(July 9, 2019 at 8:28 am)Belaqua Wrote: I think I was clear that I wasn't talking about modern humans. I think the concepts were still fuzzy for very early humans, and the ideas of what was alive, and what had emotions, and what needed to be cooperated with, was nowhere near what it is for us on this forum. 

So the early humans were by default, atheists with questions.

Quote:I think we have built in desires to explain how the world works. Maybe it works like a language -- the desire and the basic structure is built in, but the specifics are learned from whatever society the child finds herself in. In a religious society, she learns religion as the explanation. In a logic-only society, she learns logic as the explanation.

Yes, which just backs up what I said about the default position.  

Quote:If we take the term "faith" in its simplest sense, to mean "I'm pretty sure it's true,"  then a child raised in a logical household will have faith in logic. 

In a theistic sense, I take the term faith to mean "I'm believing this on poor, or no evidence." I wouldn't use the term faith in the way that you describe.

Quote:That particular woo isn't hardwired into us. The general desire to find explanations probably is. Some explanations will be a lot better than others.

So why did you object to atheism being the default position in human beings? (Yes I know atheism wasn't even a thing back then, but I'm sure you know what I mean)

(July 9, 2019 at 9:01 am)Cod Wrote:

(July 9, 2019 at 8:28 am)Belaqua Wrote: I think I was clear that I wasn't talking about modern humans. I think the concepts were still fuzzy for very early humans, and the ideas of what was alive, and what had emotions, and what needed to be cooperated with, was nowhere near what it is for us on this forum. 

So the early humans were by default, atheists with questions.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. 

They probably thought that there were different non-human powers in the world, they probably anthropomorphized somewhat. They didn't have the concepts that we do, of supernatural/natural, or natural/divine. 

If an early human goes to great lengths to appease the unseen forces of the bison hunt in order to eat through the winter, but lacks the modern concept of a god, is he an atheist? I think that's getting too hair-splitty about definitions. 

Quote:

Quote: Wrote: Wrote:I think we have built in desires to explain how the world works. Maybe it works like a language -- the desire and the basic structure is built in, but the specifics are learned from whatever society the child finds herself in. In a religious society, she learns religion as the explanation. In a logic-only society, she learns logic as the explanation.

Yes, which just backs up what I said about the default position.  

Please explain why.

Quote:In a theistic sense, I take the term faith to mean "I'm believing this on poor, or no evidence." I wouldn't use the term faith in the way that you describe.

You can use it however you want, I don't much care about definitions. The point is that a person raised in a given society will be likely to think that his society's explanations for things is pretty good. And that's the case whether the kid comes from an animist hunter-gatherer group or a sciency group.

Quote:So why did you object to atheism being the default position in human beings? (Yes I know atheism wasn't even a thing back then, but I'm sure you know what I mean)

No, I don't know what you mean. 

I think that early humans were very likely to come up with explanations that we moderns would call god-like. The power that controls the hunt, who listens to our requests and might get angry if we don't do things right. The power that causes earthquakes, who might be in a bad mood. 

Thinking of human psychology, it seems more likely to me that these god-like concepts would be a part of people's earliest thinking, than that people remained pure empiricists until some conman invented the concept of a god. So at the time, given how people's minds work, explaining the world through god-like forces seems closer to a default than not. 

(July 9, 2019 at 9:01 am)Cod Wrote: So the early humans were by default, atheists with questions.

I wonder about this though, Cod. I see where you're coming from. But the thing is, you don't find primitive tribes with worldviews that resemble those of, say, atheists on this forum. They typically have shamanistic beliefs or assume some kind of animism. To me, that says something about what default human belief is.

I think this is because they are using an unrefined, rudimentary kind of logic to form conclusions about the world. As we all know, our innate sense of logic is often fallacious. People who depend on such logic are bound to form erroneous conclusions.

Anyway, long story short, I wonder if humans need a developed sense of logic with a careful, systematic study of the natural world (ie. science) in order to genuinely reach the conclusion of atheism.

Of course it depends how you define things like "nonbelief in gods" or the "default position of belief in gods" etc. etc. but the argument could be made that humans innately form ideas about the world that include spirits and such. And atheism is not a default, but an ability to reach different conclusions after carefully and systematically considering evidence.

We can split hairs all day about what belief is default , but anthropologists have arguably observed default human belief, and it don't look like atheism.

(July 9, 2019 at 9:46 am)vulcanlogician Wrote:

(July 9, 2019 at 9:01 am)Cod Wrote: So the early humans were by default, atheists with questions.

I wonder about this though, Cod. I see where you're coming from. But the thing is, you don't find primitive tribes with worldviews that resemble those of, say, atheists on this forum. They typically have shamanistic beliefs or assume some kind of animism. To me, that says something about what default human belief is.

I think this is because they are using an unrefined, rudimentary kind of logic to form conclusions about the world. As we all know, our innate sense of logic is often fallacious. People who depend on such logic are bound to form erroneous conclusions.

Anyway, long story short, I wonder if humans need a developed sense of logic with a careful, systematic study of the natural world (ie. science) in order to genuinely reach the conclusion of atheism.

Of course it depends how you define things like "nonbelief in gods" or the "default position of belief in gods" etc. etc. but the argument could be made that humans innately form ideas about the world that include spirits and such. And atheism is not a default, but an ability to reach different conclusions after carefully and systematically considering evidence.

We can split hairs all day about what belief is default , but anthropologists have arguably observed default human belief, and it don't look like atheism.

Or you could look at the Piraha people.

Interesting discussion from a missionary who tried to convert them
https://ffrf.org/publications/freethough...ithout-god

"God did it" was the lazy excuse to not think about something.

(July 9, 2019 at 4:59 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: "God did it" was the lazy excuse to not think about something.

Some people say that everything was just atheist until some guy invented the concept of god. 
That's a lazy excuse to avoid real thinking.

(July 9, 2019 at 4:51 pm)Abaddon_ire Wrote: Or you could look at the Piraha people.

Interesting discussion from a missionary who tried to convert them
https://ffrf.org/publications/freethough...ithout-god

Wow. That was a really interesting and insightful essay. Thank you for sharing. As much as I enjoyed it, however, I'd like to point out that it was more a criticism of the Western ethos than rigorous commentary concerning religiosity of primitive peoples. Although it masqueraded as the latter from time to time, the criticisms along that vein were just not quite on point. Take this statement:

Quote:What are the lessons we can learn from the Pirahã? Well, for one thing, the Pirahã are happy without god. And that violates a lot of the predictions not only of religious folks but of anthropologists, who believe that god is an essential ingredient of all cultures. That’s false. There are cultures that get by just fine without any concept of god.

(I take issue with the bolded portion)

I appreciate the point that Everett is making here. It is an excellent point. But he seems to have mischaracterized anthropology while making it. If there are any anthropology buffs on the forum, feel free to correct me here, but as I understand it, anthropologists typically conclude that gods are a ubiquitous ingredient of all cultures--not an "essential" ingredient.

Also (again concerning what I see as a mischaracterization of anthropology) I take issue with these remarks:

Quote:We find anthropologists who, like Malinowski, one of the fathers of modern anthropology, kept two sorts of journals. He kept one journal about the cultural observations he was making and another journal about his personal reactions. He hated the people he was working with. He said terrible things about them in his journal. He kept them separate in his journals, but I doubt if he kept them separate successfully in his mind.

Who fucking cares? He kept his prejudices out of his work and that's the important (arguably crucial) consideration here. It doesn't matter to his work that the man had prejudices when expressing his personal opinions in his personal journal. The REAL question is, did these prejudices affect his conclusions? If you want to argue that they did, fine. Show me how his professional work was prejudiced. Don't tell me about the man's personal journals and say, "I doubt if he could have kept them separate in his mind." WHY do you doubt he could keep them separate in his mind? Some part of his mind compelled him to keep two separate journals. Maybe that was the part of his mind that was able to separate his prejudices from his personal observations. There is a little bit of mysticism going on here in Everett's thinking. And I don't like it.

The part of the article that most concerns our debate about atheism being "default" to human nature are his claims that Praha people have no creation myths. As interesting as that is, it doesn't quite relate to our thesis about "default atheism" (which is no fault of Everett's, but it is worth noting). Moreover, Everett's support for this claim are largely anecdotal. What's missing from his essay is a rigorous analysis of Piraha beliefs. This doesn't weigh down his main observations about Western/Christo-centric value and knowledge systems and their relevance to life in general (which are quite on point) but it does mean his claims about Piraha religiosity are flimsy and unfounded.

Quote:Plato was really a religious fascist, if you look carefully at what he wrote. Plato said that what we see here are just shadows of the ultimate reality that lies behind all of this. So when John started off his story, in chapter 1, telling the people that the Logos was God, the Greeks found that fairly easy to believe; but not in the Christian sense, in the sense that this was the ultimate reality. But then he gets down to verse 14, and he said, “And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” For the Greeks, that was really difficult to understand, to accept that idea at all. But it was the entrance of Christianity into Greek culture. And that was used by Don Richardson and Billy Graham and others as an example of a redemptive analogy. The Greek culture was prepared by Plato to accept the message of the gospel.

I don't know what the fuck this is. How is a quintessential anti-dogmatist a "religious fascist"? Guilt by association... perhaps drilled into Everett during his Christian indoctrination. Who knows? But he obviously hasn't looked carefully at what Plato wrote. You don't write quasi-unsupported statements about Plato in the first two sentences of a paragraph and then spend the rest of a paragraph rambling about the Gospel of John as if it is somehow relevant to Plato (who wrote his works four centuries earlier). As much as I agree with most of what Everett writes in the rest of the article, this entire paragraph is incoherent bullshit that says absolutely nothing.

(July 9, 2019 at 6:31 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 9, 2019 at 4:59 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: "God did it" was the lazy excuse to not think about something.

Some people say that everything was just atheist until some guy invented the concept of god. 
That's a lazy excuse to avoid real thinking.

Whoa, that was stupid.

(July 9, 2019 at 6:31 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 9, 2019 at 4:59 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: "God did it" was the lazy excuse to not think about something.

Some people say that everything was just atheist until some guy invented the concept of god. 
That's a lazy excuse to avoid real thinking.

No it isn't. How would you label early humans in a time before we invented Gods, and everyone had a lack of belief? Okay the word atheist isn't a perfect fit but it's close enough for me. You are sounding like someone who is pushing the idea of some sort of intentional design, like we were destined to invent Gods through an 'inbuilt need'. I'm not buying it.

(July 10, 2019 at 3:02 am)Cod Wrote:

(July 9, 2019 at 6:31 pm)Belaqua Wrote: Some people say that everything was just atheist until some guy invented the concept of god. 
That's a lazy excuse to avoid real thinking.

No it isn't. How would you label early humans in a time before we invented Gods, and everyone had a lack of belief? Okay the word atheist isn't a perfect fit but it's close enough for me. 

When you say "before we invented gods," it sounds as if we were going along with no notion of gods and then came up with the idea out of whole cloth. 

That strikes me as too simple, and as projecting modern thinking backwards where it doesn't belong. 

People tried to figure out how the world worked. They attributed various events to various kinds of forces and agents. Some of these are what we would now call natural, and some weren't. Some were anthropomorphized, and some weren't. 

Gawdzilla and other lazy thinkers act as though people used to be honest empiricists until some guy had a fantasy. That suits the general anti-religion ideology around here, but it's a comic book view of history.

Quote:You are sounding like someone who is pushing the idea of some sort of intentional design, like we were destined to invent Gods through an 'inbuilt need'. I'm not buying it.

This is your interpretation, but it's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that when early humans tried to explain the world, it was natural and understandable that they would picture causal agency, other-than-human powers, and thinking agents that reflected the way they themselves thought. If early humans were at all thinking beings, offering the very earliest explanations for how things work, it is close to a default premise for them to assume that other things work the way we do. Only bigger, in the case of volcanoes, for example. 

Before any such explanations occurred to early primates, it makes sense to call them atheist in the sense that dirt is atheist, or the empty space in a box is atheist: it lacks belief because it has no belief. It has no belief because it has no abstract thought or the capacity to try to explain.