"How God got started", how god belief + basic reason + writing -> modern humans?

[Whateverist]

I just started reading a longish article titled "How did God get started" I found at an online site for a journal of the humanities and classics called Arion, published by Boston University since 1990.  I was impressed by the accessibility of the article and the richness of the ideas.  So I've excerpted a few bits that convey what I found interesting here.  I've only read the beginning of the article and up to this section of the article.  I'll need to ruminate on this a while before taking another bite. 

I'd love to be able to discuss it here with anyone who also finds it interesting.  

It isn't a religious site so the challenge for theists is likely to be greater than for atheists.  The article is primarily an attempt at piecing together early history and considering how that reflects on the development of human psychology and culture.  The part of the article preceding what I've excerpted considers the precedents leading up to the founding of Abrahamic religions which apparently happened concurrently with the emergence of written language and modern reason which is the main focus of this passage.  

I've underlined one passage I especially liked which likens the raw human capacity for symbolic logic in interpreting their environment to the capacity dolphins have for using sonar to do the same.  The raw capacity and use of symbolic logic when combined with authored texts and peer review blossom into science, technology and whole tradition of free rational inquiry.

GETTING TO ONE

Right around the same time that the Jews were celebrating their release from the Babylonian Captivity, the ancient Greeks freed themselves from a very different sort of captivity. The crucial first step was a fully alphabetic writing system, ...
Here begins, if not the march, then at least the toddle toward string theory and space telescopes.
For writing and thinking go together, and the dawn of this new literary age was simultaneously the dawn of reason. 

This is not to say that no one had ever thought rationally before, of course. All humans have the capacity for rational thought; clearly there exists something we might, for consistency, call the mental faculty of reason. It comprises an innate ability for symbolic logic, which we humans use in something akin to the way dolphins use sonar.   ... 
Thales and his successors struck off in a fundamentally new direction, that of secular explanation. Within a generation or two, they established free rational inquiry as a recognizable movement, a culturally coherent literary and intellectual tradition, in which ideas and concerns were passed from identifiable individuals in one generation to identifiable individuals in another, with each generation building on the work of those who came before.

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Like the tradition of faith, the tradition of reason was invented only once, although also like its religious counterpart it concentrates and amplifies a corresponding mental faculty that’s common to everyone.

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And as any student of ancient philosophy can tell you, we see the first appearance of a unitary God not in Jewish scripture, but in the thought of the Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote in the early fourth century bc. Moreover, its origins go back to none other than Thales, who had proposed that nature can be explained by reference to a single unitary principle that pervades everything.  ...  

Adding limited agency to this tradition, Plato in his dialogue Timaeus described what he called the Demiurge, a divine Craftsman who shapes the material world after ideal Forms that exist on a perfect immaterial plane. And Plato’s student Aristotle put his own twist on the concept, conceiving of God as an Unmoved Mover—a conception that would later, like Plato’s Demiurge, profoundly influence Jewish and Christian theology.

Centuries would pass before the Jews assimilated Greek thought, and scholars suspect that it was Hellenized Jewish philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria who imported the Greek idea of a single unitary God into the Jewish tradition.  ...


So one indisputable thing the last century or so of scholarly work has uncovered about faith and reason is that they are hardly the rigidly separate traditions we commonly take them for. It’s surprising for us, looking back, that reason came first. Even more surprising, perhaps, is how quickly monotheistic faith followed, starting with its first glimmering in the thought of Thales himself. As we perceive order in nature, it seems, we also gravitate to the One.

The full passage from which I excerpted the above:

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GETTING TO ONE

Right around the same time that the Jews were celebrating their release from the Babylonian Captivity, the ancient Greeks freed themselves from a very different sort of captivity. The crucial first step was a fully alphabetic writing system, which the Greeks invented and began using around 800 bc. Earlier alphabets had been missing vowels. The Greeks took one of them, the Phoenician alphabet, and added new letters for vowel sounds, making the whole thing a much more flexible and precise instrument. Here begins, if not the march, then at least the toddle toward string theory and space telescopes.
For writing and thinking go together, and the dawn of this new literary age was simultaneously the dawn of reason. Within a mere couple of hundred years or so, we see a Greek thinker named Thales of Miletus taking the novel step of trying to explain the material world in secular, naturalistic terms, and of publicizing his ideas so that others could critique them. In other words, Thales (whose name rhymes with “Hailey’s”) invented science, as well as the larger tradition of rationalistic inquiry to which science belongs, and which soon included other disciplines such as history.
This is not to say that no one had ever thought rationally before, of course. All humans have the capacity for rational thought; clearly there exists something we might, for consistency, call the mental faculty of reason. It comprises an innate ability for symbolic logic, which we humans use in something akin to the way dolphins use sonar. Nor is it to say that neighboring civilizations such as those of Babylonia and Egypt hadn’t developed wisdom traditions that included much information about the natural world. Thales and his immediate successors came from Ionia, the coast of what is now Turkey, where the mainland cities of Greece proper had established a number of prosperous colonies (of which Miletus was the acknowledged leader). Modern authorities believe that Ionia’s proximity to those older cultures did much to stimulate Ionian thought. But their explanations always came back to religious mythology. Thales and his successors struck off in a fundamentally new direction, that of secular explanation. Within a generation or two, they established free rational inquiry as a recognizable movement, a culturally coherent literary and intellectual tradition, in which ideas and concerns were passed from identifiable individuals in one generation to identifiable individuals in another, with each generation building on the work of those who came before. Like the tradition of faith, the tradition of reason was invented only once, although also like its religious counterpart it concentrates and amplifies a corresponding mental faculty that’s common to everyone.
And as any student of ancient philosophy can tell you, we see the first appearance of a unitary God not in Jewish scripture, but in the thought of the Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote in the early fourth century bc. Moreover, its origins go back to none other than Thales, who had proposed that nature can be explained by reference to a single unitary principle that pervades everything. Thales thought everything boiled down, so to speak, to Water, which he seems to have seen as an inherently divine material substance with no agency in nature; his immediate successors posited their own monist principles, including Air, Fire, and the Infinite. Divine but not divine agents, these ideas straddled the line between religious and secular. In his contribution to a groundbreaking book called Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (1999), the classicist Martin West calls these monist principles “mindless gods,” which suits them admirably.1
Adding limited agency to this tradition, Plato in his dialogue Timaeus described what he called the Demiurge, a divine Craftsman who shapes the material world after ideal Forms that exist on a perfect immaterial plane. And Plato’s student Aristotle put his own twist on the concept, conceiving of God as an Unmoved Mover—a conception that would later, like Plato’s Demiurge, profoundly influence Jewish and Christian theology.
Centuries would pass before the Jews assimilated Greek thought, and scholars suspect that it was Hellenized Jewish philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria who imported the Greek idea of a single unitary God into the Jewish tradition. Philo, who was educated in Platonic philosophy and lived in the lifetime of Jesus, wrote, “God is One, but he has around him numberless potencies . . . ” Philo’s “potencies” would soon become the angels and demons (including Satan) whom early Christians would equate with the traditional gods of Greek polytheism as Christianity split off from this evolving Jewish tradition.
So one indisputable thing the last century or so of scholarly work has uncovered about faith and reason is that they are hardly the rigidly separate traditions we commonly take them for. It’s surprising for us, looking back, that reason came first. Even more surprising, perhaps, is how quickly monotheistic faith followed, starting with its first glimmering in the thought of Thales himself. As we perceive order in nature, it seems, we also gravitate to the One.

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http://www.bu.edu/arion/archive/volume-1...t-started/

[Succubus]

That's a good hour to spend, bookmarked for later.
The guy writes with some humour:

...abortion, and gay rights, to suicide bombings, West Bank settlements, and flying lessons in which students ominously disdain instruction in landing...

...Some of them may have been behind the staffs-into-serpents trick by which Pharaoh’s wise men tried to out-conjure Moses’s brother Aaron, before their serpents were eaten up by Yahweh’s...

[Neo-Scholastic]

This article is so bad, it isn’t even wrong. It’s hard to critique because it’s all over the place. His arguments hinge on very slim evidence. For example, he dramatically overstates the influence of Thales, especially since so little is known about him. Everything we know comes from fragments of fragments of later philosophers writing about him. He was by far less influential than Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus. And to characterize Hellenistic philosophy as entirely secular, in the sense of being wholly naturalistic, is a gross overstatement. If anything it started to converge on a kind of mysticism that culminated in the third century with Plotinus. Next, the list scholars he references is unbalanced – Dennett, Pagels, Ehrman, etc.

The essay begins by comparing the “faith” based Abrahamic religions with the development of ancient Greek philosophy. The author seems intent of showing the gradual invention of God, whereas most theologians would recognize progressive revelation.

The author presents us with a thought problem: what if all knowledge of religion, including all sacred tests, disappeared. His theory is that because of a natural “mental faculty of faith,” religion would reappear, but probably in some polytheistic or animist form. My guess is that he would be right. Not only that but in complete agreement with Aquinas who at the very beginning of the “Summa” asks whether it is possible to have knowledge of Divine Truth apart from revelation. He of course concludes that it would not. So at this point, I agree with the author on the form a naturally developing religion would take – still not at all in conflict with the idea of progressive revelation.

I do however, take issue when he starts to compare and contrast the parallel traditions of Hellenistic philosophy and Oriental religion and asserts that they cannot be reconciled into a “tidy” theology. Except that it can. For example, Aquinas is called the “Angelic Doctor” precisely because of his elaborate angelology, retaining the notion of a heavenly host, without abandoning the Greek “God of Classical Theism” of Necessary Being, etc.

The author states that in the time of Abraham, God was understood not as the sole divine entity; but rather, one of many divine entities, albeit the most powerful. That much is true; however, the author’s belief that late monotheism collapsed all spiritual reality into a single divine entity is simply not true. To this day, all three major forms of monotheism retain belief in, not only a heavenly host, but also malevolent spiritual entities. Then he backpedals later to say that the independent “old gods” were rolled into the heavenly host under Christianity. Again this is not true. The Pantheon was built around the idea that the sum total of all the gods represented a single spiritual reality. This same idea can be found in the Lotus Sutra and I don’t think anyone is going to say that Buddhism was a reaction to Christianity.

I could go on. From that point on the author is spinning wildly out of control building speculations on top of speculations based on his faulty premises. It was starting to make my head hurt.

On a personal note, I really do not understand this obsession with showing that faith and reason are not compatible. Nevertheless, Whateverist, if there is some particular point within the article you find interesting, I would be happy to drill down on it.

[Minimalist]

His arguments hinge on very slim evidence.

Whereas your arguments hinge on no evidence and you think that is preferable.

BTW, Zoroastrianism far pre-dates Plato.  If I have any complaint with the excerpt it is that it seems far too Euro-centric.  The Greeks learned a lot from their association with the Persians.

[Whateverist]

His arguments hinge on very slim evidence.

Whereas your arguments hinge on no evidence and you think that is preferable.

BTW, Zoroastrianism far pre-dates Plato.  If I have any complaint with the excerpt it is that it seems far too Euro-centric.  The Greeks learned a lot from their association with the Persians.

You're a history guy, Min. Are there any sources for the Persian/Greek connection that is as accessible as this article you would recommend? My interest in the history is to get a sense of how people experienced the world and themselves in earlier times.

Like this author, I assume that people have always used reason to understand threats and to cope. I likewise assume people probably thought of the world as a kind of adversary with intentions, embodied by gods which could be supplicated or bartered with. Some kind of meta-noia was probably what pushed our developing power to reason. It doesn't surprise me that people use that capacity for reason to make room for the god(s) they have inherited. But for me it is a real question how vital god-belief had been in becoming what we are now and what if any pay off there may be for those still able to maintain it. (Not saying I want whatever it may be, I'd just like to understand it.)

[The Grand Nudger]

I sometimes wonder how people would imagine our experience of the world and ourselves if all that was left of us were coke flip tops and the Left Behind series.

On a deep level, I'm pretty sure that we're all doomed to embarrass our descendants whilst simultaneously failing to see that our ancestors experience of the world and self was significantly similar to our own.

[Edwardo Piet]

We don't need to know much about Thales. It's the philosophy that matters. Whether Socrates ever even existed is irrelevant too. The teachings are relevant whether the person existed.

You should really already be familiar with this, Neo. Considering you're such a fan of that Jesus guy who never existed but who is rumored to have said some wise (but unoriginal) stuff (as well as vile stuff like "I bring not peace but a sword").

[Minimalist]

Mary Boyce, a British scholar who died in 2006, is considered to have written the definitive study of Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices

I have no idea if it can be found online.

[Whateverist]

This article is so bad, it isn’t even wrong. It’s hard to critique because it’s all over the place. His arguments hinge on very slim evidence. For example, he dramatically overstates the influence of Thales, especially since so little is known about him. Everything we know comes from fragments of fragments of later philosophers writing about him. He was by far less influential than Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus. And to characterize Hellenistic philosophy as entirely secular, in the sense of being wholly naturalistic, is a gross overstatement. If anything it started to converge on a kind of mysticism that culminated in the third century with Plotinus. Next, the list scholars he references is unbalanced – Dennett, Pagels, Ehrman, etc.

I don't think the article wonders any wider than necessary to address his thesis that monotheism only arose where the expression of reason based only on the observation of patterns intrinsic to things themselves, and not on their manipulation by powers unseen.  Faith as a stubborn insistence on a particular doctrine wasn't necessary when we were just polytheistic people trying to survive in the world, using our wits both to figure out what was going to happen next but also what gods might be involved in that.  But when the pursuit of reason without regard to the will of the gods threatened theologians there were repercussions.  One was to emphasize miracles to establish the existence of the supernatural.  The other was to consolidate and formalize the nature of the supernatural (if that makes any sense).  

I'm no expert in greek philosophy so I can't argue the relative merits of those you mention, but I am convince by the case the author made for thinking Thales is significant for the emergence of science.

The essay begins by comparing the “faith” based Abrahamic religions with the development of ancient Greek philosophy. The author seems intent of showing the gradual invention of God, whereas most theologians would recognize progressive revelation.

I didn't get that.  He specifically says that Thales and all or most other greek philosophers were polytheist, not atheists.  He also casts Plato and Aristotle as compatibilists (not his word for it) who sought to reconcile the action of gods with the regularity observed in nature.  God wasn't invented, but a defensible unified doctrine concerning God and his supporting cast was invented in response to the those philosophers who were gaining interest for studying the world without regard to the gods.  I think his point was that the formal interest in secular reason had the effect of galvanizing theologians to make a response.  Monotheism was part of that response.

The author presents us with a thought problem: what if all knowledge of religion, including all sacred tests, disappeared. His theory is that because of a natural “mental faculty of faith,” religion would reappear, but probably in some polytheistic or animist form. My guess is that he would be right. Not only that but in complete agreement with Aquinas who at the very beginning of the “Summa” asks whether it is possible to have knowledge of Divine Truth apart from revelation. He of course concludes that it would not. So at this point, I agree with the author on the form a naturally developing religion would take – still not at all in conflict with the idea of progressive revelation.

It sounds as if we both agree that only polytheism would arise in the thought experiment.  We simply account for in ways which reflect our worldview.  For you revelation is how we 'progress' to monotheism, for a naturalist the hypothesis here is it would come as a reaction to the power of secular reason.

I do however, take issue when he starts to compare and contrast the parallel traditions of Hellenistic philosophy and Oriental religion and asserts that they cannot be reconciled into a “tidy” theology. Except that it can. For example, Aquinas is called the “Angelic Doctor” precisely because of his elaborate angelology, retaining the notion of a heavenly host, without abandoning the Greek “God of Classical Theism” of Necessary Being, etc.

I don't think the author is saying it isn't possible to reconcile hellenistic philosophy and oriental religion.  His point, as I understood it, was that reason and god belief never came into opposition in the east because the state control of both learning and religion was more tightly controlled there.  Asian rulers found value in both advances in empirical understanding and in god belief, both were important to control.  If any asian philosopher had suggested that the gods were superfluous to understanding, that would not have been well received and would certainly not have been shared or preserved.

The author states that in the time of Abraham, God was understood not as the sole divine entity; but rather, one of many divine entities, albeit the most powerful. That much is true; however, the author’s belief that late monotheism collapsed all spiritual reality into a single divine entity is simply not true. To this day, all three major forms of monotheism retain belief in, not only a heavenly host, but also malevolent spiritual entities. Then he backpedals later to say that the independent “old gods” were rolled into the heavenly host under Christianity. Again this is not true. The Pantheon was built around the idea that the sum total of all the gods represented a single spiritual reality. This same idea can be found in the Lotus Sutra and I don’t think anyone is going to say that Buddhism was a reaction to Christianity.

So I already said why I think you misunderstood what he was saying about the east.  But the part about the 'multitude' or 'pantheon' is interesting too.  The part I've bolded is indeed what the point of the move toward 'monotheism' was all about.  It was about formalizing and making defensible the study of the will of the gods, something that had never before been necessary.

I could go on. From that point on the author is spinning wildly out of control building speculations on top of speculations based on his faulty premises. It was starting to make my head hurt.

On a personal note, I really do not understand this obsession with showing that faith and reason are not compatible. Nevertheless, Whateverist, if there is some particular point within the article you find interesting, I would be happy to drill down on it.

I'll give it more thought.  I'm still digesting the article too.  I realize the article is very challenging to someone who takes seriously the defense of that which cannot be seen, but if you're up for it I'd still value your take too.

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Mary Boyce, a British scholar who died in 2006, is considered to have written the definitive study of Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices

I have no idea if it can be found online.

Thanks.  It's not in my local library but I do find it available on Amazon.  Think I'd better read it in a library up on the UC Berkeley campus first to check for accessibility and see if the interest is there.

[Minimalist]

Well..... I will be dipped in shit.  Here it is.

http://www.dnzt.org/images/BOOKS-PHOTOS/...yBoyce.pdf