I love religion!

[Zagreus]

See, even saying ‘some sort of animism’ requires an initial idea that there are souls in other things, and an idea of what a soul is…

No, they probably weren't communicating with grunts if that's what you mean. But primitive people were exactly that. There is a tribe in South America right now whose members, as of last year, didn't have a concept of "the future," so I find it somewhat hard to ascribe that much sophistication to our ancestors.

The thing is, a comparison with our ancestors and modern day primitive people is not quite accurate, as there are such big differences. Our ancestors developed into us, whereas the ancestors of the people in the tribe you speak of didn’t, they would have been much the same. Their generations have spent many, many millennia like that. Our ancestors built Stone Henge, developed trade with stone tools (archaeological record shows this), developed more complex language, and developed into people who could build great monuments, such as the pyramids.

Part of this is obviously contact with more advanced homo sapiens, as we see technological development spread fairly slowly across the planet. Bronze Ages happened at different times in different places and so on. England, for example, was about 2,000 years behind the middle east on agriculture, and it was relatively late over here. The tribes like the one you mention have not had the contact with more ‘advanced’ members of the species. That’s partly where I’m getting the idea for a trigger for, as ideas had a domino effect as they were told from group to group. Trade routes had a massive impact on the spread of ideas.

The capability of sophistication is there, it’s the cultivation of it that is key. Some of our ancestors had that sophistication, to a relative degree (I reckon).

There’s a couple of things that arise here; one being that most humans follow the pack, but we are the only species to also display genius…

Makes perfect sense. Shamanistic rituals often do involve psychotropics. I don't know if it's strictly necessary for a belief to form, but definitely I'd think some of the early "religious" experiences were drug related. That said, humans have such a strong tendency to anthropomorphize that I think it could easily have happened in day to day experience (Pocahontas quote: The rainstorm and the river are my brothers, The heron and the otter are my friends, And we are all connected to each other, In a circle, in a hoop that never ends ). In fact it was probably both- I think that religious or supernatural concepts were developed multiple times around the world.

I don’t think it’s strictly necessary for the belief to form either, but some of the more ‘out there’ ideas it could be a result of this. I am not denying the anthropomorphising or the fact that many ideas of God / gods are simply personifications of ideas. I think you are entirely right on that. There are other layers to belief though, such as the concept of the Tao from China. With something like that, I’m reckoning there is some brain state, that would have been achievable by older ancestors, that led to the sayings of people such as Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching. Drugs are somewhat comparable here, but not strictly so. I think that might be something I’ll mention in the pm and then if the conversation goes that way mention here.

Overall I agree with you here. Also, if Pocahontas was taking the hallucinogens that would explain why she thought her brother was an otter and a heron (maaaan!)

100% agreed- it's just easier to talk in metaphor- when I can say strategy instead of "set of properties of a certain allele which lead to the same allele becoming more numerous in the gene pool after successive generations" my head hurts less.

That made me laugh.

I’ve not read it yet, but I might do on your recommendation. It’s only Dawkins’ literalist take on religion that bugs me, the stuff on biology he does is great from what I’ve seen and heard.

Yeah, it's one of his first books, about 30 years old, so there's not a lot of harping on about god or anything. It's just very well written and easy to understand- and actually it's the book which really solidified exactly how simply evolution works when you look at the gene as the active participant in natural selection, rather than the individual, group, or species. Sometimes I get really awed by the beauty in the simplicity, and it's because of this book.

I’ll have a look at it then. Second book recommendation of the thread, so I’m happy!

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No, no, no. I meant "problem" in the sense that it is hard to convey your interest in religion to others while identifying yourself as an atheist without invoking the sense that your perpective is somehow paradoxal. I myself have an interest in religion, yet find no need to believe in some "big imaginary dude who controls shit". I find your love of religion to be valid. That's what I was trying to say: that I appriciate your point of view.

Right, I get you, and your original post makes perfect sense now! Judging by the rest of your post, I guess you take it at a philosophical level, as opposed to necessarily having to be considered a possibility of truth. By this I mean, to take Nietzsche as example, you enjoy getting your head around the ideas as opposed to necessarily having to agree or disagree with the ideas; though working out an opinion is also part of it, but not necessarily a main part. The fun is in playing the game, as opposed to necessarily having to win, as it were. Am I right on that?

Be careful in interpreting Nietzshe. I suppose the fact that you haven't studied him much might make it easy for you to take the quoted passage out of context. To Nietzsche, power is everything. He wasn't mocking "outdated" power. He was praising it. But also, he points out that it is the cultural ESTEEM that the belief in an ideal provokes that is of real value and not the thing that is actually believed. (sorry if that's confusing) For instance, he admired druids and pagans because they LOVED LIFE and their beliefs repesented and acceptance and appriciation of LIFE, though he did not believe in gods of the rocks and fertillity and such. I was proposing that maybe you shared his awe and wonder at the cultural diversity (and, indeed, cultural divergence). On the other hand he saw Christians as weak and despicable because they always are WEARY of life and HATE life and DENY life and claim that the only important life was some IMAGINARY life or "eternal" life in "heaven". The doctrines of denial of the passions also put him at odds, to a lesser extent, with buddhism. But a knowlegable person knows that Buddhism is about REALIZING passions by letting them go and not being attatched to them like a weak spirit, but I digress...

This is very much appreciated, as you’ve pretty much given me a ‘beginner’s guide’, so I thank you for your time! That’s really grabbed my interest, and I might have a go at some of his works next. You were exactly right, pretty much, in what you were proposing was my interest in religion, and I look forward to chatting with you more about this subject if you’re interested? (I don’t mean talking specifically about my views, I’m not that vain, but about your digression.)

Birth of Tragedy is a pretty good mind opener, but it reprents his thinking before it passed through a certain threshold never to return. To get a better presentation of what were Nietzsche's mature ideas check out "Twilight of the Idols" (very short) or "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (medium length). Now to get a scholastic-grade familiarity with his most powerful and culturally relevant arguments you must read (in this order) "Beyond Good and Evil" (long, but opens up the mind magically) "Geneology of Morals" (fairly short) and finally "The Antichrist" (very short and one of my favorite titles by him, garenteed to blow your mind if you can grasp it-- you might not need to read the two former titles to "get it" but it would most surely help. If you understand "Antichrist" you understand basically the whole of Nietzsche).

Again, I can’t thank you enough for that breakdown, and I’ll go for the books in that order. I have copies of Tragedy, Zarathustra, and Beyond, but have only delved into Tragedy so far as it was applicable to the research I was doing on Dionysus at the time. I definitely want to get my head around his ideas soon though as he was such an important thinker of the last century, and I feel I’m missing out. I chose doing a module and dissertation on Aristotle instead whilst at university rather than him; I wish I could have done both!

Finally, I just wan't to point out that I do NOT agree with about 75% of the man's philosophy. But I do so love his accurate portrayal of the psychology of the "believer"-- a liar who hates life so much he has adopted a system of thought and ritual to deny it. And his style is magnificent and stylish. But one thing you will find by studying Nietzsche is that he has his own dogma as well. And as a non-dogmatist, I just can't groove with that.

In summary, I was just saying that your love of religion is completely valid, that I too love religion along with any other great work of fiction, for its inherent literary value as did Herr Nietzsche. But even Christianity has some truth to it. Afterall, it "should be considered unclean to lie with animals" shouldn't it?

I really like your comment here. You seem to get what I’m meaning. Even if I disagree with 99% of religious philosophy, doesn’t mean I can’t take an interest. As I said though, it looks to me like we’re both coming at this from a philosophy perspective, which will alter a view. If I’d done a degree in physics I might not feel quite the same.

PS: We will never know if Buddha was an atheist. I think he probably WAS because there is no trace of "God" in his core truth. I think that BUDDHA was an atheist, but most BUDDHISTS aren't. How ironic. But this is coming from the guy who wonders if Jesus might have been an atheist...

I’m up for discussing whether they were atheists if you want, especially Jesus. If it’s a conversation you’re interested in either pm or start a thread. My knowledge of Christianity is better than that of Buddhism, but half the fun is the research to have these conversations, in my opinion.