of your statements imply that Stalin, being an atheist, would have been the most peaceful man on Earth, but he wasn’t - he did all the nasty awful things many religious people have done. So, while atheism may have not caused him to do harm, it didn’t stop him.

I always hear that atheism invariably leads to open-mindedness, “free-thought,” kindness, etc etc, and that it beats religion hands-down in this regard. Where’s the evidence for this? Show that atheists, when placed in a position of power, are always more humanitarian that the religious.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Thanks! It makes a lot more sense now as to what your purpose was for bringing Schmidt up. I can see how his arguments for monotheistic religion to have come first to be definitely a valid source to read, and critical to the Christian argument that our God really did come first. It sounds as if reading some of his work would be crucial to digging further down to determine what the underlying source of monotheistic religions, especially Christianity, really is.

However, even if he makes good arguments based on historical and archaeological findings that monotheism came first, that still leaves us with a question of “What caused monotheism?” Was it a real interaction with God, or was
it a psychological byproduct of our human/evolutionary development? That question is a chicken or the egg dilemma of which came first, a real God creating and communicating with man, or man creating the idea of God.

What work has been done on this from an apologetic standpoint? Have the writers’ names that have already been mentioned in this thread the best to read as far as covering this issue as well?

Check out G.K. Chesterton.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas is right on. What he is emphasizing here is that faith is a matter of will, not of intellect. He is commenting on the doubts of that doubting Thomas, the apostle, of whom Jesus said, after he had seen and believed, “Rather blessed are those who believe and have not seen.”

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas is right on. What he is emphasizing here is that faith is a matter of will, not of intellect. He is commenting on the doubts of that doubting Thomas, the apostle, of whom Jesus said, after he had seen and believed, “Rather blessed are those who believe and have not seen.”

I agree with you on this one a lot Gilbert. Faith, like hope and love, are matters of will, not of intellect.

 

[mmortal03]

I agree with you on this one a lot Gilbert. Faith, like hope and love, are matters of will, not of intellect.

Which definition of “will” are we talking about here? Thanks:

dictionary.reference.com/search?q=will

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Which definition of “will” are we talking about here? Thanks:

dictionary.reference.com/search?q=will

God’s will manifesting in man by the Holy Spirit.

 

[mmortal03]

God’s will manifesting in man by the Holy Spirit.

Right. I thought I had something to work with there on the human conceptual side of things, but I guess not. We can make semantical arguments all day long that God is the ultimate source of all of these things, but it isn’t going to help to better understand the human aspect of it at all, the human involvement in the deal, the “free will” that we have. If we can choose to not have faith, we can choose to have it, even if it is God working through us in the latter case.

So basically, back to the initial comment on Aquinas, what you and he are saying is that we either get it or we don’t, and there is no way to help along the process with knowledge.

I would rather easily like to argue that it IS knowledge that has helped many along with it, even if one can semantically argue that it was actually God behind it working through that knowledge.

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Right. I thought I had something to work with there on the human conceptual side of things, but I guess not. We can make semantical arguments all day long that God is the ultimate source of all of these things, but it isn’t going to help to better understand the human aspect of it at all, the human involvement in the deal, the “free will” that we have.

But we do have the free-will to rebel.

mmortal03:

If we can choose to not have faith, we can choose to have it, even if it is God working through us in the latter case.

No. If we are moved by the Spirit, then we have not chosen anything. We’re moving according to the Spirit’s motion. In this sense, we are here to point to others how the Spirit is already moving them to salvation and assist them in their path toward God.

In other words, if we choose to rebel, then we have really acted against God’s will. But if we do God’s will, then the Spirit is growing within us and leading us toward greater faith.

People often speak of the quick and the dead. But few people realize that a ‘quickening’ also refers to the very first time a woman can feel a child in their womb move.

The early church actually considered themselves being ‘pregnant with Christ’, allegorically going through spiritual labor pains as Christ grew within them by the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the deposit of faith that God deposits is, like a child in the womb, growing within us and bringing us toward greater salvation as Christ brings us to full-term so to speak.

Our job is to ensure that others who may be feeling the ‘quickening of Christ’ within them do not fail to recognize these motions of the Spirit within them.

mmortal03:

So basically, back to the initial comment on Aquinas, what you and he are saying is that we either get it or we don’t, and there is no way to help along the process with knowledge.

No. That’s not true.

We were made to ‘get it’. It’s when we rebel ‘against it’ that we don’t get it.

This isn’t a bland statement without context. It forces those, if they are open to the Spirit, to listen to the words presented and be more docile to the motion of the Spirit.

mmortal03:

I would rather easily like to argue that it IS knowledge that has helped many along with it, even if one can semantically argue that it was actually God behind it working through that knowledge.

Then start moving by the Spirit and start presenting the knowledge.

At this point I’m not sure what else you’re expecting us to present here. More to the point, and I could be wrong, but you seem to be playing devil’s advocate to the ideas presented thus far.

What exactly are you expecting us to present?

 

[mmortal03]

At this point I’m not sure what else you’re expecting us to present here. More to the point, and I could be wrong, but you seem to be playing devil’s advocate to the ideas presented thus far.

What exactly are you expecting us to present?

You are right that I am playing devil’s advocate throughout this thread, because I call myself Catholic and I think that there is truth in the teachings of the Church. Possibly there is absolute truth in the teachings of the Church, but I haven’t come to those conclusions yet. I have an optimistic outlook on Christianity, because I have seen the good it can do in people. I have been confirmed in the Catholic Church (at a too early point in my life, I might add, as far as the perception of finality that it brings). I continually find more truth in Catholicism it than other denominations of Christianity, but that is only when I place myself already on the side of the argument of a belief in God. The other side of the argument makes sense if I place myself on their side of the argument, of no belief in God.

So, to the extent of answering the title of the thread, THAT is why I bother with religion, because I want to investigate the good it brings. This does not mean that I have convinced myself that Catholicism contains the absolute truth above that of another religion in the world, it is just what I have been exposed to and what I have found to be useful so far.

All of my posts here completely follow my logical, intellectual way of thinking, and their purpose are to help myself and others reading the thread who are coming from a similar standpoint (there are a lot of these types that become or are atheists) get to this intellectual side of things, and to the crux of the argument.

What I have found here are that there are a lot of “emotional feelers” here that contribute nothing in helping the “thinkers” get anywhere.

The books that were mentioned were quite helpful, and maybe that is all that will be needed is to read them, however, I really am surprised that no one here can take this discussion any further than “to develop one’s faith, you can’t read anything to do it, it is just going to occur, and you will just FEEL it.”

Just because I am the one coming from the Catholic side of things doesn’t mean that I can’t argue from the other side if things if their indvidual points make more sense, because the absolute truth should prevail and come out, right?

 

[Imagine23]

You are right that I am playing devil’s advocate throughout this thread, because I call myself Catholic and I think that there is truth in the teachings of the Church. Possibly there is absolute truth in the teachings of the Church, but I haven’t come to those conclusions yet. I have an optimistic outlook on Christianity, because I have seen the good it can do in people. I have been confirmed in the Catholic Church (at a too early point in my life, I might add, as far as the perception of finality that it brings). I continually find more truth in Catholicism it than other denominations of Christianity, but that is only when I place myself already on the side of the argument of a belief in God. The other side of the argument makes sense if I place myself on their side of the argument, of no belief in God.

So, to the extent of answering the title of the thread, THAT is why I bother with religion, because I want to investigate the good it brings. This does not mean that I have convinced myself that Catholicism contains the absolute truth above that of another religion in the world, it is just what I have been exposed to and what I have found to be useful so far.

All of my posts here completely follow my logical, intellectual way of thinking, and their purpose are to help myself and others reading the thread who are coming from a similar standpoint (there are a lot of these types that become or are atheists) get to this intellectual side of things, and to the crux of the argument.

What I have found here are that there are a lot of “emotional feelers” here that contribute nothing in helping the “thinkers” get anywhere.

The books that were mentioned were quite helpful, and maybe that is all that will be needed is to read them, however, I really am surprised that no one here can take this discussion any further than “to develop one’s faith, you can’t read anything to do it, it is just going to occur, and you will just FEEL it.”

Just because I am the one coming from the Catholic side of things doesn’t mean that I can’t argue from the other side if things if their indvidual points make more sense, because the absolute truth should prevail and come out, right?

Mortal, I have appreciated your responses here as they have been more useful than biblical quotes and declarations that one must have “faith” rather than think for himself. I still think that there is a lot of hope for you because of your ability to think critically. The day will likely come that you will find that whatever comfort or good you associate with the Church can be accomplished without the need to recite Bronze Age rhetoric and rituals.

Peace be with you. Merry Christmas.

 

[Sixtus]

Want me to say ‘oh how could you’? or ‘You must believe this or that’!

But quite frankly, I do not wish to sound uncharitable but I really do not give a toss about what you think about Catholicism.

You think it is a myth…so…ok!

 

[Imagine23]

Want me to say ‘oh how could you’? or ‘You must believe this or that’!

But quite frankly, I do not wish to sound uncharitable but I really do not give a toss about what you think about Catholicism.

You think it is a myth…so…ok!

Well that is rather uncharitable young man, despite your desire not to appear uncharitable. Didn’t Jesus say something about loving your neighbor? And don’t you want those you love to go to Heaven and not Hell? And isn’t it a requirement under your belief system for ascendancy into Heaven that one believe in God and Catholic teachings? And one who does not so believe will go to Hell?

Of course the answers to the previous questions are all yes. Therefore, if you don’t care what I think, then you must want me to go to Hell, in which case you are in direct violation of the teachings of Jesus.