RE: Question about "faith"
September 29, 2020 at 9:39 am
(This post was last modified: September 29, 2020 at 9:54 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Again, anthropologists don't think so. They point to red ochre burials and artwork and practical objects and more as records of full modernity - which they place around 50k years ago. That leaves something like 150k years before that, and with no reason to assume that we thought like we do today before full modernity, and every observation we've made establishing that we did and do beyond that point - that puts a clock on souls.
I guess that it's difficult to imagine a human being that doesn't just think different things than we do, but that doesn't think like we do at all - but that's what we find in the archaeological record. We haven't always thought the things that we do now, and we haven't always thought the way we do now, at all. Not about the ordinary things or the hallucinations or the dreams or the drugs - not about the things that provide us with the intuition of soul, or even about the bison that lives outside our hovels. As far as we can tell, that's an effect of full modernity, and it's one of the defining aspects of observed full modernity.
Before full modernity, expecting another human being to have so much as a familiar concept of self necessary to the modern concept of soul is wishful thinking based on what we are today. If they did, they never did anything to indicate as much, even though they would create mounds of reasons to think as much, independently, all over the world, beyond some point in time. Meanwhile our historical records, and particularly our historical records about beliefs, indicate their placement at the beginning of man ( contemporary religions are incapable of imagining man as anything different to full modernity). We know that's not true - so, in this case, those records are less valuable than those which inform our academic positions on the subject. Those guys were mythmaking, and we don't base our conclusions on the content of their myths, we base them by digging through the trash and checking the walls for graffiti. We base them on when we started burying our dead, and when we added ritual to burial. So on and so forth.
I guess that it's difficult to imagine a human being that doesn't just think different things than we do, but that doesn't think like we do at all - but that's what we find in the archaeological record. We haven't always thought the things that we do now, and we haven't always thought the way we do now, at all. Not about the ordinary things or the hallucinations or the dreams or the drugs - not about the things that provide us with the intuition of soul, or even about the bison that lives outside our hovels. As far as we can tell, that's an effect of full modernity, and it's one of the defining aspects of observed full modernity.
Before full modernity, expecting another human being to have so much as a familiar concept of self necessary to the modern concept of soul is wishful thinking based on what we are today. If they did, they never did anything to indicate as much, even though they would create mounds of reasons to think as much, independently, all over the world, beyond some point in time. Meanwhile our historical records, and particularly our historical records about beliefs, indicate their placement at the beginning of man ( contemporary religions are incapable of imagining man as anything different to full modernity). We know that's not true - so, in this case, those records are less valuable than those which inform our academic positions on the subject. Those guys were mythmaking, and we don't base our conclusions on the content of their myths, we base them by digging through the trash and checking the walls for graffiti. We base them on when we started burying our dead, and when we added ritual to burial. So on and so forth.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
