First Time Poster (Please Read and Comment)
Edward Bartlett
Let me begin by saying that these are my own ideas and feelings on the
subject. I have not studied the Pschology, Sociology, Philosophy, nor
History of the Theism vs Atheism debate. If I cover ground that has been
already discussed, I apologize in advance and plead ignorance. Like the
title says, I'm a first-time poster.
I, like many, was raised in a religous enviornment, Catholic in my
case. As I grew older, I discovered that the more questions I asked about
religion, the less satisfying the answers became. To me, they smacked of
rationalizations, rather than valid explanations. I drifted further and
further from my religous background, before abandoning it all together. Over
the years, I have come up with my own opinions on how religion came to be
born, and why it can be found in every culture.
This is a rather long post, but I would welcome any thoughful
critiques. If you are an adherent to any religion or system of belief,
please don't try to "convert" me, it's taken me many long years to get to
this point, and it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to change my mind now.
Unless you have some proof that would stand up in a court of law, or would
pass hard scientific scrutiny, I would prefer not to hear how "God will
change your life". Also, if the following stikes any chords with anyone
reading it, and has some idea where I might find further resources that are
similar in tone, please don't hesitate to let me know.
IMHO, you have to look at religion in a Historical and Psychological
context for it to make any sense. Religion, in one form or another, appears
to have been around even before we were. By that, I mean that it is a well
documented fact that the Neanderthal had very ornate and ritualistic burial
practices. Most Anthropologists agree that this denotes some form of
"Religious" belief system. Imagine for a moment what the thought processes
were for a Neanderthat man, living some 30,000 years ago. He looks up at the
night sky, and sees thousands of stars. Even now, it's an awe-inspiring
sight, if you get out of the city that is, and we know what stars are. Our
Neanderthal friend does not. He can't touch them, but they are undeniably
real, and they are there every night.
Now, how does he explain them? Science can explain them, but his
scientific knowledge ends with fire, and he doesn't know how that works
either, only that it does work.
Add to this, he knows that someday, he will die, an awareness that
(as far as we know, anyway) we are alone with in the animal kingdom.
Someday, he will cease to be. BTW, if you want to make the arguement that
Neanderthals did not possess such higher brain functions, just change it to
Cro-Magnon instead. The arguement still works the same.
The Human mind cannot concieve of nothingness. Try thinking of
nothing sometime. I wish you luck, that's the sort of thing Zen masters
spend a lifetime trying to achieve. But our ancestor knew Death well, the
average life expectancy was about 25 years. So, on the one hand, he knew he
would die, on the other, he can't picture himself dying. What to do......
There is something in the Human psyche that makes us want to find
out the why, the explanations behind the facts. It is one of the things I
love about Humanity, otherwise we would still be wearing animal skins. Our
friend wants to know why, but he lacks the resources to truly answer the
questions.
Until someone sat up one day, and invented religion. Now here was
something our Neanderthal friend could sink his teeth into. It explained
everything, in a way he could understand. Now he knew why the seasons
changed, why the plants grew, and what happened to him after his death.
Religion could explain it all. And about 5 seconds after the invention of
religion, some bright boy figured out that whoever "passed down the word
from on high" could have a pretty good life of plenty, not to mention power,
by telling the great unwashed that was what "God" wanted. Who was going to
argue with God?
I have a lot more of my own theory on this subject, but this is
getting kind of long. If there is a favorable response, or at least a lively
discourse, I will post more. I look forward to reading your responses.
Ed
David J. Vorous
Edward Bartlett wrote:
> .... Until someone sat up one day, and invented religion. Now here was
> something our Neanderthal friend could sink his teeth into. It explained
> everything, in a way he could understand. Now he knew why the seasons
> changed, why the plants grew, and what happened to him after his death.
> Religion could explain it all. And about 5 seconds after the invention of
> religion, some bright boy figured out that whoever "passed down the word
> from on high" could have a pretty good life of plenty, not to mention power,
> by telling the great unwashed that was what "God" wanted.....
Religion is the oldest profession.
--
David J. Vorous
Yosemite Llama Ranch
da...@TheLlamaRanch.com
http://www.TheLlamaRanch.com
UDP for WebTV
Icarus
"Edward Bartlett" <sgt...@earthlink.net> wrote:
<big snippage>
> ... Until someone sat up one day, and invented religion.
Hi Edward... Interesting post, and I've no doubt you're right in
almost all of what you say, except that perhaps the 'invention' of
religion was rather more of a gradual haphazard process than the word
implies. People can invent a religion from scratch today for entirely
cynical reasons (apparently Mormonism and Scientology fall into that
category) but in the beginning it was probably just a very long
groping towards some kind of explanation for all the things that
humans had no other way of understanding at the time. I would guess
it was probably only later that some people realised they could use
religious feelings to manipulate and take advantage of other people.
I could well be completely wrong though :-)
Cheers...
Paul_Morphy
"Edward Bartlett" <sgt...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1010296937$20...@alumni.caltech.edu...
> Until someone sat up one day, and invented religion. Now here
was
> something our Neanderthal friend could sink his teeth into. It explained
> everything, in a way he could understand.
Oh, man, I know you didn't *mean* to equate religion with Neanderthals,
but.... Damn, I wish I'd written that. Seriously, good job all the way.
You've captured the symbolic nature of religion. Unfortunately, theists get
tangled up in there, mistaking symbolism as literal truth. That's what
really separates us from them, IMO. Most of us probably don't have issues
with most of the symbolic content of, say the Bible; we just don't take it
as "gospel."
I've been background processing here, trying to come up with some witty
retort along the lines of "too bad the Neanderthals didn't go on to
completely digest religion, so we wouldn't be stuck with it now." Nice post.
"PM"
Bria...@webtv.net
Great post Ed!
but don't expect much lively debate from theists. They don't like to
discuss why ancient religions are false and theirs are not.
blazingmuse
Ah yes, religion. While it's possible to see how a religious belief
could arise in the first place, I like to think such an enduring
feature of human society would not have stuck around unless it brought
some tangible benefits. Carl Sagan had a similar notion on how a God
was invented on the basis that:
0- humans observe order in environment.
0- humans change portions of environment (through tools, or as tools,)
to suit
purposes of survival.
0- humans begin to associate order with design.
0- order more sophisticated than human tools implies grander designer.
God is
born.
But while the notion of a creator who fashioned the entire Cosmos
exclusively for your benefit is very comforting (you're obviously the
most important portion to start,) it's difficult to imagine how it
ballooned into the vast bloated theocratic monolith we see today all
on it's own.
So consider an extension of the tale, and I would appreciate all
rejoinders. There was one major difference between Neanderthals and
Cro-Magnon hominids. Cro-Magnons could talk. Language, the great
bridge across the gulf of generation gap and personal space, gave us
such an edge because it allowed collective intelligence. Not just
pack behaviour, which is an instinct, or an aquired skill within a
lifetime, but the genuine growth of a supermind within the tribe which
outlasted any of it's component parts, like the shift from unicellelar
to complex life during the Cambrian. A racial memory and internal
organisation of the new beast, Hobbe's own Leviathan, brought the same
specialisation and explosion in complexity in our societies that was
seen half a billion years ago in organic life. the mechanics are a
little different, but the analogy does extend further.
The first thing a superorganism has to impose on it's components is to
tightly control their reproductive strategy. But the Leviathan
reproduces quite differently from lifeforms based on evolution. What
is the act of reproduction, but a window of opportunity for the
modification of the genetic code? In a conventional beast,
spontaneous mutation is most likely to result in cancer and death,
since the DNA spiral is complex enough that any spanner thrown in will
likely wreck the works. A certain amount of redundancy aside,
reproduction needs to be a concentrated event, where a mutation
unravels from the beginning of the sequence, and even if fatal to the
newborn, does not destroy the parent. But the memetic code of the
Leviathan, encoded as ideas, reproduces through the change of ideas,
something it can suffer without the need for a physical zygote as
neural networks are much more fault-tolerant than linear reference
machines i.e genes. But, to control the reproductive urges of it's
component mentalities, a supermind must curtail original thought.
it's something of a stretch, but consider. If the superorganism is to
survive, discipline must be imposed on it's parts, they need to
fulfill certain roles. Religion evolved as a means of tying the
desire to avoid death- one of the most powerful of human instincts- to
suit the needs of the society, where church and state were closely
allied: like a chemical receptor on the surface of a cell that tells
it when and if to split or even self-destruct, or the pheremone
cocktail that keeps wayward soldier ants in order. Apoptosis- Like
skin cells that march upwards to dessication, jihad arose like a means
of fending off foreign societies, as individual souls were duped into
believing that their single deaths were beneficial. It's also
interesting to note that many religions advocate priest celibacy, and
that in the body, most neurons can't reproduce. It's a rough and
ready analogy, but I think it does explain various things.
I would be interested to hear arguments in favour of original thought
being more beneficial to the society than inner organisation and
stability, how, under what circumstances, and if so, why it hardly
predominates.
Edward Bartlett
> "Edward Bartlett" <sgt...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > ... Until someone sat up one day, and invented religion.
>
> Hi Edward... Interesting post, and I've no doubt you're right in
> almost all of what you say, except that perhaps the 'invention' of
> religion was rather more of a gradual haphazard process than the word
> implies.
Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it. I have to
admit, I was being rather flip in that paragraph. Your phrasing is much more
accurate, and I'd be willing to bet, much closer to what actually happened.
We as a species have always tried to discover the truths in our lives, it's
just that today I believe that we are much better equiped for the task.
Science has been able to answer many of the questions that our ancestors
were unable, or unwilling, to answer.
Unfortunately, Science cannot, by it's very nature, answer what
I like to call "The Big 3", the three questions that form the basis of what
draws people to religion in the first place;
1. Where did I come from?
2. Why am I here?
3. Where am I going?
For Question #1, I'm not refering to evolution or
fertilization, science explains those quite well. I mean the essence of what
makes each of us unique, whether you call it conciousness, spirit, soul, or
what have you. Science can't answer those questions, because the answers are
different for everyone. These are the same questions that philosophers have
debated for thousands of years, and will continue to debate for thousands
more. In fact, I like to refer to Religion as "Philosophy with an attitude".
Ed
Ron Hammon
blazingmuse wrote:
>
snip
> So consider an extension of the tale, and I would appreciate all
> rejoinders. There was one major difference between Neanderthals and
> Cro-Magnon hominids. Cro-Magnons could talk. Language, the great
> bridge across the gulf of generation gap and personal space, gave us
> such an edge because it allowed collective intelligence. Not just
> pack behaviour, which is an instinct, or an aquired skill within a
> lifetime, but the genuine growth of a supermind within the tribe which
> outlasted any of it's component parts, like the shift from unicellelar
> to complex life during the Cambrian.
snip
Your view is very, very common, that Modern Man is significantly
superior to Neanderthals. However, this prejudice is just another
example of the old us/them slander.
The improvements in voice communication, which you allude to, allowed
vowels to be spoken by the new man, nothing more. Neanderthals were
speakers, social beings, tool-makers, almost indistinquishable from the
fresh interlopers at the time. Modern man lived for about 50,000 years
with no real development beyond the Neanderthals. That is, until the
invention of writing. The vast improvement that you argue for should be
writing, not speech. Notice, also, that writing happened WITHOUT a
change in man. We do not owe our technology and knowledge to the split
from Neanderthals. There is a good possibility that writing could've
been discovered by the earlier man.
--
Ron Hammon. Remove "y" from "nyet", if present, from my address to
reply.
blazingmuse
I would say that the development of vowels is pretty much essential
for coherent speech. Otherwise you are reduced to a series of hissing
rasps. There is some evidence to support the view that the
development of language was as much a cultural innovation as a genetic
one, but as the Neanderthals don't seem to have caught on and were
promptly wiped out by the new superorganism, I think it can be
concluded they didn't have the capacity for language or large
organised society as we know them. Neanderthals did coexist with
humans up until about 14 thousand years ago as far as I know, but only
in remote locations, for wherever we get the spread of culture, we see
art, musical instruments, significantly more sophisticated toolmaking
and guess what? A total abscence of Neanderthals.
This happened significantly earlier than the invention of writing some
8000 years ago, which moreover was initially a far from flexible means
of communication, being largely used to store tallies of goods and
records of production, later being used by a priestly caste or for
purposes of administration, and only finally settling into the niche
of replicating language. Language existed first, and was responsible
for our, for want of a better word, humanity.
I still don't see how you've addressed my main argument though. I
still would like to know, why, if original thought is such a good
thing, why it is not encouraged. Given the large administrative cost
of religions, societies with smaller or weaker theocracies would
presumably have triumphed over others more hidebound, simply from the
saving in resources. Is religion a parasite, or a symbiote, is what
I'm saying?