This video is honestly pretty great, and might help some religious people on the fence to see that their myth is nothing special

Religions started when some bullshitter sitting by a campfire made of camel dung told a tall tale to explain the world around them. The lies keep coming all these thousands of years later.

Actually, gods started out that way. Religions started when those with a quick imagination and a glib tongue realised they could use them to manipulate others to obtain wealth and power without having to do anything to earn either.

Julian Jaynes* hypothesizes that consciousness itself began as a hallucination of the voice of a god. Actually it's more complicated than that. But if any of it makes sense then the voice of god has always been a hierarchal affair. The highest priest/king would still hear the voice of the last one emanating from a stone figure commanding him what to do and everyone below him would hear the voice of god when he spoke. That voice would continue to resonate with them even when he wasn't there by way of their own capacity to hallucinate. The capacity to have a voice of ones own would have been and some degree of will as an individual would have been a later development. So if he were right about this, the priest class wasn't a scheme of a conniving individual; it was instead part of a process which led to individual consciousness of self. But god only knows what he may have been huffing.


*The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Based on the number of different voices the priests have heard, god must be hallucinating during a bar fight.

(June 19, 2017 at 1:08 pm)Whateverist Wrote: Julian Jaynes* hypothesizes that consciousness itself began as a hallucination of the voice of a god.  Actually it's more complicated than that.  But if any of it makes sense then the voice of god has always been a hierarchal affair.  The highest priest/king would still hear the voice of the last one emanating from a stone figure commanding him what to do and everyone below him would hear the voice of god when he spoke.  That voice would continue to resonate with them even when he wasn't there by way of their own capacity to hallucinate.  The capacity to have a voice of ones own would have been and some degree of will as an individual would have been a later development.  So if he were right about this, the priest class wasn't a scheme of a conniving individual; it was instead part of a process which led to individual consciousness of self.  But god only knows what he may have been huffing.


*The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

The claim that the brain didn't have as many connections as it does now (the corpus callosum was smaller?) is sort of what Jaynes was driving at, IIRC. I don't know the biology of that, though. It's also been a long time since I read the book. In any event, my personal thinking is along the lines of a person having a problem to solve, and he thinks long and hard about it. Sort of equivalent to praying for a solution, but without the woo. When a solution presents itself, the religious person may consider it "divine inspiration" instead of just realizing that it comes from his own mind. As in, "How did I ever come up with that solution?". I do not ascribe to a divine source.

(June 19, 2017 at 1:08 pm)Whateverist Wrote: Julian Jaynes* hypothesizes that consciousness itself began as a hallucination of the voice of a god.  Actually it's more complicated than that.  But if any of it makes sense then the voice of god has always been a hierarchal affair.  The highest priest/king would still hear the voice of the last one emanating from a stone figure commanding him what to do and everyone below him would hear the voice of god when he spoke.  That voice would continue to resonate with them even when he wasn't there by way of their own capacity to hallucinate.  The capacity to have a voice of ones own would have been and some degree of will as an individual would have been a later development.  So if he were right about this, the priest class wasn't a scheme of a conniving individual; it was instead part of a process which led to individual consciousness of self.  But god only knows what he may have been huffing.


*The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Sounds overly complex. The bullshitter theory is quite enough.

(June 19, 2017 at 1:25 pm)Fireball Wrote: "How did I ever come up with that solution?".

All of my teachers have wondered that about me during those math tests

This is a great video. I've seen it before, and it's good to watch it. It may have been the video, or at least one of them, that made me realize the Jesus story isn't special at all.

(June 19, 2017 at 1:38 pm)Aoi Magi Wrote:

(June 19, 2017 at 1:25 pm)Fireball Wrote: "How did I ever come up with that solution?".

All of my teachers have wondered that about me during those math tests  

That's why I never cheated on tests. I don't want to own other's mistakes- I make enough of my own.